One Word After Another

Grieving Moon The house bears down on him from up the hill. He hunkers, a distant moon, uneasy on the front…

Warp and Weft: The Architecture of Longing Always thinking of the next move, she never arrived, fully, in the place she happened…

Running the River Regret It’s an easy put-in, but Bull Sluice to Shoulder Bone is a run of holes that might claim…

Sun, Descending Yellow sky, pale as a breath, crescendos into flames running the rim of earth. Pitch silhouettes of cottonwood trees ripple…

At Last Count The cells multiply, coagulate, assemble in lumps and masses, demand to be counted. My doctors speak in centimeters…

The Evolution of Clouds Memories play out, slow, mutable clouds shifting subtly across the expanse of blue years, becoming truer than…

Since April Your mother has died, You are motherless. These are two distinct pains. One follows you, room to room, a…

In The Face of Such Abundance This lovely, laden spring has left me quivering, a mouth just kissed. The bloom on…

Always in August Festooned in flaming trumpet vine and daylilies, tomatoes just coming on, really, and afternoons still bearing down on our…

Sweet By and By I am a mayfly, blue-winged olive here one day then gone, entire life spooled out over a sunlit…

Poetry & Photography by Debra Shirley