Red Throne Bluff
- A copperhead suns himself on the bluff.
- The river below silently chews its stone,
- carves and fills its space.
- A tractor roots through wheat in the field,
- a metallic boar after jewels,
- ancient charms to call down rain, ward
- off locusts, heal the years.
- The snake stirs and trickles away
- through clefts in the rock --
- dark arrowheads on his back in flight.
— The New Press Literary Quarterly
Spring 1995
