nature
Kin Stories
Once he mistook a prostitute for a hitchhiker, and twice he has invited genies into his truck. All three asked him the same thing: “What do you want? More than anything? I can give it to you.”
The Muddy Divine
Inside the pristine valley below me, coyotes drag newborn lambs snatched from adjoining farmsteads, and cattle sink knee-deep in stream-drenched muck. In the woods, next to the bluebells, crawl ropes of poison ivy thick as my wrist. Yesterday, a red fox lay dead on a trail, two large bite marks on its side. Paradise exists in the mind of the simple, yet there’s something to be said for a canopy of maples embracing at their tips, leaves rocking to the sighs of an afternoon breeze.
Autumn in Florida is Strange and Sad When I have Lost
Late November and gusts / rock the oaks to groans. / The living will find shelter: / pygmy rattlers seeking ground palms / for sleep, lizards scurrying / into thorny hiding places, armadillos...