My friend Jim Gronvold has published a string or strand or stream of books full of something we call “poems,” though that word (like the word “word” itself) doesn’t quite capture the uncapturable, if ever it could.

Here is one of my favorites from “Word and Mortar:  Secular Verse”:

Not After

“Life now–

not when.

Never as true

in tenses of then.

No hereafter

out of the blue

nor harps that you

or I could hear.

No wings in lieu

of belly laughter

when then is here

and I disappear.”

Jim’s poetry is like a mental saunter into the wilderness both invigorating and intimidating, but only in the sense of overwhelmed senses.

Or a great belly laugh after you’ve swallowed the sun.

Life now–

not when.