Tag: poetic realism
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Love Is
I wrote Love Is after my cancer surgery, when my wife sat beside me and held my hand as I woke. The poem is about how love survives the body’s breaking — not through comfort, but through the persistence of touch after pain.
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Each Morning Before Dawn
I wrote Each Morning Before Dawn after noticing how the small rituals of care—refilling a bird feeder, waiting for song—can reveal the violence beneath domestic calm. The poem began as a record of sound and silence, but it evolved into a meditation on expectation and dread. The mockingbird and squirrel became emblems of persistence and…
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Making Lemonade Street
I wrote “Making Lemonade Street” after watching a forest near my neighborhood being cleared for new housing. The poem began as a note on the phrase “the forest in front of the forest”—a doubling that felt like both description and elegy. I wanted to record the moment when the natural and the artificial overlap, when…