Skating Rough Ground
Skating Rough Ground (Kelsay Press, 2022) contains prizewinning poems, including "The Creator Praises Birds," winner of the 2018 Clint Larson poetry prize from BYU Studies Quarterly; "His Own Hand," winner of the 2021 Body/Bodies of Christ award from Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought; "Closing the Account," winner of the James Larkin Pearson prize from the now defunct Poetry Council of North Carolina; "I Sing," Third Wednesday poem of the week; and "Patient John Doe in the Rec Room," winner of the 2017 Carol Bessent Hayman award from the North Carolina Poetry Society.
Skating Rough Ground can be purchased from Amazon.
Skating Rough Ground can be purchased from Amazon.
Slow
We were standing under the bright
bole of the sycamore that split into three
crooked fingers. Even in the noon glow
we could not make out our hearts. Slow,
you said, slow, and hours dissolved
into the scent of night flowers.
Look, you said. Under the alder,
their wings folded like Dürer’s praying hands,
the butterflies waited for light.
First published by Third Wednesday and selected for public display in the Poetry in Plain Sight program sponsored by the NC Poetry Society.
bole of the sycamore that split into three
crooked fingers. Even in the noon glow
we could not make out our hearts. Slow,
you said, slow, and hours dissolved
into the scent of night flowers.
Look, you said. Under the alder,
their wings folded like Dürer’s praying hands,
the butterflies waited for light.
First published by Third Wednesday and selected for public display in the Poetry in Plain Sight program sponsored by the NC Poetry Society.