Art Here is this tree before me whose skin is as fissured and split as the landscape of the Rockies as if a network of rivers had, for centuries, by force of friction, sculpted canyons into its surface; bark beaten by torrents of rain, dried by torch of sun, torn by whip of wind, but…

Do Top Dogs Care I place my body — life, in hands of corporate heads and engineers I am in my seat perched above a wing and through this little porthole peer. I slide my sight along its graceful lines, to its distant tip, vague among clouds. We’re far from earth up here. I know…

—“For all practical purposes a lie is as true as the bias of its believer.” —Roshi Bob Plum of a Lie If I told you a lie would you believe it? ….. Will it be a true lie? Will it ….. pierce my bias to the bone? Will it ….. meet my need? Does that matter? ….. As sure as…

Bread Upon the Water Every book just speaks, and every light just shines, and every touch just feels, and every look just finds, and everywhere just is, and every road’s a line — So, throw your bread on the water and beat your feet to the chimes and if you have a daughter and count…

Blink . . . In a blink the sun comes up over mountains sublime and the sea laps it’s rim like a pup . . . regal elms come and go . . . splayed trunks broken by blight, . . . limbs corrupt future and past together abide, winds whistle side by side, bodies…

Compost wonderstuff of summer declination that’ll grow my beets and beans and other rations browner than the mere idea “earth”, archetypical as sacrifice, more wonderful than virgin birth more promising than the phantom wealth of nations more essential than human beings of highest stations shoveling this wonderstuff into my wagon sifting it through hardware cloth, screening stems &…

Standing Under Without Understanding Horizon’s circle, beyond which you can see no further in any direction other than up, hems us in, but looking up you can see forever, or as far as lightspeed allows, or until more time passes or, more accurately, until it shifts again, now. But by then, you yourself may have passed, whatever that…

Replacing the Gates If I’d broken the laws of light— if I’d been caught by a black hole and sent to prism, would you visit me with spectral frequency and split waves with me? Would you help cleave white into colors and set them free to carom off of everything in sight replacing the gates…

Stardust —on a celestial photo look to the spiral arc of stars of which the nearest star and you are part and see your milky way and climb your finite climb and run your finite run and whirl and turn and wind while they spin their finite spin and glow their finite glow and give you…

What A Moment Is A moment’s a poet’s take of a singular blur as tentative as an airborne bubble and hard as a hammer blow to thumb, the smallest thing able to contain an unimaginable universe, a universe able to imagine the smallest thing. Her’s one now, notice how quick— joy, gone. Hear’ s  another, …

Homes we all leave home eventually, leave the dark comfort of wombs, leave the home of childhood, some earlier than others depending upon the warmth or not of particular hearths. inevitably some step out and abandon silver spoons like Siddhartha who was not comforted by comfort, while some break from huts of sheer neglect. eventually,…

“Parrots, songbirds and hummingbirds all learn new vocalizations. The calls and songs of some species in these groups appear to have even more in common with human language, such as conveying information intentionally and using simple forms of some of the elements of human language such as phonology, semantics and syntax. And the similarities run…

“The past is inevitable”  —Delmore Schwartz, Poet I’d Never Thought of it Like That           though it’s likely to come, tomorrow’s not set, …….. this day’s loose ends twist in the wind ………like kite tails in blue jerked at the end of present’s string, ………they’re codas no one can sing— ………the future’s…

Who Spoke First? who knows from where the echoes come, who knows who forms the echoes? if, in a canyon, I speak loudly enough that echoes come,   I might think it’s me,     I am the maker of echoes,   I belch a series of wave forms toward a mirror of cliff and hear myself return on…

Making Way —Narragansett Bay —1960, first time out We part from pier slow as disengaging lovers one landlocked, the other a floater who won’t be kept at bay The diminishing dock slides back, its bollards and planks deploy to some other place not here —to a distancing otherworld The tether breaks as stern-first we pass…

A Sprawl of Cemeteries Blood for blood is in our bones, the bass line of a ceaseless requiem. Justice screams carpe diem, but none of the dead are soothed as the living gloat and hoot, or wail Why did it have to be her, or him? Satisfaction’s not been found in the pages of our “Good Books”.…

Terri Amig