A fairy-ringed moon—that's an old farmer's saying. Once in a while, the moon, when it's full, will have a ring around it. It means there's a storm coming.

Animals, I feel, can sense these things. And when I wrote this poem, in winter, I would have dozens of crows in the trees behind my house. I would come home at night. If I slammed the car door, it must have resembled a gun shot, because they'd all come out of the top of the trees. And something about crows, they always seem to be ridiculing us.

So what I'm saying is, This is winter, it's cold and everything is frozen. We got frozen peace. Tomorrow is supposed to be a blizzard. So the crows are making fun of us. They're laughing: “Enjoy it while you can.”

This poem occurred to me in summertime. But it's also a vision of numerous experiences. I stand at Clinton Square now and feel the same thing. It's a spiritual presence.

I'm amazed to hear about Frederick Douglass coming to Syracuse to speak about the abolition of slavery. Five thousand people came to hear him. Five thousand! There couldn't have been much more than that in the whole county. Not in the 1840s.

I just try to write what I feel.
Shadows.

This is the first collaboration between my wife, Shirley and myself to be published.

One nice summer day we sat in our backyard and passed poems back and forth as much as twenty or thirty times.

Each time it got better. We ended up with four keepers; this is one of them. It was a magical time which we've never been able to repeat since. For one day we gave up our egos, and became haiku writing machines.

I'm not much for bars. I'm 49 years old, married, and I don't drink. So there's not much use to it. But I love music, all kinds of music. My wife and I, we've gone to the symphony. And now I'm starting to listen to rap, trying to understand it.

So I know there's good music out there. Syracuse has done a real good job with the blues and the jazz fest. And there's been a lot of times I've been downtown, and you hear the bars playing good music. I don't go in them. But I walk by them, and you can hear it—it's good music. I say to myself, “Jeese, this place sounds great.”