Hazels to Hickory Nuts

 [Addendum, June 2015: The poems mentioned herein are no longer available on the website, but are in the collection, "Swallowing the World," new this month from Lost Arts Design.]

I put seven new poems in the “Uncollected” section of the website today. A wide range, new and old.

CATKINS is the newest, celebrating the Hazelnut catkins. Hazels hold the ground north and south of the house. In January and February their soft subtle flowers are a welcome visual and textural delight when everything else seems scattered, chaotic, broken or skeletal.

You’ll find two Northeast Florida poems, HOLY VISION and WINDFALL. I get down there a lot to see my father, who is in decline, but stable, and not in much pain. His body and mind just don’t work as well as they used to. So we all get down more often, to help him out. 

Dad lives in assisted living, but still has the house he and my mother lived in for the ten years or so before her death, in 2009. This house is sited on a beautiful curve of the intercoastal waterway on the landward side of Amelia Island, the northernmost barrier island on Florida’s Atlantic coast. The next island north is Cumberland Island, in Georgia. 

The back deck of the house practically overhangs a wide salt marsh, rife with birds, bordering the river, where great barges, layer-cake tug boats, and all manner of pleasure craft travel by day and night. Eagles, Osprey, Kingfisher, and all sorts of wading birds nest nearby. The place provides a remarkable and inspiring residence and retreat. HOLY VISION and WINDFALL were triggered by experiences in that rich, tropical landscape, where I always seem to be about to go, or just back from these days. 

The other four newly posted poems are AFTER DARK, CONFLUENCE, AT THE SCULPTURE PARK, and WEIGHTLESS. 

Let me know what you like, or what you would like to hear at the reading, March 21.