WATERMARK

a poet’s notebook

Established 02004

snake

October 29, 2004

Smooth Green Snake

This fabulous photograph is from Fragments From Floyd, via Via Negativa. . . . And out of that mundane chore of autumn, in this world of orange and ochre, in that cool, safe space under the flat roof of rock where it would have spent its anonymous days fattening on spiders before winter, a newly-hatched… Continue reading

Critters, Noticed

photograph, snake
October 16, 2004

Wildlife Morning

There is a dead snake on the path, bicycle tracks across its body. Two noisy kingfishers fly from the tennis court fence to the river and back again. A blue heron lifts from behind some bushes; passes by me with its awkward grace; turns so that its slate-grey self has a backdrop of brilliant autumn… Continue reading

Critters, Noticed

heron, kingfisher, snake

Ancestral (Artificial )Intelligence

I do not use AI to write. For me, writing is how I think, and I prefer to do it myself. If/when I post anything here that I suspect or know to be AI generated, I will tell you.

I have changed this from Artificial to Ancestral, after Abi Awomosu @ Substack. This medium was made with human history, human thought. All of it, bright and dark. It is ancestral.

Poems

Please do not assume that I am the speaker/ subject of my poems.

In these times of creative nonfiction and fictionalized memoirs, I think of the poem itself as true fiction: it is most likely not factual, but it must be true.

It is likely to be — it is best if it is — a truth I did not know before I wrote, and may not understand even then.

A poem is my way of discovering (dis-covering) what I feel; sometimes, what I think — but it is not necessarily biographical.

snake

Smooth Green Snake

Wildlife Morning