Here are some of the recent anthologies my poems have been privileged to appear in — scroll through the listings in ANTHOLOGIES for more detail in chronological order, with poem samples and publisher information. Most books can be ordered too through your local bookstore and Amazon:
The Anthology of Monterey Bay Poets 2004 is a great collection of work from a wide spectrum of poets living in the Santa Cruz and Monterey regions, published by Chatoyant Press.
My poem Every Last Bit Of It is on page 18 of the hard-copy, and appears below:
Every Last Bit Of It
My son calls me, daddy come see! as I saunter into the backyard,
find him bare-legged, bare-chested, bright red under-shorts
caked with mud, as are his shins, his hands, his face, as though
a young Jehovah, ecstatic in the garden he was making, paused—
water & dirt of life smeared up to elbow & knee—bellowing
that first exclamation, that it was all good, every bit of it,
even the mud, especially the mud. Unlike that young,
effervescent deity, my son
has someone older to ponder his handiwork: how the hose,
hooking like a snake round the tree, has created a small river,
how the river has dug a channel, the channel now a lake
for boats filled with tiny pirates marauding the coast,
the forest of lawn lurking dangerous nearby,
myriad adventures waiting on his whim to unfold.
What I see:
sturdy eye calculating the damage to clay path,
the now filthy grass, the time it will take to make it right—
how age shapes estimation, the crazy extravagance of spring,
the raw glee of summer’s heat never failing to remind
of autumn’s steep fall into winter—the work it requires
to be ready, always ready. This may have been the feeling,
my own father standing in the carport when I was five,
hands on hips, surveying the damage to the VW bug that I,
the painter, had rendered. Swaths of color across headlight,
fender, hubcap—this masterpiece of unrestrained creativity—
my slow dawning that something was amiss, that it wasn’t
all good, not every bit of it, not this urge inside
to find out for myself: this undertow into the underneath
of things. As with my son now, his eye scanning mine,
intent on finding praise—and I give it, his flush of pride
evident on skin amid mud. Then we begin
the slow task of unraveling creation, the story of how
it must be made whole again, the garden put back
not quite the way it was: laden now with memory,
each fault buried beneath new clay, each mistake softened
till the path is smooth, the grass again green, father & son
knowing that it is good, that it is all good,
every last bit of it.