I am a professor of English and Creative Writing (fiction and poetry)? at Ohio Northern University, 
with nearly 500 of my poems appearing in more than one hundred journals in the U.S. and Canada, 
including Agni Review, Carolina Quarterly, Epoch, The Georgia Review, The Missouri Review, 
The Northern American Review, The Ontario Review, Poetry, and Shenandoah. 
Seven collections of poems have been published, including Running in Place (L'Epervier Press,). 
At Park and East Division ( L'Epervier Press,) The Lindbergh Half-century (L'Epervier Press,) 
The Inheritance (Sandhills Press,) and Storm Service (Basfal Books). 
Basfal also published After Business in the West: New and Selected Poems .


?I have completed several print and hypertext (hypermedia) collections of poems for publication, 
including Character in the Works: Twentieth-Century Lives, West of Luna Pier, Spooking in the Ruins, 
Keeping Touch,? and Eating Asiago & Drinking Beer.?


Besides the print publications poems have appeared in several webzines, 

 

ICARUS / BEFORE LIGHT

     She'll have her own smalltalk housed in.
And I     -- without a word to tell --
one     in a weekend's     low-keyed infamies,
I feel the crossveins
triggering     -- finding the ash from an old pipe
still pressed in the stitched creases --
December say     -- in its ways 
reminding     a man apart 
unbearable.


     I take on this treeless holiday.  I study the air
just over the heated
scented wax    -- in     air     imagining --
and in this air
the freshening     / completing 
interests.  


     Loved     -- I would say     -- broad-loved! --
coaxed from the run of dreams   
and into the night's own vanishing --  
but loved     -- broad-loved --
with even the emptiness undone --
enjoying     the rooms
/ steps down     -- enjoying 
her rooms below
without the pleasure 
of 
a night-light


     and finding the locks I check assured --
stepping without a light
through space I've come to know by heart
and     -- closing 
the front-door    -- snug    -- tapping 
the loose glass back --
turning at last to pre-dawn light--
I lay my hands 
on air      --  as if I needed air
for balance -- 
where blocks themselves 
seem spilled --
in someone's mad 
anatomy.




     BEFORE THE HAMMER FELL

     We entered that mist     / that moving grey --
traveling south     to search     the stuff 
     of lifetimes in old places     -- in watermarks
/ molded notes      -- in the drawers 
     more deep with river city images.  Fashion
( we'd say )     was not due course --
     nor the rain-assisted dusk     / drawered scenes
in outdoors light     -- and     -- more 
     obliquely     measuring     -- the ways a home
would seem in last-century pictures
     / would seem in musings sent through distances.  
Words     -- in your father's hand -- 
     leading your thinking off     -- my own hands
to your shoulders     -- distracting the touch 
     that slipped the feast-day china in pink sleeving --
into that box and box
     we packed for travel in the Bonne     -- letters 
you found imagining     -- your     father's
     war-sworn     assurance     to your grandmother --
on holidays set apart     -- even as I am 
     set apart by holidays     -- here     in this home 
the decades raised and cost a family --
     Reasons     to hate the reasons then     / to hate
such minutes now     -- personal
     and apart     -- with love's collapse      -- where 
celebrations were to prosper     -- and     now
     as old as docudramas seem to be     -- as masks
/ fault-lines     -- masked     like anyone's
     half-century     -- asked in your eyes     -- asked 
wait     -- and asked to be less than anything --
     anything less     than north     and winterblood 
become a focus     -- a blur     in this driving
     driving out     -- where     every objection     stalls 
and fails at persuasion     / fails to seem as is     
     / to     animate     such robes      -- that     poured 
like liquid cloisonne     -- from 
     ritual     to source     / from wide-poured privacy 
to something like espousals     -- and     into 
     that silence afterward    -- to meals apart     -- to 
earlier chill and late loud silence of the talk-shows -- 
     reasons to hate the reasons then     -- dismissing 
the risked     / made love     -- where     two 
     advanced and improvised     -- as if there had been 
no universe     -- been     no     lost home 
     for     lovers     to be lost in     --  Kind     -- in 
their hungers then     -- and kinder still
     in fealties to hunger     -- before the hammer fell --  
before the reception crackled     / layered
     voices interferred     -- and wizardries of scale
declared there'd be no poetry     / no lyrics                                                                      
     struck     / no lyrics     set     among the fibers 
in that terrible overmuch.  I concentrate 
     on line.  I think of the thimble concentrating 
family history     -- opening a line of thought 
     tonight     -- opening the air between two hearts -- 
made up on better travel     -- hearts 
     risking membership     / risking     delux 
paid on     -- something     more sure 
     than     plot     or     the spring river 
would decide on     -- than     
     love     made long     / than    
love     -- made     less 
     than singular.