Poem: Maryland in Brief

Maryland my home
Where first ancestors flourished
Kissed by deep waters

Poem: Idle Days on the Patuxent

The rain in Seattle makes me miss the east coast
With summers so hot you melt outside
Those brutal days are worth the warm nights
Where we would drink beer on the hood of your car
Watching the tide roll in lapping at the sand
As we skipped rocks shattering the stars

Poem: Becoming a Marylander

Between the tides of the Chesapeake
And the muddy waters of the Potomac
Seedlings cast from an old world
Seeking out new fertile soil to grow

Poem: Tobacco (nicotiana alata)

Nearly every summer for a decade
I watched tobacco being grown and harvested
Cut to air dry on stalks high in the rafters
Out in the old weathered gray tobacco barn
To cure and sweeten in the humid summer heat

Poem: Chesapeake Home

Old tobacco barns and fields of dust
Stories about how life used to be
Before they put the highway through the farm
I used to sit in that old white steeple church
The Enoch’s hands built and contemplate praying

Poem: Old Bay

Her lips taste like old bay
An undefined blend of spices
That is a perfect compliment
To the Natty Boh on my lips
When I’m kissing her

Poem: Church Point

On the riverfront down at church point
There’s music rising up from the river
Where the gathered congregants
Drink shitty beer and talk of Marx
Or whose going to do what
With all their big plans soaring
Towards an uncaring god