The quiet man’s a sort of sphinx:
even if you think to ask,

he’ll never tell you what he thinks
behind the noncommittal mask

(part shadowed smile, part phantom frown)
he drops for no one but his wife,

who jots his murmured judgements down
in notebooks marked The Quiet Life.

Robert’s poems have appeared in Poetry, Light, Snakeskin, Still: The Journal, Alabama Literary Review, and Lighten Up Online. His third chapbook Convalescent appeared from Finishing Line Press in 2011. He teaches at Mississippi State University and lives just outside Starkville with his wife and daughter.