Thomas D. Reynolds is an associate professor of English at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas. He has published a chapbook of poems (Electricity) as well as poems in various print and online journals, including New Delta Review, Alabama Literary Review, Aethlon-The Journal of Sport Literature, The MacGuffin, The Cape Rock, Midwest Poetry Review, Flint Hills Review, Falling Star Magazine, American Western Magazine, Combat, Strange Horizons, Prairie Poetry, Muscadine Lines-A Southern Journal, Ariga, 3rd Muse Poetry Journal, Pedestal Magazine, and The Green Tricycle. Woodley Press of Washburn University of Topeka recently published his first full-length poetry collection Ghost Town Almanac.

The Mule

A long moaning bray before dawn.
A listing trail of prints across the pasture.
Mud from some bramble streaking its side.
Cockleburs like a wasp's nest in a catacombed tail.
He was wild, from deep in the hills where none walked
but wild things with vacant stares like glass
and a scent like burned leaves underfoot.
Once a year, he stood outside their cabin door,
as if recalling for one strange moment some ancient life
long forgotten, the call to work in the dawn,
and a bent man like my grandfather descending a porch
to take up the harness and plow
and work man and beast for something good.