Now that's a lotta dough

How hard will your title work for you?

How hard does it have to?

I've been looking for titles. Or, I've been looking for new titles, wondering whether some of my poems are weighed down by titles that just don't add that certain mystery or intrigue, titles that just don't work.

Once in a while, I come up with some bold, long title that I love. Yet those poems aren't getting picked up, either.

Hmmm… Let's get to specifics.

On the one hand, I have poems called

• Beyond the Streets, Slick with Night’s Imprint


• 1999: Into the Sharp Timbre of Light We Walk the Morning


• At the Hospital, They Keep the Bright Lights On


• Late in the Growing Season, When the Nights Begin to Cool

And then I'm left with

• Another March

I convinced myself that this last had subtle shades of meaning, although possibly only to me.

Looking at them here, I realize that I am equating length with goodness, which I admit seems arbitrary (maybe not even fair), but the longer titles are stories in and of themselves. Is that a good thing? (I'm leaning that way.) And would you want a whole book of these lengthy and exuberant titles? (Back to that idea of balance.)

I know it rests on context, the title with the rest of the poem.

But as I struggle with my paltry one- or two-word titles, I find myself wondering whether I'm just not trying hard enough to find something more generous, maybe even wild.

Any title hints or tricks out there?

Ain't no ravens here

You see wings the color of night
and want to say it's the shaman's bird,
find portents in the clicks and caws
that crack the morning. You want
mystery and the mystic,
truth unfolding as light as feathers
or as dark as death, to know
their wheeling flight at dusk reveals
a world no longer common.
It would be that romantic,
but Brother, I have to tell you
those are crows.

What do you do...

when your kids miss their connecting flight in Phoenix?

You make a lot of phone calls, and then you go out for lunch.

A Rhone wine, a lamb burger, and frites.

When your kids miss the plane, you eat the frites.

Epilogue: They finally made it to their destination.

On the way to the poetry reading

Yesterday, David D. Horowitz and I took the ferry from downtown Seattle to Winslow and drove up to Port Townsend for a poetry reading at Northwind Arts Center.

I didn't get any photographs of the reading, but it was a great evening with a really good turnout and a lot of colorful, energetic art on the walls. Oh, and poetry!

Fast love

Store-bought sauce + oven-ready noodles = lasagna in the refrigerator, on a night when I'm away

What we can see

When the trees let their leaves down,
they show themselves. Bare.
The cloak of summer green goes

and anyone can see the ruckus
of limbs grown akimbo
like a story poorly told
with lots of starting over.

You can spot the scrappy nests
left from other summers,
years of bad pruning.

And they let the leaves go

so that the wind can pass.