Overlook
Along the ridgelines of slippery rock, the thin birch saplings stay thin. And so the many days I depend on beauty are few. There’s a valley below with steel lattice towers connected by cables…
Trespassing
I leave those sandstone ledges higher than me. I step down a mulched trail that switchbacks into the river gorge. At the bottom, in the pines, a wood duck lingers on a mudpool, and the water is dar…
Dusk on Snow
Look, I am that hound dog limping away from electric fences. It is my mouth that chews the bark from black walnut trees— thirst is a splinter fixed inside my throat. That creek below has grown bitt…
Andrew Shields