Remain in the light, though it may waver.
Remain in the gentle grasp of hands you trust.
Remain open-mouthed, wide-eyed, arms spread to possibility.
Though dark oceans are rising, remain afloat.
Remain at your post: at the blackboard, on the shop floor, hand on the plough.
Remain upright, remain in motion, remain ever on course.
Remain gorgeous, remain lyrical, remain for the last encore.
Remain outraged at cruelties that gouge through our humanity.
Remain for the casualties, chant their names in the streets.
For all the barbed words that would hook you, remain thick-skinned.
Shoulder your remaining hurt and empty, bring it with you.
Foothold, slip, foothold: remain focused on ascending.
Remain calm in the belly.
Remain eye-to-eye.
Remain sane.Remain.
Selected Poems
“Behind the Homeless Family Shelter,” A Quiet Courage, 3/25/16
“What the Horses Hear,” Poets Reading the News, 3/8/18
“On Learning that Ho Chi Minh Once Worked as a Baker at the Parker House Hotel in Boston,” Carve Poetry Prize winner, Spring 2018
“A Can of Pinto Beans,” Pangyrus, 4/8/19
“Pink Trombone,” Rise Up Review, Spring 2019
“If Emily Dickinson Had Used the Dewey Decimal System,” Riddled with Arrows,” Spring 2019
“Incidents,” Whale Road Review, Vol. 18
“Lawn Care,” The Summerset Review, Spring 2020
“Hodie Christus Natus Est,” Rust + Moth, Spring 2020
“Sense,” Coal Hill Review, Winter 2020
“Love Construct in the Covidicene,” Pacifica Literary Review, Vol. 17.1
“Everything that Rises Must Converge,” Mason Street Review, Spring 2021
“Surface Tension,” Claw & Blossom, March 2021
“As Thomas,” Halfway Down the Stairs, June 2021
“Sweet Blue,” Lunch Ticket, Summer/Fall 2021
“Reading from the Desert Fathers at the Laundromat,” The Sun, January 2022
Selected Prose
“Exit Wound,” Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices, Fall 2019; named a notable essay in Best American Essays 2020
“Journey to an Interior: Northville-Placid Trail September 15-21, 2015” [trail journal as haibun] Deep Wild: Writing from the Backcountry, vol. 1, 2019
“Dispatch from Norway,” Wanderlust: A Literary Travel Journal, 3/2/19
“Poems as Pilgrim,” in the anthology Far Villages: Welcome Essays for New and Beginner Poets (Black Lawrence Press, 2020)
“Barriers: Scenes from a Pandemic,” Scoundrel Time, 6/16/20
“Pinsky,” Complete Sentence, 10/3/20
“Scapula,” Pithead Chapel, vol. 10.7
“A Murmuration of Stones,” Pangyrus, 9/10/21
“Plaque,” Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices, Winter 2021