Category Archives: poetry

After ten dry years, the drought-killed,

dead-standing oaks have shed their limbs

in piles, like clothes at their feet—some

centuries claiming space, offering summer

shade to cows, acorns to a host of hungry

mouths, hidden homes to hawks and lesser

feathered flocks—and have begun to tip

over as the rain-soaked earth lets go

of their decomposing roots to rest

on fences or across the dirt tracks

between us and our children grazing

the ridgetops: like emerald thighs, toes

reaching for the flats along the creek.

Despite the disassembled skeletons

of a generation passing that litters

and melts into the ground, lush canyon

and slope come alive to welcome and beckon

to embrace me for the first time

in a decade—and I overwhelmed, submissive

having spent my penance on unknown sins

I will confess just to prolong this moment.