Poetry

The desert exhales.
Coyote, awakening,
sings the darkness bright.

Coyote laps up moonlight
sees his reflection as a shadow
in the wide dusty draw
knows his home of a thousand
hiding places
knows where to find the
good water along the riverbank

He lopes with confidence
he is the shadow
that wags through the brush
rearranging the stars
and leading the way
with keen eyes that see
beyond the present storm

I love camping in the desert in the American Southwest. I love being awoken by a chorus of coyotes. And I love Susan Wooldridge’s book Poemcrazy; it’s been an…

Poetry | Prompts

Insta-inspiration, or not. . .

I’ve determined that Instagram is my favorite platform. Maybe it’s because I am visually driven (even with poetry: the internal vision, the desire to make an image with words, etc etc), or maybe it’s the ease of sharing and interacting, but it’s definitely my favorite. Social media might not make me any extra dollars, but, to paraphrase a friend of mine’s book, “life’s not just about the Benjamins.”

(Not that I make Benjamins from writing. Jacksons, at best.)

There’s a writer on Instagram who has been doing a very cool thing for over a year…

Poetry | Project

Hi Medium family —

A couple of weeks ago I had an idea. Whether or not the grand plan in my head will actually manage to bear fruit remains to be seen, but I am working towards Something.

First, I spur-of-the-moment created a new website specifically for my writing (since, quite frankly, I have been frustrated with the blog experience on the platform where I have my photography website). I can’t keep away from the motivation to include others, so the idealist inside me would like it to be so much more than just about Amy. Whether or not that…

Journal

Reflections on the journey of writing, etc

In this plain hardback Moleskine notebook resides the bulk of my endeavors for National Poetry Month. (Which also happens to be my work for Camp NaNoWriMo). You’d think, with me being an avid writer of poetry, that I would be all over this platform this month, taking full advantage of the situation, and in fact that was my original plan. I set a goal for myself to share one poem from my project every single day during April, going whole hog on the 30 day challenge thing and seeking to publish each piece…

Such great work! I know Shaun really liked the poem, too : )

Journal

Sometimes, something’s gotta give

I’ve been mostly absent from Medium lately, because there aren’t enough hours in the day, but there *is* such a thing as too much screen time and eyestrain. I spent several of those absentee days camping, which was amazing. I’m hoping that sometime soon I will be able to get down to the business of developing the film from that trip, especially since I took a large format camera with me and I am keen to see how those images came out. (Usually, I wreck all my large format work.)

Before the trip, I worked like…

Poetry

It should be green
all over by this time of year
it should be green,
but yellow brown instead is seen.
To answer human worry’s fear
tree blossoms shout out loud and clear:
soon we’ll be green!

After the whopper, unusual dose of winter that Texas received this year, most trees, shrubs, grasses, and plants appear in a state of traumatized demise. Normally by now everything would be fluffed in lovely new spring green, so it’s disheartening to see it touched with gold instead. . . . . as if Winter went berserk with a misguided Midas touch. In the…

Poetry

Sparkling rainwater in a bottle:
did it spark and shine as it fell to earth?
A downpour of giddy fireflies who
raced and swirled into the waiting glass neck,
funneling their swarm to make a small lake.
The bumper crop of glitter filled storm clouds
exploding down like a party popper.
Booby-trapped greeting card’s messy surprise,
soaking your boring day right to the skin.
The effervescent hydration of dry
ideas desiccated by neglect.
Ignite the moment with carpet-charged socks:
twinkle toes deliver inspiration
through the touch of electric fingertips. …