Stormanstown

Wheeler Avenue, the Ides of March, Caesar is dead, you know that. You don’t know Johnson’s Farm is closed, that I spent high school Summer’s spraying dirty monkey dishes and ketchup-stained ramekins in their kitchen. You don’t know their sugar house made maple syrup, with sap they got from the Sugar Maple in my front […]

Ode to My Dirt

I jump with my muck boots to the shovel’s step With this blade I hit rock With that I sink delightfully down Lever out that sound Rhode Island grade A agricultural earth Into my wheelbarrow. With untold hours My middle aged wrists freeze up My fingers, callused and scratched and prearthritic, look to me like […]

View from Work

Spring comes slowly to New England. When I leave the house in the mornings at the end of April, I pull my fleece jacket tighter around me on my way to the car. My daughter’s dark eyes and solemn mouth watch from the second-floor window as I pull away. In the “don and doff” station […]