What You Cannot Help Naming

Hiking with children, in a nature park at noon,     the world is sparkling and synth-laden.  Without trying, the sacred ibis of thought is upon them,      as their fingerprints singe burn marks of poetry in the bark of trees.To them, pine needles are hairbrushes for unicorns.   George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications […]

Never Judge a Bourbon

By the memories of childhood  Judge it by the way it makes you remember  Being a childNever waste anything George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, The Angle at St. John Fisher College, and 3:16 Journal. George’s blogs, essays and letters have appeared in USA Today, The […]

On a Soccer Field Behind the Rec Center

Geese honkFlorida boundIt finally feels like late Octoberthe feeling of being left behind George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, The Angle at St. John Fisher College, and 3:16 Journal. George’s blogs, essays and letters have appeared in USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The […]

A Scene from Cumberland Bay

Before his sister could budge him out of the way,Mendon climbsdown the rabbit hole to a window in the stars where everything worth  seeing is hidden inside a half-devoured pine cone. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, The Angle at St. John Fisher […]

Home

a small childyet to master the written wordknows beautywhen they seetheir mother walk through the door,home from work. A wordless setof hieroglyphics without their brain peeringthrough. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, The Angle at St. John Fisher College, and 3:16 Journal. George’s blogs, essays and letters […]

How Children See

Children see melodiescrackling, jumping, stretching,crowding, living like hummingbird bones taking offfrom a cage of suet.They see corn, millet, oats, and sunflowers,devouredinto the bloodstream, racingdown the arteries of a secret language, a communication flooding the transcendent, and the soft distance of headlights, as she waitsfor him to come back. Children see storm cloudsand distant planets,the tendons of other animals moving about,and the seconds growing rarer and more […]

Where Deer Sleep

My three-year-old sonasked me where deer sleep.So I took him there. Steppinginto a space that is not meantfor fathers and sons, we founda ritual that has nothing to dowith us. An original grace. A serenitythat evokes the burden of redemption.That place where deer sleep, under aplumbeous sky, the pods of grass benttoward the center of […]