Sitting in silence as the red sky ripens
Nearby a woodpecker already labors
Shhhh
The time is not yet for infant eyes
Now the wrens join in song
Dappling rays dance down
It’s the calm before the…
Alright
let’s go

Shhhh was originally published in half truths on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It feels funny how the years already slip by now. From what I hear it only gets more strange and slippery as we go.

Reading through my notes from last year hits hard. Nothing worth sharing for now. Those thoughts I will keep to myself and save for another time.

But what I will say is what I’m reminded of in seemingly seeing the same day a year a part. And that is it’s okay to not be okay.

As long as you keep going — there’s a light up ahead.

Somewhere.

I turned 29 today. was originally published in half truths on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I always said I would never live far enough north that it required me to get up before the sun in order to scrape ice off my windshield. Coming from central Texas the thought of living in such a way always felt bizarre — and frankly unpalatable. As far as I was concerned, I would never allow my life to come to such a thing.

Then, the world as we knew it got turned upside down. And that led my wife and I to migrate to eastern Colorado for the last three months. Far enough from the mountains that there’s nothing on the horizon except more horizon dotted with windmills jutting from the landscape like sticks a child has jabbed into their sandbox.

As a technical matter, I do not have to scrape ice off my windshield in the morning.

As a practical matter, I do. My wife is an emergency room nurse who leaves quite early, so it’s her windshield I’m scraping.

So, I guess, ultimately it’s half true — I don’t have to get up to scrape ice off my windshield. But it certainly is my pleasure.

My Pleasure was originally published in half truths on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Her home was the sea and
His love had never known the waves
Each day an encore performance
Of a long gone tragedy

Excerpt from Days Long Gone, Part I.

XX was originally published in half truths on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Inked lines
permanent
Grounded knees
repentant

Here it comes
There it goes
Blood oath

Excerpt from Days Long Gone, Part I.

XVIII was originally published in half truths on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

My memoir will be filled
with laughing friends and freight trains
each known for crashing through still nights
and leaving faint memories in their wake

Excerpt from Days Long Gone, Part I.

XVI was originally published in half truths on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’ve visited terrible places before
hell holes down to the tiniest detail
I’ve been there, but to me
those places are foreign
Have you been to hell before?
I have
People believe in it
as a place in the cosmos
or pinpointed on a map
with boundaries between here and there
The truth is the deepest corners of hell
exist almost exclusively
in the human mind

Excerpt from Days Long Gone, Part I.

XV was originally published in half truths on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Birdsong kills off dawn’s silent approach
but its beauty justifies the crime
in fact pleasant enough to be worth
suffering this morning muggy air
damp
gritty
like a sandy beach
stuck at low tide refusing to dry
mug in hand there’s an Amazon heat
sitting on my neck
that’s Texas for you
yet even in the discomfort
there’s a pleasant tranquility
to the songbird’s shriek
so I stay
to witness
the rise

Songbird Shriek was originally published in half truths on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Courage comes in crowds
This side of the city.
Are tiny bits truly enough
To feed the least of us?

Most men merely boys
Disguised by dirt on their brow;
The rest gave up their spine
Last time the collector came through -
Coaxed them away
Bartered for stale bread
And a drunken view of the valley’s far side.

Hope isn’t lost here.
You wouldn’t know
From the look of this lot,
But it’s not.

Excerpt from Days Long Gone, Part I.

XIII was originally published in half truths on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

He was a child of the wildwood
And came from the Wise-men
Beneath those treetops colors spoke
And low hanging fog breathed heavy

The stillness between spring and summer
Brought liberty, the cheap kind
But in these parts priceless

Excerpt from Days Long Gone, Part I.

XI was originally published in half truths on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.