Poems

Poems is a collection of my own writing that explores a variety of experiences and topics. I find these pieces are never fully finished; always being tinkered with, tweaked, revised or completely reimagined. However far along they are here, I hope you enjoy. Also, be sure to check out other writing from the menu above, the work of other writers, and some ways to connect with me on social media.

Letter To My Son
^{June 8, 2026}

Dear Ellis

This letter is from both your mother and me. And our words here are much more than well wishes over all you've endured and overcome, undertaken and accomplished in your 18 years of life. Instead, we write a kind of declaration of what we believe is true over the whole of your life, beginning to end—the miracle you are as light in the world. This has always been in our hearts.

Your mother and I have always believed you are gift from God. Initially, and most excitingly, we affirmed you as a gift to us only and to our growing family. Eventually, however, and perhaps more reluctantly, we came to accept you as a gift well beyond our home and into the world at large. How we have upheld this belief, clung to it at times, opposed it at times, clutched it in our hearts, and endured with it over years is the real work of our parenting. Only God’s infinite grace will prove our efforts worthy.

Without question, where your mother and I have failed you in our words, in our actions, in our attention or care or love (and indeed we have), God has prevailed mightily. He always has and does even now set his sights on something more than mere repair work (He is not in the business of mending regrets). With this mind, be abundantly confident that God will create in you and through you something so exceptional as only to be defined as miracle. That is God’s promise to you and to us.

In a day or two you will graduate from high school. You have come through to the end of a journey of sorts, a pivotal pathway of unique challenges, aspiring progressions, and devastating setbacks. And though you are, in one sense, still in the care of your parents, you are in a more real sense, free. You are free to come and go as you choose; free to live and love and serve as you like. You are free to be light in the world or not to be. We can only pray you choose wisely, not out of obligation to please your parents or teachers or friends or even out of religious duty, but out of an experiential assurance that God will prosper your obedience.

Ellis, as you well know, your mom and I love you dearly and deeply. We take immeasurable delight in all that you’ve become. But again, what we write here is much less about the singularity of your graduation night, your transition to college, your progression onward unto wherever, and more about the whole of your life and our overwhelming hope in God’s provision as you move ahead. That said, we commit (as best we can), to seek God’s best for you in every way. We believe for you a tenacious ambition in your college experience. We believe for you a confident wisdom among your social circles. We believe for you a gracious discernment in who you seek to date and marry. We believe for you an unhindered passion to raise children and provide for a family. We believe for you the gifts of voice, influence, respect, honor, enduring loyalty and effectual legacy in every opportunity God allows.

To you, Ellis, all our heart.
Your loving parents.

“I brought you up from the ends of the earth and called you from the farthest corners. I have said, ‘You are My servant. I have chosen you and not rejected you. Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be afraid, for I am your God. I will surely help you; I will strengthen you and will uphold you with My righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41).

Here
^{by Dan Behrens, 2024}

The maps app on my iPhone
Says I'm here. Right here.
I'm right next to you. See?
Look. Here. This dot.
This tiny blue dot. That's me.
On the street corner by a bench
That's wet from rain.
And right here, that's you.
This blue dot next to me
Is you. You're here.
Right here—the same street
Corner where a flowering
Cherry takes off.  See?
Look. Here. See?
See us here? Together,
Along the city's waterfront
Outside Islander's cafe?
You. Me. Here. Everything
On this tiny little screen.
Tiny blue dots...
On the edge of the earth
Wherever that is.

Our Best
^{by Dan Behrens, 2023}
_{—for my wife}

We are at our best in the yard,
You and me, working a flower bed
Or pruning fruit trees, rolling
Fresh stain over some repaired fence,
Clearing the downspouts.

You wear a straw sun hat
And talk of a neighbor who's saving us
Spring starts for the front.
They’re vacationing on Kauai.

Goldfinch lap a perfect spring sky
Around the little island of our life.
I love you here with me right now
By the raspberry canes,
Still bent from winter.

You love that our last year is over
And that I'm smiling again,
And all our ideas for a simple patio
Overhang and new outdoor furniture.

We are at our best in the yard,
You and me, deciding on boxwoods
Or whether to take out the giant lilac.
I spread a bag of Grass Patch before evening

Sets in on us all the intimate difficulties
Of our twenty years together—
All our trespasses and trusts
The shaded corners where we've given our best.
"I love you, I say, "here with me right now

Under this towering Maple,
Under a slice of daytime moon."

Leading Thursday Night AA
^{by Dan Behrens, 2023}
_{Remember that we deal with alcohol – cunning, baffling, powerful! Without help it is too much for us. -The Big Book, p.58}

Shaking.

Eight or nine of us huddle
Around a small space heater
In the basement
Of Trinity Lutheran Church,
Warming ourselves on coffee
And cookies, sizing up
A small circle of folding chairs
And our overall odds of escape.

It's late November.
A light snow falls outside.
Inside among shivering,
Shriveled men who cough
And shift and straighten,
Or follow the laggardly orbit
Of a phone list making its way
Around, a half-dozen of us

Like cold, crinkled leaves
Still clinging to a marriage
Or a delivery job, joint custody
Or a driver's license—
 (Kevin next to me. Or Hal
 Directly across. Or Sean
 To the right of Hal and so on)—
All of us on our slow, steady

Decent toward full admission.
We say our names out loud
And that we're still alcoholic.
Together. Nervous. Sick.
And the whine of that silly-ass
Heater like the sound of a small
Rescue plane cresting the foothills
One ridge over—

The cacophonous echo of ourselves
Climbing back up the stone stairs.

After Apples
^{by Dan Behrens, 2019}
 
October twenty-eight—
My father’s birthday,
After the Whitetail high hunt,
The town’s holiday harvest lighting,
A first frost on our Orchard grass.
 
After apples. Dinner. A few cards.
The annual end we all know
Apart from my one recurring dream
Of dad falling from a picking ladder.
Ribs breaking. Gasping.
 
Pointing me the pasture’s length
To the neighbors and a phone.
Only nine. Crazed. Confused.
Poised for flight
Like a mass of Mule Deer
 
Scattered among the trees, among
The sharp Fall frost, erect
And peering into all that gathers us
Into ourselves, like an inevitable diagnosis
After all our apples have fallen to the ground.

The Mere Mention of Fishing
^{by Dan Behrens, 2017}
 
Nine years old.
Early summer.
Mom’s up, eager
To get us to the garden,
To snap peas, rows of corn
Not nearly wide enough
For my imagination.
 
Alto-Cumulus stack
Just north of us
As I pine on and on
About a fishing trip
Dad mentioned. Diablo Lake.
 
Magpies on mesh wire
Peck at Mom’s nerves,
Cawing for spilt peas
Or an early strawberry.
A single bull thistle
Rises among the radishes.
Our first year for radishes.
 
My older sister sets
A sprinkler.
The soft dark earth
Oozes up through my toes.
And I am on to beans now,
 
Chattering on and on
If only to the sun overhead,
Exhausting her patience,
Keeping her off
The evening mountains
Till I make it over to Rhubarb
And the fish-teemed shallows of Diablo.

The Release of St Peter
^{by Dan Behrens, 2016}
_{─Acts 12:6-19}
 
There is that story
among all the Acts
of the apostles,
where the house of Mary
is itself a house of prayer—
a lighted city
above the valley of the world.
Fervent believers kneel inside
fervently praying, believing,
while outside in the street
new men find themselves
walking about.
New men. Free men.
Unrecognizable men
under the dark of night,
under the arm of the empire,
under the Spirit of God.
Still, how little is ever made
of that servant girl Rhoda,
and all that was accomplished
through her at the gate—
this magnanimous release of St Peter,
and the train of the church
thundering through the ages.

Patio Blocks
^{by Dan Behrens, 2014}
 
More cinder than stone,
Four dozen patio blocks
Lay behind our tool shed,
Misplaced, abandoned,
Exposed and melting away
Under the long linger of rain─
This heap of garden bricks
That once hedged off roses,
Retained a lofted green bed,
Perhaps encircled a school of Koi
Or encamped evening fires
For a family who lived here.
 
Now unearthed,
I scrape, wash, and stack
These moss-coated slabs
Erect as an Incan altar
Beside our broken gate,
Like something conjured
Out of the womb of earth,
A small tower of fidelity
I’ll later use to reset
The sagging porch,
A near nod to whomever
Kept this yard before me.
Her hands. His dirt. Their Eden.
 
This evening, I’ll cut the grass,
Gathering Lilac clippings,
Toss some fertilizer
And place these neglected stones
To help us turn the corner,
Listen for that ancient utterance
Of new birth, the miraculous
Marriage of symmetry and chaos,
Not unlike the tale of Babel
In her infancy
Before the scattering─
      and the falling apart,
Before our creative language severed,
Our sacred union wedged
To the far reaches of earth.

Flight, Kate
^{by Dan Behrens, 2012}
 
Hallway's a runway,
A glidepath
For my one-year-old’s
Roundtrip
From kitchen to closet.
Little legs, little mind
All wound up
For attention.
A revolution─down
And back and down again.
Her laugh as loud as liftoff.
So small a world
She and I,
The afternoon
A never-ending flight.

On the 40th Anniversary of My Lai, Swedish Hospital, 2008
^{by Dan Behrens, 2008}
 
Pictures of Mỹ Lai,
Vietnam 1968. All the bodies 
You could possibly stack 
Inside a Newsweek 
In the waiting room  
Of Swedish Pediatric Center, 
Seattle. Across from me 
A couple fills out forms. 
Next to them a woman 
Is swaddling. My 4-month 
Old is to have his blood drawn 
And I am midway through 
A chronology of Haeberle’s 
Harrowing photos. One in particular 
I can’t forget: infant with half 
Her head blown off, laying 
In three to four inches of water, 
Elephant grass partially obscuring 
A brother or father a few feet away 
And again, only half as far away 
A Second Lieutenant kneels 
To feed a dog from his hand. 
The fire in his eye 
Is crawling up the grass wall 
Of an eight by twelve hut 
In the foreground; the roadway 
Framed in, a focal point of sorts, 
An arterial artery 
To somewhere else but here. 
This room, perhaps, and all its clatter 
Of car seats, eager, anxious parents, 
The Aloe plant soaking up sun 
At the window. A urologist 
Is beaming at the couple 
As if our most difficult days 
Are behind us, beyond
The thick black smoke
And the sound of helicopters.

Mondays at Mary-Haven Nursing Home, Snohomish
^{by Dan Behrens, 2008}
 
Applesauce is all she really eats,
Ellis all she really smiles at.
 
Her slow slipping away into something
More redemptive and young
 
Gram will never again feel,
Let alone hold in her atrophied arms.
 
Fewer words each time I visit.
More staring. More sleep.
 
Different pair of caregivers today,
Busying themselves with pudding

Or plasticware, the tv volume, ice.
I turn the blinds enough for her

To look out toward Machias of the late 30’s
And the stationhouse there
 
She’s long since left. Tears.
Our times together grow shorter.

Her recall of names now near nothing.
Whether ever married. Where she is. My face.

I squeeze her hand and read of the still,
Quiet waters in the Psalms till Ephrod

(the afternoon nurse) stops in.
"Here we go Bobby," he says.

"Lift for me. Come on girl. Role."
Towel. Pad. Cream. All for a fresh diaper.

"Whatever pain there is is minimal,"
 Ephrod says. But what does he know

Of that slowly slipping away,
The long drive home or the mirage

Of memories beyond the Bellevue high-rise,
Back down the Renton Valley?

Putting Down Horses
^{by Dan Behrens, 2004}
—for Ryan
 
Feeding cows in the far field one morning,
Hear rifle cracks in the distance.

Echo report turns our heads to the highway,
To the far tree line, to the valley floor.

A dozen gathered heifers scatter like strewn hay
As a low-laying fog blocks our bearing on the world,

As we stand ignorant in the following stillness.
Back at the barn in the front corral

Lay two dead horses, gutshot. A third,
Still on her feet is opened up to the bone

In her breast and foreleg, loose hair
Floating here and there like tufts of milkweed,

Blood letting out into the washtub as she drinks.
Through fence boards everything’s red.

Everything framed and warmly shaded,
Muted textures of horror and hesitation.

She's dying upright and watching us, melting
In the sun and dust and all the shit she's let out.

"The Fuck." Ryan says, shaking, fumbling,
Thumbing shells into a thirty-óuht-six

To put her down. Little gray heeler pup
Darting under a gate to bite at flies.

I don't say anything. Feel nauseous.
Lean up against the truck tailgate

And sift oats in a Maxwell House coffee can
To calm the mare. Sift for some sense

Of what happened here —
Buckshot. Close range. Guts and gathered flies.

A million other irrevocable facts, witnesses
Standing silent against the panel fencing,

The morning cows closing in on our aim,
Bawling, then scattering again at a crack,

At a mare's blood splashing fence boards,
A warm red running random in Jackson Pollock fashion.

On Certain Evenings
^{by Dan Behrens, 2004}
 
I sit outside on the front porch steps
and watch the second-floor apartment
window across the street, slightly
shadowed from the city's light
cast pink against low-level clouds,
and catch my neighbor─young gal─
perched between the vinyl shutters,
leaning her slim frame into the sky
through the open sill, flicking ashdust
from a cigarette out over the dirty
yard snow below. She's cute and quiet
and lives alone.
 
                            She's a dancer.
And on certain evenings I've seen
her fill her entire apartment with turn
and twirl and spin, auburn-colored
curls collapsing over her shoulders,
the straps of her bra, the valley
of her back; her thin arms drape
around her own neck. And just there─
a drab motif straddles the street
between us: I'm studying loneliness
and how it moves, the only dance
I know the steps to.

Poems

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