On this site, I am including only works that have been previously published in print (which is why there are so pitifully few of them). This is because I nurture the fond conceit that my unpublished work is only temporarily so.   Magazine editors want first rights.   There are many websites that allow anyone to post any poem, without editorial control.   I posted the following verse on one such site.   The problem is that once you do that, you are no longer able to offer the work to print magazine editors.   So I have not done it since.   Anyway, this is the poem, a fairly routine case of lover's angst:

At moonrise I must go in search of snakes

At moonrise I must go in search of snakes,
disturbing ancient logs, releasing shadows to the air.
I'll scan the trees for owls, learn the song that each one makes,
and track the autumn spirit to its lair.

I'll find the silent stream that cuts through here,
its water black as death, its surface smooth and undisturbed.
In darkness I'll approach it, without any trace of fear,
and offer up my soul, quite unperturbed.

Then gripped in ice-hard blindness I will sink,
through countless numbing strata, into featureless despair.
At last I’ll reach the bottom, where I'll write in blood-black ink,
that unrequited love lies buried there.

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