John is a social worker working in the field of disability management and holds degrees in social work, rehabilitation services, and psychology.  He is the author of four books of poetry: “March” (2019), “The Seasons of Us” (2019), New Days (2020), and Fragments (2021). His work has appeared widely in numerous literary journals, magazines, and anthologies internationally. John is also a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee and lives in Caledon Ontario, Canada with his wife and two children.

Awakening

Through the thick
Calcium fog
Of morning
Into the chaos
Of awakening light
To search for shadows
Behind the sun
Over stepping stones
Across rivers of change
To the open wound 
Of quiet creation
To wring diamond tears
From the fabric
Of fear tightened eyes 
And to shake away
The tattered cobwebs
From tomorrow’s 
Slavering sky

Passage

Juno and Cronus
And the two faces
Of Janus
The obscured mannerisms
Of hopeful centuries
Twisted 
Into the grotesque
Distorted
And illogical 
In the strangeness
Of the unexpected
Mad creations
Of souls in decline
And the sudden sanctity
Of pure demise

Way Back When

In the backwaters
Within a vision of solitude
So profound
As to be 
Something else
Something solid 
In our hands
With deities
Tripping down
From the mountain
Over the golden desert
Through echoes of tradition 
Where we once
Believed in magic
And our own 
Infatuations
With the truth