Poetry

  A Poet Explains Perhaps, dear madam and dear sir, You might with my remarks concur As I explain why...

  Swimming to the Waterfall at Uvongo In the heat of the early winter By the haunts of the southern...

  Meeting Alexander You were the wonder of another age. Enemies and friends alike: they learned To love your laughter...

  I Don’t Know With questions some adults are asked Why do they try to keep it masked--- Like they’re...

  Glog Gets Participation Prize Our tale’s set in a prehistoric cave Carved in a cliff above a vast expanse...

  The Bamboozlers of Belém inspired by the recent disasters that plagued COP30 (UN Climate Change Conference) in Belém, Brazil...

  The Last Caesar ---Ravenna, 476 AD The figure on this golden solidus: a beardless boy, his dress a bossed...

  Just Do It. _My spirit’s wings shall soar _Although at times I stray. When I’m downcast… when life’s storms...

Diocletian’s Horse “Save it for your horse.” ---Oedipus Tex, P.D.Q. Bach (Peter Schickele) While Diocletian owned the home Octavian built...

The poem read by the poet himself at the Society of Classical Poets' in-person Poetry Symposium held in Naperville, Illinois...

  Choosing a Thermometer If tubes hypoglottal Can cause you to throttle, And things in your ears Breed irrational fears,...

  Morning Rain Veiled sky, dusk at dawn, Night gone---yet not gone; Half-light, hardly day; Weird world, dim and gray....

  Timeless The timeless, gentle swish of wave-washed sand; The echoed “chock” of rounded wave-washed stone; The silent, skittered feet...

. Beyond "Daffodils" The British weather gets my goat. For once, upon a morning stroll, My path became a flooded...

  Longfellow I first met you in the schoolroom, _When I was but a child, And read your words and...

  Sensation Amidst the flaming of the flying saucer’s landing gear, like as the Sunshine glazing it, in gold-white-yellow sheer,...

  Seeing Shen Yun in Milwaukee The curtain rose—divine, resplendent stage, Where heaven’s hues met earth in living grace. The...

  Early Days The scent of roses, and the blazing sun, The gas pump next door busy—day’s begun. No school;...

  Snootsplaining For every galoot there’s a dutiful snoot Acutely aware that their truth’s absolute. They jabber and jaw as...

November by the Sea The cliffs, they are eroding On old Pacific shores, But chill November calls me To where...

  Gilgamesh Lines Introduction In 2011 when we were evacuating Iraq, looted antiquities entered the market. One such was this...

  Sonnet of the Hardened Heart Care less, I warn myself; bother no more With inner crevices: prying the shell...

  Upon Seeing a Stump Where a Tree Once Was When in the park, I passed a felled oak tree...

  On Time I went to bed too late last night And woke up to an awful fright But now...

The poem read by the poet herself at the Society of Classical Poets' in-person Poetry Symposium held in Naperville, Illinois...

  Big Pharma Big Pharma companies pay fees that get spent on the salaries of scientists who regulate each new...

  Solid Oak The oaks are always late to shed their leaves. They cling to vestiges of summer raiment, Now...

  November Nights are cold, days crisp and bold. On the ground and in the trees, Vast array of red...

  The Golden Soldier ---for my grandfather He had a calming charm. He always spoke Of garden-basking instances of joy---...

  A War Poem of Sorts ---to Robert Thomas Waldock, who died in 1983 The graveyard’s last but one dug...

  BBC Leadership Change Most networks now compete to be the one perched at the apogee of those to whom...

  The Long Journey Home I’ve traveled many miles on this long road, Across cold, barren hills and sweeping plains,...

  Old Bottles ---Oneida County, Wisconsin From time to time, when stirring in the muck below our lakeside dock, we...

. Europe Arranges Its Own Autopsy ---with apologies to T.S. Eliot . I. The Trojan Horse When April came it...

  The Reliquary One early morning long ago, I stopped to watch the Avon flow. Long-steeped and weedy, olive green,...

  Listening to Incense A spiral from ignited aloe rises, Translucent, swayed with compound camphor salve Through azure air that...

  Machine Learning All algorithms, hypothetical Or otherwise, all organised behaviours Evoke responses antithetical— And thus the desperate ever doubt...

  Melampus: The Listener   Canto I---The Gift of Listening 1. The Birth of the Listener The strong winds over...

. The poem "Ode to the Dogs" by Shari Jo Lekane read by the poet herself at the Society of...

  Words of Wisdom One bit of wisdom that life has conferred Is when to give somebody else the last...