My Poetry
Introduction
My poems and book reviews have appeared in PoetsArtists, MiPOesias, Moss Trill, Littoral Magazine (UK), Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Blue Fifth Review, Ygdrasil, New Letters Literary Magazine, Literary Revelations Journal, As Surely As the Sun, The Penwood Review, and elsewhere. The chapbook, When the Wolves Come After You, Hang On, co-written with Pris Campbell, was published in 2017. My poetry collection Divining the Spirits in the House of the Hush and Hush won the Utah State Poetry Society's Book of the Year Award in 2021.
Here are a few of my favorite poems that have been published throughout the years.
When Praying and Love
Ruminations Of A Man In A Failing Body Under A Perfect Sky
Knight Of Wands
October nineteenth. two-hundred-ninety-third day of the year. It’s Mercurii, and the waning Hunter moon sits by Orion’s stretched thigh. Hydra lifts her head out of its eastern hole (there, next to Orion’s foot), wanting to devour the cadmium-hued moon.
What explains our struggles’ centrality?
At night, we sit by the window waiting for our suffering to leave;
the desolation of pain’s long war, and how that
pain changes and consumes
every single ounce of us.
This just might be the answer.
We have lost the guide star.
The nights are all black and shadows, and
we are bleak with a quotidian affinity for
our very own insufferable violent solitude
(because no one around us knows our pain).
The days are crowned with the southern sun, glowing.
If we walk, we’re crooked; slower than the wind.
Aphids, like tiny-winged fairies, dance like heavy snowfall.
God is soft spoken.
The praying tree has been felled.
Blood has come out on the leaves on the trees.
And dry leaves fall away from their own
beloved green communities.
The Prince of the cards leaves his own Egypt.
(Does he feel the terms: lone, exile, desolate?)
I see he carries a long stick.
I don’t want to believe it’s a weapon in this age of weapons.
Rather, he holds it forward like a diviner’s rod.
Divining a future? Divining life
without the fear of increased pain
(which chokes sufferers like ivy about the neck)?
Yes, the angels seem to have lost us.
Lost to us in our kingdoms of the unapproachable.
Lost to us in their great and benevolent flight to
minister to the forsaken living and
the unburdened dead.
--From the collection, Divining the Spirits in the House of the Hush and Hush, page 10.
At The End Of The Street Lies The Sky
At the end of the street lies the sky
dressed in the purple magician's robe
of eventide and the winter storm.
Tonight, she sculpts stairs of ice and
snow. She casts spells upon the laden
earth and the dying man can hear
her invitations in the blizzard,
in dreams that are like all other dreams
except more sound, deep, and vivid.
He leaves while his wife is sleeping.
He leaves without any goodbyes.
There is no gentle kiss for her lips.
No tussling of the boys' hair
or kiss for the daughter
with the moon-face.
This is not intentional.
How could he know the destination
of this dream?
He leaves his house,
walks down the silent street
past rows of barren trees
that shield homes of dear
neighbors who helped round out
the days, grow kids, and watch
year after year arrive and depart.
He does not think this odd tonight.
He considers it an adventure,
walking past the shroud of snow
and on to glistening stairs
that climb the breast of sky.
--First published by Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought
How We Respond To Life Is Brief
for my brother Todd
Let us not speak of right and wrong,
our gains, our losses. We have
already marked the territory of
our long, pain-laden nights.
We have paced the halls and rooms
of our own dark houses, shunning
the remarks of shadows—that the life
of a man is always brief.
There are things we know and things we know.
There are things that are and things that are.
All such things happen
whether God is in His sky—
wild geese go north of the passes,
and a cougar stalks the high ridge.
You and I understand this like Job.
So let us pretend the wise have spoken—
there are no more apologies for pain;
there are no more winter depressions
we throw upon our backs like coats.
These are the days we stay brave—
steal fire from the mountain of gods,
wrestle arrogant angels,
tame the cave of esurient lions.
Thousands of years are just one day
and one day waits ten thousand miles
before it lifts its strong, bearing wings
and crosses the plain into morning.
--First published in the collection, Divining the Spirits In the House of the Hush and Hush, page 44
When You Feel Yourself Lacking
grow roots like the oak
plant your roots in that place you know ―
the making of the singular morning
the flurry of life under the sun's long road
or the sorrow in the passing and letting go
of that beloved day you will never see again
I like to believe that you would stretch yourself wider
feel the things you most desire ―
the soul of the spirited breeze
the rage of the temerarious storm
the curling 'round the circumference
of the robin's newly inhabited nest
if you want to imbue the serenity of the stars
then imagine radiating clear light
if it is a harvest you are yearning to be
then by all means be a bounteous tree
there is something alive when I say this, like it is
the birth of meaning
the re-creation of fire
that newly celebrated equation that proves
infinity
yes, there is something more alive in me
there is a well-traveled path, a widening road
there is well-lit horizon, and the wide house of the sun
and I am walking in
to its heart
--Originally published in PoetsArtists, Winter 2012
A Whole Body of Meaning
Like life
a child of the earth, people in history, men made various, and innocence betrayed
like a thief in the night, wolves on the fold, a conquered province, parchment in the mouth of fire
a road, any road anywhere, decisions on trial, junctions
wind, waves, water on stone
like the flowing river, a river glorious, a river of waking lions
an upturned mantle, a tear in the ocean, the mad sea, and a boat in a storm
a man in love, breath and water, fire in the heart of bones, a shining cloak, a living stone, seasoned timber for the long season, a cedar of Lebanon, peeled hope and its ramparts
like a house of light, taste of summer, summer's infinite clouds, wings, smiling leaves
thunder coming off drums, a sparrow through the heart, a seed with its singular dream
Like the first time
Like we used to be
the sun gone down, canopy of night, the roundness of the wild moon, stars humbled, stars ponderous in the sanctuary
like the short gaze of statues
Like those who dream
Like one who dreamed
rolling thunder, a beast of colors, an angel that strikes from the skies, angels climbing Jacob's ladder
like most revelations, shaking hands with God
restoring the phoenix from the ashes
fathers, mothers, sons, daughters you see in a dream, friends, sand, stars, wheat arising green
like memories, trees that grow beside a stream, and trees walking home
Like this
--Winner of the Whitaker Award, Utah State Poetry Society, 2014.
A Poem For A Year's Ending
Days have flown quickly by like fearsome comets.
Here then gone; here then gone.
My hair is colored moonlight.
My bones are brittle as the limbs
of the trees cracking
from the touch of winter’s deepening freeze.
If I could disclose a secret, it is
suffering has visited me like an old friend.
But if there is anything I know, if there is
something I want to pass on after a year,
it would be this:
the remains of my yesterdays shall be
steps I take in my tomorrows—
emboldened memories, flying aspirations,
lessons administered like sacrament,
perseverance practiced like a holy mantra,
convictions adhered to like Grecian marble,
and hope rooted like mountains.
It is true. What I have lost has broken me,
what I have learned, I do not
want to leave behind.
I aspire to the patience of the moon
through her long cycles,
seeing all our joy
and all our dark history.
I know tomorrow is
the best theory of probability—
a gamble with life, with the Fates
who weave my hours and days
through patterns of the living
and the dead.
I aspire to listen to where the ancients are—
at the windstorm’s end
in that invisible country
now glowing in the widening skies.
I know I am master of the ship
and all strive to maneuver
through the maelstrom
and settle the spirit down
through raging storms.
My hope for the new year—
settle down, wild storms,
settle down.
--Originally published in the book, Divining the Spirits in the House of the Hush and Hush