Jul 5, 2021 | Aging, Alexandrine, Commissioned, Gus Stevens, Irregular Rhyme
You wake before the birds, during the dark’s slow decay into the pale light of dawning day. Your mind holds thoughts— that hold no words, like dreams too-soon forgot. Outside, a lonesome cry, a beckoning belief that there is more than silent...
Dec 10, 2020 | Aging, Commissioned, Grief, Gus Stevens, Irregular Rhyme, Mom, Winter
She appears in the glass like a watermark and her image in the window tells the score. Her eyes, reflected, look blinkered, tired, sore as she scrapes the dishes clean. Inside: herself. Outside: the dark, and this old face between. It seemed just weeks...
Aug 22, 2016 | Commissioned, Gus Stevens, Quatrains, Songs for the Dead
Being eldest, she always knew the best places to hide for games of hide and seek and where to find the abandoned bird’s nest or the stones you needed to cross the creek with dry shoes. She was strong and fast and brave; she already knew most of the letters and...
Aug 20, 2014 | Commissioned, Gus Stevens, Moss Kingdom, Picture Challenge, Sonnet, Terza Rima
Yes; I could estimate the grains of sand the Colorado carries year by year carving with his crooked and cursive hand. But such reckoning is but a cashier’s math yielding a number I cannot know for in my mind the zeros disappear. Nor can I figure a new fallen...
Aug 3, 2014 | Commissioned, Gus Stevens, Moss Kingdom, Picture Challenge, Sonnet, Victorian Sonnet
Grasping blindly through the barnacled slab he hunts eyeless for his armored prey. He cracks the clam and ignores the infant crab who traipses by but is no threat today. Perhaps he will hide in the deep again before the great ‘Out There’ supplies fresh...
Aug 2, 2011 | Commissioned, Gus Stevens, Humor, Picture Challenge, Sonnet, Victorian Sonnet
Webster Wagner was born in Palatine just a stepping stone between Rome and Troy as you ride the old New York Central line from Albany straight west to Illinois. He built quite a home alongside the bridge, a mansion of the Mohawk Valley ‘tween the Adirondack and...
