Don’t confuse the hypnotic
hum of highway traffic
with the anesthetic lull
of your dreams deflating.

Don’t confuse the murmuration
of small black flies above the bowl
of rotting fruit with the devastation
you feel in the hard pit of your soul.

Don’t confuse the blinding eyes
of white vapor streetlights
with the coruscating promise
of an unmolested path home.

Don’t confuse the empty auto lot
at the edge of town with an orchard:

tonight the gravel of crushed bones
blossoms in a shower of moonlight,
the interminable hush of a hard rain.

On the side of the country lane a wooden post holds a sign indicating the route of a public footpath. Hardly a mile goes by without passing another one, maybe more. They don't stand out, so common they hardly register as we motor by. Some of us have explored where they lead, others have not.

Some follow hedgerows, ditches; others strike across open fields. Wherever they are, the landowner has a legal obligation to allow free unhindered public access. Growing crops must be cut or sprayed to keep paths clear.

Many of these paths were formed by country folk walking to church, work or market, taking the shortest route across the fields. In 1948 they were recognised and given legal status on the definitive map.

Close to villages the paths are well used. In more remote areas some are barely walked from one year to the next. Even so, they are still legal rights of way.

The celebrated fell wanderer Alfred Wainwright put together his famous Coast to Coast walk by connecting existing rights of way to form a continuous route from the Atlantic to the North Sea, passing through three National Parks.

Almost a kind of accident of history, the footpath network is now a National Treasure.

Snow plows beeping
Reverse whine and scrape
Swirling blizzard of waking—Strange
in this place where
boredom banks both snow and cold
Are my eyes running?
After all
there's a stiff wind, and it’s 18 below....

Pictures and phone calls make up my family
Stray cats eat suet I leave for the birds
who make names for themselves in sunlit bushes
Love these more than...

my hearse of a job

where that ice cream vat—slipped
smashed
my sodden dish-doin’

fingers    against     sink

Pain mounts its insurrection!
Ambushed!
from every direction
Fainting in steam
Squeezing my eyes    
till the blood shuts my brain-failing
Down my wrist
all over
the front of this rubber apron....

Someone hates me somewhere

Someone found me more tenacious
than a road-**** skunk!

I eat    I drink    I work    I sleep
between these vicious icicles  


-18F = -28 C

fallow winter does not bring
peace to the restless soul
finger-licked, waiting
on subtle winds shifting
for the tropical taste
of exotic droplets of rain
a salt-stained remembrance
in this time of dreaming

red-light ladies hatch
in raftered minds
a mass awakening
beneath hardened shell
freedom awaits wings
a collective opening
an essential
transformation