Looking At Trees

The pressing issue for us Westerners, the famously alienated, is that our relationship to the world is that of master to slave. We think we’ve solved slavery in the human realm by turning iron shackles into low paychecks. But the shackles on nature grow tighter. In Brazil, a chain stretched between two Caterpillar tractors mows down forests.

Trains, Planes, And Godhead

When I was in my teens and early twenties, I’d sometimes run out to meet the Burlington Northern trains as they made their slow progress through the Colorado town of Fort Collins.

To Invent Fire

I am much too concerned with the actual earth and what walks on it to spend my small time here seeking to define such abstractions as capitalism and socialism, and broader still, society and country.

Disappearances

My father died on a July day in Phoenix. When he was found, his temperature was 108. The medical examiner’s certificate listed the cause of death as hyperthermia.

Wings Of Wax

It was a long bus ride from Mexico City to San Miguel, coming as it did on the heels of the overnight flight. You were glad when it ended and at the same time you would have preferred to keep on going.

The Wreck

Shirley Moody got sick in our house that night from sunburn, and that night — two nights after my ninth birthday — my daddy had a little too much whiskey and drove the Austin-Healey through the fence down on the canal.

A Charm Against The Language Of Politics

Selected Poems

Selected Poems