Welcome to Memphis

rainy
Fourth of July
just outside of Graceland
no Elvis but the thunder keeps
clapping

Editor's Choice, Sol Magazine, 2003

(Link no longer available)

     Ringing In The New Year

bird chirps echo throughout the morning as if to say this is the here and the hear after

“Science doesn't tell us what we should do. It only tells us what is.” 

~ Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

"Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you."

~ Author Unknown

(Attributed to Nathaniel Hawthorne, but according to Quote Investigator this saying appeared in a newspaper written by someone with the initial "L". More details available on this site.)

Migration 

(originally untitled)

monarch
trains heading south
into the trackless air
dew on the engines that push them
onward

"We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master."  ~ Ernest Hemingway

To Ernest Hemingway:

Sunset

papa has gone

his limelight, a green flash

     of tequila going down in

  Key West

Madonna

as seen
on potatoes,
the woman of grottoes
and stained glass--when other visions
have failed

Originally published in Amaze: The Cinquain Journal, Vol. 3, No 2

Electrolux vs The Grim Sweeper

Death does
not always knock
like a salesman selling
vacuums. It can rob you without
a sound.

Originally published in Amaze: The Cinquain Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2

Damn Physics

today
when an acorn
fell on my head I cursed
the Newton in nature and all
that drops

___________

Originally published in Amaze: The Cinquain Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2

Mo Says

Taum Sauk*
you're a bit short
for a mountain but you're
within my reach and easy to
talk to


________

*highest point in Missouri

Originally published in Amaze: The Cinquain Journal, Vol. 1, No. 2