James Doyle

James Doyle was born in New York City and grew up in the Bronx. He is the author of Einstein Considers a Sand Dune (2004), winner of the 2003 Steel Toe Books Poetry Prize, and Bending Under the Yellow Police Tapes (2007). Doyle worked in Wisconsin politics and taught before retiring; he lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, with his wife, poet Sharon Doyle.

Love Story

The kitchen door opens onto dirt

and the second half of the country

all the way to the Pacific. Rusted

prairie trains out of the tall weeds

elbow the last century aside, rumble

from every direction towards Chicago.

My great-grandfather, who would be

150 years old today, put on his one

tall hat and took the big trip

to Omaha for my great-grandma

with the family ring on his vest

and winter wheat lying wait in seed.

He gave her all the miles he had

and she gave him the future I walk

around in every day. The mountains

were too far west to count so they

doubled back over the land and century

and the real weather kept coming from them.

— James Doyle