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Beginnings

Moses was found

in a basket on the Nile,

raised in the Pharoah’s house.

I was born

in Kingsburg, California,

named Bill Byron

after my grandfathers;

pruned grapes, weeded cotton,

fed chickens and cows

on a rundown farm

northeast of Reedley.

—
Bill Simmons, after twenty years in Iowa, has moved back to Fresno where he lives and writes. His works have appeared in Abandoned Mine, Jesuit Review, The Healing Muse, California Quarterly, Evening Street Review, Eucalypt, Bottle Rockets, Modern Haiku, and others.

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