Don’t shave off your bark Don’t hack back the wild places Where unique blooms straight up Bright like a scarlet bougainvillea frond Conformity is over rated and bland Opinions are formless They slip down the uncurated Tumbling straight off raw edges There is nothing to hold them In a chuckle and wry shake of head […]
If you don’t love what you make You won’t look after it when times are tough Imagine if you gave birth to your children And didn’t love them Didn’t love them like you would die in their place In a second Without a thought Not an inkling of hesitation Imagine what would happen to them […]
The Winton Writers Festival is drawing to a close. Some have already left. Some are off exploring dinosaurs or sitting quietly with new books and thoughts. There were sunset drinks and final conversations, photos taken in golden light, and that strange sense of holding something while it’s still happening — knowing it’s about to become […]
This motel room is neither here nor there I’m halfway And another day to go Thoughts occur half way And even though the pause is inevitable I half wish I’d driven all the way through I spent an hour in the dark Before the sun Wondering if I was enough The thoughts drove me up […]
A dog digging a hole is happy Sometimes they are digging to bury a bone Or investigate a noise Lost in the digging they avoid all thought other than I Am Digging But when they surface happily panting A little wild eyed Is when the reality arrives And they wonder if perhaps that great and […]
A grandfather builds a cubby for his grandson. A little house for dreaming, and for slowing down.
The Bridge I’ve Been Building I’ve been walking toward this for a long time. For me, writing poetry has never been about craft or output.It’s about return.It’s how I come back to myself when the world — or my own patterns — have carried me too far away. I was thinking about it this morning […]
What if what’s up there isn’t heaven? What if hell is not below? What if both are not places but presences — things that live in the spaces all around us, shifting their nature according to our thoughts? What if we know nothing about death or dying? What if we don’t go anywhere — we’re […]
I sat alone utterly happy — because my passing thoughts are great company when I’m happy. And when I’m otherwise engaged, they’re the only company I can tolerate. — This isn’t a dark post — just a simple truth known to most writers. We are a thousand voices and memories, compressed into one fleeting, fragile […]
Love is the catch in your chest Sometimes painful It’s the emotion that runs fingertips through your flesh And grips It’s nothing you can control I feel it when I think of this earth sometimes — People disappearing down the plughole of the internet Resurfacing “elsewhere” Uncaring for this aliveness Out here I try to […]
