Happy homecoming in more than one way–my poem “Talking Stones”, which I wrote with poet friends on retreat in Maui two years ago, has placed in Little Red Tree Press’ competition and will be published in its anthology late this summer. Not only that, I get a cheque.

Don’t quit your day job for poetry, though–it’s fifty US$. That’s the way of it in poetry. One of the most important human activities, and there’s no money in it.

“Blind Bison Jump” was also selected for inclusion in the anthology.

Here is the poem. Be sure to check out Little Red Tree Press, too.

Talking Stones

The sea has few defenses
but she may negotiate
her illness with the tides

She has her talking points,
beaches where she heaps up stones in choirs,
great walrus thrones as tympani,
obbligato monster bones;
lava peas and coral scatters
scurry and chitter,
chorus each wave,
however small,
gossiping like strings of pearls
flung down by a woman betrayed.

The sea may gather her skirts,
exposing private parts.

Then her stones lie shocked and mute.
positioned on a line or space,
on a staff of littered sand,
the stones await Cassandra,
barefoot, torn, in pain—
a witness to stone spelling songs,
someone to hear this silence
as a prelude to disaster

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