I’m delighted that under the rubric “Two Poems to End the Winter, The Seaboard Review of Books has published two poems today, one of mine, “Creature Comforts,” and another, “Love’s Mantle,” by my friend and agency client Alexis Greene. “Creature Comforts” explores nature, the animal kingdom, the wild, and our place in the world vis-a-vis animals. It’s composed in rhyming verse, and was written as a series of reflections that came to me one day some years ago when I was on a walk with my black Labrador dog, Noah, pictured here, who was a boon companion of mine for a long time. It was a very rainy day and Noah sniffed a rabbit. That’s what moved me to write the poem.

“Love’s Mantle” by Alexis Greene explores themes adjacent to those in my poem, though in a different and distinctive manner. I believe she was moved to write it this past winter while she’s been contending with an illness, and I think she sees this poem as a kind of valedictory statement of hers, about life and how she views the world. I’ll add that earlier this year, Alexis published a personal essay about her lifelong experiences of live theater on this website, and on the website The Arts Fuse.

Below are the first two stanzas of “Creature Comforts”:

The tide washed over the driveway
Stirs in me a notion
How in such a live way,
Rain may play at being an ocean.

The asphalt sluice is shined a fluid black
While snow on the lawn holds one sogg’d rabbit track.
Snout wet, Noah sniffs the clue of rodent visitation
And careens in hope for a sign of the hare’s habitation.

Here are the first two stanzas of “Love’s Mantle”:

Snow descends in icy flakes,
Coating the hills and drifting ’round lakes.
Covering houses and fields and trees,
Snow whitens the world as far as you can see.

Cold to the touch.
Wet on your skin,
Snow, winter’s blanket,
Protects the life within.

Thanks for reading the rest of “Creature Comforts” and “Love’s Mantle” at The Seaboard Review of Books, linked to here.