Author Archive

Hebron Maple Festival

Saturday, March 16th, 2024

A festival that celebrates our town
We're Hebron, a community of friends 
The maples here achieve a great renown 
And every year we hope it never ends

The sugar from our maples is so sweet
It flows when trees are tapped in early spring
It flows like friendship flows down every street
It seems to make the people want to sing

A festive song, a festival we love
We welcome all with hope that always grows
Like maple leaves on lofty limbs above 
Through which the joy of maple syrup flows

The winter snows will melt and go away
While Hebron’s Maple Festival will stay.

Gentleness

Friday, March 8th, 2024
I watch the maples sway across the street 
The wind seems gentle, tinged with gentle rain
The gentleness of morning is complete
As gentle dreams of reverie remain

The reverie of gentle autumn days
Remembered in the winter times of chill
I wonder if a maple tree that sways
Remembers when it used to stand stone still

The memories of trees are like the wind
A paradox with roots that wait for spring 
A memory no weather can rescind
The maple tree has other songs to sing

I watch the maples watch as I compose
A gentle song as gently I repose.

Jabberwonky

Monday, February 26th, 2024

As odd conditions find their tongues are slit
Like fiendish fangs they drip with mothered blood
If born with light they start before they quit
Eternally what bombs becomes a dud

Explosions of conditions draped with fur
Expressions make the most of rancid dawn
Untold by children told to be unsure
The offer states the honor which has gone

We find the bitch of all we might expect
As heinous scars of rotten-rendered-meat
While more than this is what we recollect
And recollections hold what gods repeat

My mistress finds a place to don her hat
While screaming faithless fiction to her cat.

TNT Is Meant To Be

Tuesday, February 13th, 2024
For Valentine's Day

Every good love story needs a good sonnet. 
This one is for Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce:
-----
They found each other somewhere in the light
A metaphor that knows just where to look
To see beyond the limits of plain sight
A simple story in love’s storybook 

She sings her songs of love with dulcet voice
A song becomes much more than what she sings
The words of love become a lyric choice 
Like songbirds know the tune of precious things

He must have known true love will know it’s true
It overcomes uncertainty and more
It seems to know precisely what to do
To show the love beyond love’s metaphor 

And now together they are TNT
An acronym for what was meant to be.

Around the Yule Log

Thursday, November 16th, 2023

The Adoption of Caliban

Saturday, October 7th, 2023
What father leaves his child with a witch?
By Setebos I curse the wretch to hell
The wretch will from humanity unhitch
The wretch becomes a story I must tell

By Setebos we live before we die
To live or die is often quite the same
Each life is but the telling of a lie
A lie which knows that truth is just a game

Play on, play on, we’ll die in wretched time
What father leaves his child with a witch?
By Setebos you recognize the crime
The players come and go; with you they switch

With Sycorax the witch you had your fun
Your Caliban exists in everyone.

Witch

Thursday, September 7th, 2023

Taco Simplicity

Thursday, September 7th, 2023
As simple as a taco," people say 
When speaking of dichotomies of life 
The spices of this sentence tend to stay 
In simple flavors filled with ease and strife

The taco, a philosophy you eat 
Just look at the simplicity at hand 
It's folded in the middle, filled with meat
You'll find them fresh at any taco stand

And while the taco has a complex taste 
It's simply filled with all you hope to find 
In simple food too good to share or waste
Unless of course you've simply lost your mind!

A life that's lived like this is here to stay 
"As simple as a taco," so they say.

The Kilted Sonneteer

Saturday, August 19th, 2023

Streams of Smoke

Monday, August 14th, 2023
I watch the streams of smoke as I exhale
They show me words I never knew I knew
They seem to know the breath they would regale
The breath, the smoke, a wispy grayish blue

The streams of smoke are remnants of a gift
A gift from Mother Earth who loves to give
I watch them rise above; I watch them lift
Above the earth, where stories often live

The stories of the smoke begets the streams
(Who says “begets” unless they’re fuckin’ high)
The stories fill the smoke with more than dreams
And dreams of smoke will lift us by and by

It makes no sense, these things of which we spoke
But sense is not the realm of streams of smoke.