Here’s the second poem published by Misfit Magazine in their Summer issue. Again, my thanks to Alan Catlin and the editorial staff for including me among these fine poets.

February 2026

This cold, cloud-bleak day, I hike
the bottomland near the river
through scrub oak and thistle,
grasses, stiff and broken. My boots
shatter ice skims that hover over mud,
hard frozen. I pick up a shard, thin
as tissue, and it weeps in my hand.
Breakage has allure—destruction 
and force, erotic. Why not
a shattering in this place where water 
will have its way in spring and erase 
the damage.
Two years ago, our country broke free 
from moorings, sage voices drowned 
by vandals wanting to trade the presidency
for dictatorship. Hard to build anything 
these days but golden calves and temples 
to avarice. Like Lot’s wife, I’m tempted 
to look back, but ahead is a small rabbit,
crouched, ears low, still as stone.