Three poems by Scott T. Starbuck

The Art of Denial

• If you ignore a thorn in your hand
• it will go away
• but first the hand gets infected, swells,
• turns coal-purple,
• and sometimes parts must be amputated
• to save what remains.
• Disease could have been prevented
• by simply removing the thorn
• but companies that owned it
• said no.

Omen Poem

• The hawk I saw
• north of Santa Barbara
• flew higher than oil rigs
• offshore.

Listening to Fireworks Near the 2014 FOR Seabeck Conference

— for Gary Snyder

• The real work
• is daily practice
• in order to be
• of greater service.
• Skies are filled
• with vibrant explosions,
• ooohs and ahhhs
• while the truth
• like a cedar raven
• waits and speaks
• at in-between
• silence.

Scott T. Starbuck is a co-creative writing coordinator at San Diego’s Mesa College and on the coordinating committee of the Road Through Paris action at San Diego 350.org. He was a Friends of William Stafford Scholar at the “Speak Truth to Power” Fellowship of Reconciliation Seabeck Conference in 2014, a 2013 Artsmith Fellow on Orcas Island, and writer-in-residence at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology.  Later this month he will be a writer-in-residence at Playa in Oregon.