Filing Order

Though only a few of these poems are standard sonnets, I have been intrigued to experiment within their fourteen lines, sometimes with rhyme and a variety of structures, while still maintaining their strong (to me) argumentative, metaphorical nature. The form allows me to succinctly salvage people, places, things, and thoughts that are the heart of all poetry but are distinctly mine-without sacrificing their emotional importance and impact.

Read each "Poem as Map." From "Newborn" to "Cremation", from crossing the "Continental Divide" to straddling the hemispheres "At the Equator", from "When I Grow Up (Since You Asked)" to "Riding an E-Bike at Seventy", the poems in Filing Order cover the spectrum of time and place. They acknowledge we all have "Breaking Points" and "So Much Sadness/Sorrow Coming." They recommend reading a "Selected Bibliography" and taking in "Scenic Views." I ask the reader "Let Me Tell You What I Think". Say yes, okay. Listen "To the End": "And that is how I spent my life with you. / The years were fledgling songbirds; then they flew."