Reading term papers in my armchair
by the window this December morning,

I trudge an endless trail of print,
switchbacking down and across

page after page after page,
faltering in brambles of prose

that pile in mental drifts and vanish
from the path, no destination in sight.

Outside, the dogs skitter over new-fallen
snow, yipping and reveling in its simple,

perfect whiteness, their pawprints
swerving, halting, going this way, that.

–Richard Taylor,
Fading into Bolivia
Accents Publishing

Richard Taylor is a professor of English and currently serves as Kenan Visiting Writer at Transylvania University. A former Kentucky poet laureate, he is the author of six collections of poetry, two novels, and several books of non-fiction, mostly relating to Kentucky history. A former dean and teacher in the Governor’s Scholars Program, he was selected as Distinguished Professor at Kentucky State University in 1992. He has won two creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and an Al Smith Creative Writing Award from the Kentucky Arts Council. He and his wife Lizz own Poor Richard’s Books in Frankfort, Kentucky.