About the Author: Mike James makes his home outside Nashville, Tennessee. He has published in numerous magazines throughout the country in such places as Plainsongs, Gargoyle, Birmingham Poetry Review, and Chiron Review. His fifteen poetry collections include: Journeyman’s Suitcase (Luchador), Parades (Alien Buddha), Jumping Drawbridges in Technicolor (Blue Horse), First-Hand Accounts from Made-Up Places (Stubborn Mule), Crows in the Jukebox (Bottom Dog), My Favorite Houseguest (FutureCycle), and Peddler’s Blues (Main Street Rag.) He served as an associate editor of The Kentucky Review and currently serves as an associate editor of Unbroken.
More By Mike James:
Oh Daddy, Give Me A Quarter For The Time Machine
Image Credit: Carol M. Highsmith “Although this photograph of Ingalls Pond, near Hiram in western Maine, was taken a few days before the fall equinox, autumn colors have already made an appearance” (2017) The Library of Congress
As It Ought To Be 
just a gem of a poem with every phrase a surprise.
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