It's the hour before the launch of my book, and like the men in the blockhouse where my father worked to send up missiles that streaked through the sky, I'm working quietly (thought without slide rule) to tell my friends and fans that this book will soon lift off from Aldrich Press -- 133 pages of poems, essays, and even a short play. Here's a taste, a prose poem from the first section, Gods of Upheaval and Flight.
Wild Ranunculas
This is how you mend, ounce by floating ounce. Each petal
lights on the eye, and the five-fingered yellow flowers nod.
A moving cloud scars the field in March wind’s bitter tea.
Walking through fields is an undoing. Eyes take off memo-
ries and stand where sun has fallen and sprouted into a
thousand green buds. Within each opened cup, a tiny black
and drunken fly. How have you come this far, you ask. To
know the wild ranunculas graze on your trampling ankles.
Go back! You tell the flowers. The world is not ready for your
news of stars. The meadow’s ancient bulletins are thick with
unearned light. You return bee-like, carrying.