I believe in the vital necessity of political poetry and publish poems against war and to preserve our planet. Many other of my poems blend images of the natural world with musical metaphors, in ways similar to improvising jazz. Here is a sample from the Spring 2009 issue of Falling Star Magazine: Dearest Betty Carter Sweet mistress of eureka, there’s only one of you swinging colors instantly recognized, leading me through far-out mazes of harmonies I could listen to marooned on a remote island forever. In the car I pray for traffic delays as you nuzzle my ears, caress me with juicy morsels of elusive melodies gliding like discoveries of birds. You change the monotonous sentence of work into honeymoons around unknown planets. So many nights I have wakened yearning for your delectable voice, spider-stepped to the study where we rendezvous in your galaxy of music. My wife doesn’t dig the idea of ménage à trois. She observes me swaying and gyrating out of control like an infatuated teenager when you steal my breath away without leaving a clue how you bridge tunes to the furthest horizons, and mold them with deceptive curves of delight. I can’t keep our involvement hush-hush any longer. She’ll read this poem and get the wrong picture about the nebulous voyages you navigate with limitless range of camouflage, the abundant sounds seducing me astray.

Landscapes of Longing (Main Street Rag Publishing Company, 2009), Discovering Mortality (March Street Press, 2005), Buoy on the Water (Hub Publications Ltd., 1979)

From The Porch Swing: Memories Of Our Grandparents (Silver Boomer Books, 2010), Against Agamemnon: War Poems (WaterWood Press, 2009), Bay Leaves (North Carolina Poetry Council, 2009), MEOW (Outskirts Press, 2009), Blue Arc West (Tebot Bach, 2007), Celebrations (July Literary Press, 2006), Mountain Time (Old Mountain Press, Inc., 2006), Passing (PoetWorks Press, 2006), Poetic Voices Without Borders (Gival Press, 2005)

.Cent, Antigonish Review, Arabesques Press, Aries, Asheville Poetry Review, Audience, Ballard Street Poetry Journal, Blind Man's Rainbow, Blue Earth Review, Blue Fifth Review, Cafe Solo, CircleShow, Concho River Review, Confrontation, Contemporary Verse 2, Controlled Burn, Dalhousie Review, Earth First, Earthshine, Existere, Falling Star, First Edition, Fulcrum, Gloom Cupboard, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Harpur Palate, Hawai'i Review, Heavy Bear , IF Poetry Journal, In Posse Review, Inscape, International Poetry Review, Iodine, Jelly Bucket, Listening Eye, Main Street Rag, Malahat Review, Manzanita Quarterly, Margie, Midnight Mind, New Millennium Writings, New York Quarterly, Oak Bend Review, Old Red Kimono, Oyez Review, Poem, Poet Lore, Poetry, Poetry Salzburg Review, Potomac Review, Powhatan Review, Quercus Review, Real, Reed Magazine, River Poets Journal, Roanoke Review, Rockford Review, Sojourn, Spindrift, Stand, Talking River Review, The Alembic, The Centrifugal Eye, The Seventh Quarry, Thema, Tulane Review, Vanderbilt Review, Wanderlust Review, Welter, Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art, and Thought