“Cutting Tracks” was recently awarded Third Prize in the Merrimack Public Library 2008 Poetry Contest. The Union Leader, a Manchester-based newspaper, included a version of the work in the Friday, April 25th Merrimack edition (and a really horrible photo of the poet!).

Cutting Tracks

Each of us

a rivulet

      the one-night offspring of Poseidon

and a water nymph,

shaped from the soot and sod of cities

some       get bent by heroin and car wrecks

then dumped near a pier at the old north shore

others    flush the gills of carp in Kyoto gardens

or feed earth’s eternal talismans

                                                    icebergs and estuaries

either way,

                             archaeology cares little for our victories

                                                                our peccadillos

cares little from what direction we came

                                                        or went

Each of us simply goes

                                               by greater force

cutting tracks.

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Special thanks to Tom Lyford of Dover-Foxcroft, Maine for his editorial guidance on this work.