Am I allowed to say I love it? I’m going to (:

I wrote the poems for Flying Beneath the Dog Star: Poems from a pandemic during National Poetry Month during such a terrible time and found such peace in my search for some kind of faith in a shaken world where my only “knowns” were a cabin porch, a spill of morning sun, and a nuthatch at the feeder. And I wrote it in honor of my sister. And then it was picked up by Finishing Line Press as a semi-finalist for FLP’s 2020 Open Chapbook competition.

And now it’s pre-publication sale time until November 20th and the sales determine the press run. If you think you want to order this book, please! do so through this direct link at Finishing Line Press: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/…/flying-beneath…/

“…and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?” ― Vincent Willem van Gogh

To the Swallow This Spring at the Nest Box

I own nothing of you
nor this leaf that shivers
into a half-bud above
the phlox and blue flax
that burrow with me
into this old winter grass.
Yet how much I yearn
for your blue-struck wing
like an arrow over a sun-
struck river, as if it were some
prayer to fit between
my strange and lonely palm,
so hollow its feathers,
so frail I could breathe through them,
so iridescent the sky
you harbor down that
whoever hammered this wood
together did so
in such hurry, in such
love, that even the nails
were left unflattened. And now
your nestling waits
at this world someone
cored into the box for it
to see: a little
knot of light,
a song
to dip and break against.

                        published by Tiny Seed Literary Journal