Contributor: James Robert Rudolph

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I am a fine limbed tree classically
posing for the seasons sunlight dropping
through me like water shedding from
a mill wheel a chiaroscuro that spots the ground
like a leopard’s coat.

But beneath my bark of deep rivulets swells
a termite ball hollowing out
my woody heart as a sharp tooled whittler, Am I
to become but a dark silhouette
against a changeling sky, a betrayal
to leave me a brittle of sticks?

Or have I brought myself to this, am I my own
scourge? For I scorned my nature played my
instincts cheap a wastrel of my youth whose hull
haunts me as a scold devouring.


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James Robert Rudolph is a retired psychologist and teacher having returned to old haunts in northern New Mexico after a busy career in Minneapolis. He is attempting a resurrection of poetry and playwriting interests and finds Santa Fe a rich, if not always willing, muse. Creatively he aspires to the crafting of work that expresses honest experience in beautiful language, complex or simple, as serves the work’s purpose.