A year ago I stood at the scrolled ironwork fence at the edge of the Horseshoe Falls in Niagara Falls, Ontario and took a photo. We were just returning from a trip to visit family in Michigan and, like clockwork, I'd picked up some sort of virus and was sick in a way I hope… Continue reading Something old, something new
Category: Poetry
Winter solstice resolutions
Resolved: to forego a proper solstice sunrise photo and substitute instead a photo of favorite birch trees. They are as beautiful as any old sun, and throw off their glow all year round. What's not in the picture is the dog, who is a boat in my gaze's current, floating directly in line with wherever… Continue reading Winter solstice resolutions
A room at Hotel Eternity
Autumn Sky In my great grandmother's time, All one needed was a broom To get to see places And give the geese a chase in the sky. • The stars know everything, So we try to read their minds. As distant as they are, We choose to whisper in their presence. • Oh Cynthia, Take… Continue reading A room at Hotel Eternity
Shackleton Found
By December 1911, the South pole was just another notch on Roald Amundsen's belt. Robert F. Scott, as we know, reached that awful place a month later, and then perished on the return. If you were a south polar explorer in 1914, all the good stuff had been claimed already. But Ernest Shackleton couldn't bear to… Continue reading Shackleton Found
29 February
This fragile silk of a day, shed snake skin in the woodpile, folded delicately between layers of tissue, stowed in the attic until nearly forgotten. This February-smeared-with-March day is crow wing, ice crystal, moss tendril, shivering beech leaf, pink cloud, frozen mud, sublimation, revelation. This come-on-I'm-waiting-for-you-everything's-waiting-for- you day stares across a locked gate, wagging an… Continue reading 29 February
What’s that you say?
<parental crowing begins> H is Thetford Academy's Student of the Month for February 2016? You bet she is! And oh! Her teachers wrote the kindest, most spot-on things about her. But I don't mean to gloat. That's H's responsibility (though she never ever would, which is another amazing thing about her). I'll just sit here… Continue reading What’s that you say?
A call across the world
In memoriam Francis Ledwidge Killed in France 31 July 1917 The bronze soldier hitches a bronze cape That crumples stiffly in imagined wind No matter how the real winds buff and sweep His sudden hunkering run, forever craned Over Flanders. Helmet and haversack, The gun’s firm slope from butt to bayonet, The loyal, fallen names… Continue reading A call across the world
Song of the New York State Thruway
Before dawn, and we're headed west, throwing behind us the Atlantic, a wake of darkness, the crescent moon with her three companions glowing above sleeping streets, the sallow November sun rising reluctantly, and then the Berkshires shaking their shaggy autumn heads out of the fog, the last of the jeweled leaves still clinging, the Hudson… Continue reading Song of the New York State Thruway
Poetourism
This past week I was acting tour guide for a new found poetry group called Found Poetry Frontiers, a spin-off group from the PoMoSco project devised by fellow Found Poet (and Vermonter) Susan Powers Bourne. Each week, the designated guide explores his or her local area and then creates found poems about it to share… Continue reading Poetourism