The Drifter's Final Destination

"In his sleep he smelled the strong smells of horses and heard the sound of waves and, waking again, saw that it was getting gray in the sky and that the banks were yellow with riverhemp in bloom. Among them were gnarled trunks, like black giants, of the mangrove trees. It was drizzling and the wind came up from the land and he could smell the fragrance of cajeput flowers and soon he saw them, tiny and white, crowding the riverbank, the cajeput trunks wetly black like buffalo horns. The Plain now came into view, flat, immense and steely gray, without boundaries, brimming with floodwater. Past clumps of bushwillows with the tops of their bushes above the water, he heard moorhens calling, and rain now falling and popping like packets of broken needles on the surface of the water, the wind damp, and in that grayness a heron rising to air."
 
Provo Canyon Review, Vol. 2, Issue 3

All the Pretty Little Horses

"The smell of brandy hung in the air in

your bedroom. Light from the front porch gleamed on the white curtains.

The breeze carried in the earth-dry smell of grass. Afraid to wake you

from sleep, I lay down at the foot of the bed next to your feet under the

bedcover. I watched the curtains rise and fall in the breeze, listened to the

dry sounds of autumn leaves on the lawn, and finally no longer feeling the

tugging at my heart, I slept."

Wilderness House Literary Review

Summer 2014