Ghost Buffalo

It is good to live in the sticks.   It is also difficult to live in the sticks. As most of the country gets vaccinated and recovers from Covid,  our stubborn red county here in western Colorado suffers disturbing  numbers and more deaths than ever from the ongoing pandemic.  We have less than a 30% vaccination rate, and no precautions in place.  As the drought continues and record-setting temperatures soar, the fires continue throughout the west.   The river depletes.  The groves expire.  What blooms in summer is wildfire.  It is good to live in the sticks. It is also difficult to live in the sticks.   Let it be said of our kind  when surrounded  by fires        still they sang. We were invited to a lovely summer solstice celebration on the Monument over the weekend.  Mary Hertert, Jere Friedman, and Heather Hayden, and their nine  beautiful gongs raised the vibration throughout the canyon and through the valley.   I couldn't help notice that as with poetry, it wasn't just abou

Well, it's been a while since I've haunted the ol' Ghost. Yes, we live in remarkable, evolutionary times.   And still, I find  the brokers gonna broker, the makers gonna make, the ogres gonna ogre.    My thanks to Rebecca Faust for soliciting a poem of mine for a feature in Women's Voices for Change.  Of the poem, which first appeared in Hudson Review, she writes:  Figures of speech help a writer to communicate ideas difficult to express in words or more effectively communicated non-verbally.   Schemes tend to work through sound and rhythm to produce a visceral effect felt in the body by making language more musical, persuasive, or memorable. In contrast, tropes appeal to the intellect by adding complexity or ambiguity to otherwise simple language. Broadly speaking, both types of figures of speech help engage both the hearts  and  the minds of readers, and in a very compressed and efficient way. A poem that really drives all this home, “Figures” by Wendy Videloc

You are what is female and you shall be called Eve. And what is masculine shall be called God. And from your name Eve we shall take the word Evil. And from God’s, the word Good. Now you understand patriarchal morality. - Judy Grahn

Delighted to have been asked by dear friend and poet, Art Goodtimes, to do the cover art for his latest book, Living on Edge, the McRedEye Poems, available from Lithic Press: This little (didactic!) villanelle of mine appears in the current issue of Rattle, whose editor, Tim Green, has been very generous in his support of my work over the years: ( Rattle ) This five-page bit of prosimetrum appears in the current issue of Think: (my first published prose), now edited by Brian Palmer.  In future issues, I'll be part of their newly minted advisory board, alongside original founding editor, Christine Yurick: (Think Journal) Some weeks ago I was asked by Joan Digby of Cross Cultural Communications in Louisiana for permission to reprint one of my poems for a post card project.  A box of lovely little broadsides on marbled paper with envelopes arrived in the mail today. This particular poem has had more requests for re-pri

Weathering storms,  Wandering, Wondering, Harvesting, Persisting, Teaching, Learning, Scribbling, Publishing, And generally just bumbling along, as usual. ---------- #rattlemagazine #hudsonreview #wendyvidelock #hopkinsreview #alcoholinks #palisadebluegrass #palisadelife #palisadepeach

Depleted nature takes her lovers   back into her bosom, as though she had not strength to fashion them anew. (rilke) And so we too,  recycle,  reinvent, repurpose, reimagine, rekindle, revise, rearrange, remind and renew,  remind and renew, remind and renew.