DAYBREAK, MONTSERRAT
 
Morning splinters into shoal reefs.
 
We waken to graves,
A tide of weather and early hair,
 
A window of volcanoes,
Purple blue mist,
A seal cackling near driftwood.




CRAWDADS

--This year we vacationed from home and traveled a couple of dozen miles away (2020)
 
Sunlight rises into fire,
early dawn,
yellowing itself into flame,
a blossoming as beautiful
as yesterday morning,
my wife and I,
my son, his wife and new born daughter
not on a Florida beach,
along the Gulf of Mexico,
but in Mid-Missouri, 
Barnard Bruns Conservation Area,
Getting our feet wet for crawdads,
the forest a grand wall beyond the river,
the sky sky blue, 
a whisper of cloud
cotton candied.
Nothing can feel as beautiful as this,
not the sun rising in the east,
not the birds of the beaches,
not the bent cedar on the cliff ledges.
Beauty is my family in a river,
the end of summer nearing, 
and both my son’s wife and my own
against a backdrop of forest and river,
of sky with strings of sugar
digging through rock and stone for crawdads.
.My family on its banks,
a bright breeze and cool shadows,
and even though we catch nothing,
we have found the milky silk of love.