








i’ve begun to hold you again
colorful cardboard portal
young men gripping bats
like no one ever ages
i used to take you for granted
trade you, shove you into
shoe boxes, stacking Tigers
and Orioles, reading statistic
after statistic, the only math
that ever made sense
now with gray hair, you are
mine again, behind plastic
i cradle delicate memory
this time around i know
nothing lasts forever
thinking always about chess
like words gliding through
space and time, these
pieces of royal motion
an endless game of poetry
those frozen crystals
one after the next
swirl and gust, dance
in sky, as we stare
hoping streets turn white
with each inch on ground
silent time arrives
waiting by the radio
listening to county
after county close schools
for children only think
of sledding and cocoa, and
knocking powder off oak branches
landscape like the untouched moon
today with Zoom the flakes
still descend, but screens trap
the young inside their computers
a flat warm world without end
no more snow days
evolution, acorn becomes
the tree, caterpillar a
butterfly, soar into future
skies, on screens with
robotic machines choosing
videos that emerge to
distract us away from
here, the present day
always leaving the
past behind, and perhaps
this should be
until we finally
become like drawings
in the cave
look how those
humans used to be
so simple and so free
now we are all
just technology
I’m enjoying my new school (Harpeth Hall in Nashville). This August interview excerpt was from Logos, the school newspaper.
no one wants the poems
give me the photos
no time to look at letters
on a page, and i don’t
really care anyway
about your abstract ideas
related to sound and sunlight
so forget it and paste
your iphone image
on the screen
get to it old man
the future is now