© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… I wake the snakes on the way to the lake Coiling in leaves, slithering at my feet Half-seen in the low branches, thick brown waists Headless, tailless stone still in wait for me To trip them into slithering again. … Continue reading
© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… There was a transitory spider’s web clinging to a metaphoric branch of birch that I undid stupidly touching it as I was going down the mountain side, the troubled spider in the middle clinging to a strand of its … Continue reading
© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… Out of the drizzle and the fog they come boys dressed up like soldiers though they’re more like the hands that wind around a clock. Out of the Scotch mist’s chilly smoke and the cry of gulls they stop … Continue reading
© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
A squirrel just walked across my shoulder Like I wasn’t there and didn’t matter Part of the bench, a kind of nothingness Who thought for a moment that a hand pressed On him like an old friend’s familiar Enough to … Continue reading
© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
How do you teach someone something they don’t Know? The first thing that comes to mind is by Example. Look a student in the eye Even if she’s blind; otherwise she won’t Understand you. The stone deaf will hear love … Continue reading
© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… … To be understood words are objective yet we understand them subjectively. When Willa Cather writes, “The long main street began at the church, the town seemed to flow from it like a stream from a spring,” the prose … Continue reading
© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
La Fonte You borrowed San Juan de la Cruz and kept it. I saw it again when you returned from the West. It looked like it had fallen in the mud with some pages stuck together like a book kept … Continue reading
© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… Everything’s happening at once. Ugh! Exhausted, nothing done, at a flower where I just saw the most beautiful bug I thought about staying for an hour to simply watch that spectacle of real gold and black, indigenous art deco … Continue reading
© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… The night comes with a chill not on but in my skin—A spider web at the end of summer stretches in the wind. Decayed dock swaying with my weight sways and sways. Water spiders molest a fallen fly whose … Continue reading
© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… Bird in the tree you are singing to me as if you know and care that I am here each note intended to put in my ear a song. What is alone can be pretty sharing itself, staccato before … Continue reading
© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
… It’s the same moon, but a different world. When we were only little boys at night we looked at this half moon glowing as bright outshining all the stars. Now lights unfurled by passing cars shine brighter and … Continue reading
© 2012 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
December 21, 2011 On discussing the qualities of confidence the other day, a group of my students decided that the ability to be persuaded, to change your mind was a quality of confidence, because only those with confidence in their … Continue reading