Tag: Tennessee poet
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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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Shedding
Shedding began as a meditation on the rituals we inherit and the ones we invent to survive grief. I wanted to write a poem that honored the quiet choreography between father and son—the way they speak through thermostats, boiled peanuts, and Dolphins talk. The “fortune cookie” structure emerged as a way to hold fragments of…
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I Will Not Go to the Light Having Known Nothing of the Darkness
I wanted to write a poem that metabolized silence, that honored the gestures we inherit but never name. The title came first—a vow not to bypass darkness in pursuit of light. From there, each stanza became a vessel: bruised fruit, a crocheted blanket, a drawer that won’t close. I wrote it to preserve what frays.