How fitting the total lunar eclipse would be an October blood moon. War, disease,
and rampant ignorance cast shadows over the habited globe as the earth flashes a full
frontal across its cratered sibling. At least the darkness on the moon passed quickly;
it doesn’t seem the earth will be so lucky. Gnawing at borders, straining at
containment, chain reactions of psychotic violence seem unstoppable in what’s
left of my lifetime. I fear for my daughter. I fear for my wife. I fear for my friends.
I fear for all those of like minds and those with whom I disagree. I fear for plants
and animals and every monument of human construction or natural. I fear for history.
I fear for the future. And I fear for the moon, for the inevitable war over who owns
it.
Mouse and shrew cower
As raptor shade glides over
Wait for it to pass
is the author of four poetry collections: 52 Views: The Haibun Variations;
Memory and Rain; Talking Back to the Rocks; and In the Bee Trees.
A multi-year Pushcart Prize nominee, his poetry has appeared in numerous print and
online journals, as well as in many anthologies, among them Spillway,
Hayden’s Ferry Review, Hotel Amerika, Alligator Juniper, New Poets of the
American West, Los Angeles in the 1970s, Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here,
and Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose About Alzheimer’s Disease.
After a 25-year career as a creative executive with the National Football League,
he received his MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles in 2005. He teaches creative
writing workshops; curates literary events, including The Literary Southwest series
at Yavapai College in Prescott, AZ; and with his wife, book artist Tania Baban, runs
indie publishing house Conflux Press.