It's here suddenly; you can order my book

I have viewed myself as a poet since, like, age twelve. In 2016, age 56, I felt dissatisfied. I asked myself, Have you given this poet thing your whole effort? Your whole depth? There are so many ways a writer can limit themselves. By the desire to entertain. To be a clown. By the fear of difficult subjects. Or of ridicule. Without meaning to, you avoid the dark places.

I cut my teeth on the modernists, figures like Wallace Stevens and T.S. Eliot, and before them their literary father Walt Whitman. I've always felt, too, like there was a poem I was born with that had nothing to do with other writers, something I was meant to say. A poem beyond words. Raw like a green sprig splitting. Silly, right?

The rules I set myself for the book that became Dark Bird were fairly simple. Walk through the cemetery each morning with our dog. Take a picture of the same tree. A tree that was nothing special. Write a poem. Explore, without deference to others' expectations. Explore depth rather than surface. Describe the world as I see it, without trying to inflate it. Embrace boredom. And what is beneath boredom.

Then, sometimes the hardest part: when the first draft is done, post it to Facebook.

It was frightening, but I soon learned how my expressive universe was shaped by my fears and childhood ghosts.

Dark Bird is available from Amazon or directly from Galileo Press. (Order it from Galileo if you can. Support the arts!) The beginning, eight years ago, still feels recent. I'm still a child in this stubborn art.