‘Not that much, perhaps, and our only companion, / a still and remembered, peculiar silence, / a silence with weight, / and the kind of karma you can't get / from books, or gurus, or pets …’

‘You return to me across a chasm in time since / we last sat in your kitchen, curtains quivering in / the warm breeze, my skin damp from cutting grass / with your old hand mower, the scent of peonies / you picked that morning and of toasted cheese / sandwiches and sliced ripe pears …’

"John Cage Engaged and Uncaged," "Redux Isn't Pronounced Ray Do, But That Hasn't Stopped Me," and "Dog Day" by John Burroughs

‘My hands cramp, fingers arching backward. / Arthritis. Two Advil daily. / My lower back aches, stooping my spine. / My arches continue their path to flat. / It feels like betrayal this revolt. / I was supple and graceful once upon a time. / First a disco queen and then a yoga diva …’

‘The beauty isn’t in the choice of stone / (a freckled, putty-grey, slightly off-round / found object, a palm-sized half-pound / of not-even-semi-precious rock) but in/ the steady, deep attention to this one / among the many …’

‘When I was little he seemed as strong / as the mountains, / but after a shuttle buggy busted loose / and ran over top of him, breaking his back in four places, / he just wasn't the same …’

The poems "The New Body," "Afro-surreal Generation," Woodshed," and "AfterGraph" by D. Scott Miller

How God, Gravity, Silence, and Darkness whipped the universe into shape over the course of a few billion forevers ...

‘Somewhere between Anhedonia and Ataraxy / we drive east on the turnpike in torrential / downpour, passing old man in rusted sedan / with driver's window down completely. / Is it broken, or is he just looking to feel something? …’

‘I am a devoted householder / & secret reprobate. / I am an insomniac & / daring dreamer. / I am eternal & / dying as we speak. / I am a teller of truths / & serial liar, too …’

How did West Virginia's longtime Poet Laureate plus an MFA Creative Writing professor-poet-musician end up "Running With Whiskey" around West Virginia and the world? We have questions, they have answers. Plus, of course, poems.

'She says Jesus / has spoken to her, told her not to drink coffee / or Redbull, that black tea is okay. / I feel jealous of such direct communication / with a higher power, then wonder if I would / stop drinking coffee if Jesus told me to ...'

'These are the hours I love the best, / when the golden light of summer has climbed / to the top of the abandoned building next door / and all of the neighborhood / cats have come out from the woodpile / beneath the back porch to carouse and fight ...'

‘A fiddle tune bearing, rough-shod, / the memory of the village: / sunlight on stucco, / leaf-plastered paths in autumn, / spectral sheep / in moonlight and bracken, / the lilt of the market tongue, / ancient beyond telling …’