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Tinkers Damn, Homebound Publications
2013 | 100 pages | Poetry | ISBN 978-1-938846-15-1 | Purchase
Deeply rooted in place and time, these poems explore nature, the built environment, and human relationships with an acute sense of reverence and wonder that renews the spirit.
“A quaint drinking town with an art problem,” reads a tee shirt for sale at a local pub near my home in Collinsville, Connecticut. A one-liner that rarely fails to get a chuckle, it’s a tongue-in-cheek truism that not only expresses present-day sentiment, but sharply tweaks the past. Contrary to current realities, Collinsville was dry for generations, a factory village where alcohol was taboo. Many property deeds still have clauses declaring them void “in case any ardent spirits, cordials or wines shall be kept or sold on any part of said premises,” and legend holds that a nineteenth century drunk was once paid never to be seen again. A place with century-and-more-ago architectural charm and a contemporary vibe, it illustrates that places exist not only spatially, as we typically encounter them, but in time as well.
Continue reading "Space, Time & Booze: A Special Theory of Place Relativity" »
Against August’s drowsy greenery, a magenta haze
of loosestrife floods the river with waves of cool,
delicious color that pools and settles in the swamps.
A sea of flashy electric flower spires.
Escaped from its garden paradise, this pilgrim plant
now devours the landscape with its relentless spread
by seed and root. It suffocates wild rice, jewelweed,
cattails and bulrushes, leaving a sterile, radiant
desert that evicts mallards and face-painted wood ducks,
muskrats, marsh wrens and long-legged least bitterns.
Seduced by blooms of subversive beauty, traffic slows
for a look and camera click that captures the pretty, coveted
postcard. We’re traffickers in images, mesmerizing us like our own
reflections caught in the wetland waters where loosestrife blooms.
