Here is the light he was born intofragile green glowalready in wind and leavesday winding downTo open a tunnel of airTo hover above the cloverhomeless in lovewith the touch of earthTo waver in brush and weedsInvincible flit of flight John Davis is a polio survivor and the author of GigsContinue Reading

“To find a new unthought-of nonchalance with the best of Nature!” — Walt Whitman, from Leaves of Grass Ada is naked, kneeling among the fennel of their front yard garden. The Evening rises balmy, still, golden with pollen lit by an ebbing sun.Ada is toiling in their garden of fennel,Continue Reading

Nurse bees are a special breed of workershatched by some unknown alchemyinto nurturing roles. They feed the needybees’ bread, honey and pollen mixedwith royal jelly secreted by their own bodies.Nurses visit often, examinelarvae deprived of food, give moreto those who signal the most distress. Nurse sisters. Duty-bound by natureto sweetenContinue Reading

The Scene: A small Bavarian town in the Georgian EraThe Players:Georgina, the youngest sisterPhillipa, the middle sisterFredericka, the oldest sisterThe Ants of a HillSome DucksA Hive of Bees and their QueenThree prince brothers, who all looked exactly alike Phillipa and Edwina laid on a blanket in a field overlooking theContinue Reading

I’m sitting on the porch.—Bees out of nowhere,the UPS guy says, “It’s a swarm, scary.” First I heard them, a loud rubbing enginedusting the sky like a sunlit orb or a dark bubble lifted out of string and rubber without the oily chrome.Only blondish density, and fear, imagining I wasContinue Reading

The pollinators sing,and the perennials dance through their short little lifespan. The bridge takes us over the water,And my two little wheels gift me freedomand grant me an overwhelming sense of calm. I wish that nature would take back over, and we could lay downand relinquish the earth unto her.(HerContinue Reading

Can you stay late today?We really need to play catch-up. It’s not more responsibility,It’s just a shift in duties. I wanted to be in the movies,That didn’t happen. Then I wanted to be behind the camera,That never happened. I thought I could write about it,Who cares? I want to beContinue Reading

I regret that I spent most of our yearstogether—over twenty-five—keeping scoreon a chalkboard, carefully recording each errorhe’s ever made. He earned the most markswhen he raged unfairly against our son—& I tallied with a heavy hand the coldcriticisms of my body. Callous, cruel.I knew as soon as the page filled,Continue Reading

Cuppediatoris1 voce coloribusque bomboque corporis cum Helena paene defigebatur2, exsultationi tamen repugnabat. Monstrum erat sub ostentatione venustā, cuius nidus novacularum cruore madefactus in pedibus Helenae iacebat. Dubitet fauces eius incidere, si manum ei iniecit3? Duobus Helenae hunc horrorem spectantis cordis palpitationibus4, Cuppediator lodicem exuit.Cum fugere ex sinibus nitebatur, iacca diloricabaturContinue Reading

The silhouette of a ridgehalf-clouded by morning fogmakes me think of scorched grass in early fallhemmed by leaves turning so fastI can watch them redden, change like corn or bamboo,——the mind toowatching white-blossomed oregano, bees, flying ants, a moth,it’s only when they’ve all flown offthat the signs of endings becomeContinue Reading