Scaring the Bears

This debut collection braids together published and new poems into a lyrical album quilt of stories and scenes. Wryly funny, earthy, susceptible to river shoals, hymns, old tools, and favorite shirts, these poems refuse to waste their troubles. They talk back to the dangers along the trail. In the title poem of Scaring The Bears, a man descending alone into a canyon to fish fires off random words and phrases to spook any predators that might be on the path ahead. This talking back to threats and trouble is something many of the poems in the collection do. The potential blessings and losses in fathering, in having sick friends, in acts of faith, in the work of marriage, and in risking everything from minor surgery to gutting trout in grizzly country give these poems tension, drama, and a wry, grateful humanity. The voice, by turns funny, elegiac, lonesome, and lusty, is a voice of experience, susceptible to the worn, found beauties of cypress knees, inherited tools, spider hearts, and tomatoes ripening on a windowsill. This collection finds courage in clear, careful description. These poems make good company.