You Be the Judge

or, Passing Through Twisp on a Snowy Evening
with more than a passing nod to Frost

Bound for Carlton on Mid-fall’s Day
I trailed a train of cars in chains
thrashing through a drifting snow.
Rainy Pass had shut behind.

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In memoriam: Dr. Paul Wesley Sartin
February 24, 1989 – July 17, 2022

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It’s a small town and still
you haven’t seen her daily
wanderings on the boardwalk
and shoulders of Highway 20
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Sex is no sin, but the regular disbursal of my indulgence
may greatly accrue to the inequity of human trafficking;
I am thankful for my sacred daily bread, but my excess
supplies pressure to beleaguered bare tables in Burundi.

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After Jedediah Smith, 1827

Are you surprised to discover that mountain men
know what the various marks of punctuation mean
and can string a few words together, properly spelt?
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For the sixth time you asked
if we knew how you fell in love
with your husband

but you had no problem,
oddly, recalling how to win
a game of Five Crowns.

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after James Clyman

January 1
Cloudy and warm
in fact a coat
has been but little
needed this winter
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Hugh Glass lay in a shallow grave
as much to keep his body warm
as quicken interment of his corpse—
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after a performance by Awadagin Pratt

He is a left-handed player in a right-handed world
reading charts, away from left and toward the right,
underscored by right-brained, right-handed composers.
Even the baton which conducts is clutched in the right.

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Curious is the fact
that a sleeping being
is altogether aware
yet elects to ignore
the waking world
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