April 2022

If the pandemic can be compared to a long and fretful hibernation, then this fresh, new April finds us tentatively, hopefully, stepping out into the world again. With an optimism tempered by awareness, we seek familiar paths, old haunts, new joys. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, indeed - and for that, this time, this spring, let us be thankful.

Chercher la Piste

By William Lenderking

In the quadrant, four directions beckon

teasing varied potentials:

studio, falls, orchard, deck…

I search for the path between memoir and possibility:

I thought first to walk the curving arm of the pond

to see the sticks I saw last winter gone -

suspended over the ice—sheathed in silver glaze,

bringing eerie stillness to the place.

Then I thought to find the ginseng patch

to search for the leaf that never yet showed.

But under my first step, a garter snake stirs

and slips into the moss

as if its languid pace were camouflage -

while elsewhere a raptor swoops a lightning loop

over an elusive dove.

And then it comes to me.

I receive all I need from here.

It is enough today to sit with friends,

filling up with afternoon.

William Lenderking is a musician, yoga teacher, blessed father, and consultant/psychologist, who uses his love of words and poems to bring soul into his life as often as possible. He is a frequent participant in Old Frog Pond Farm & Studio Plein Air Poetry projects including the chapbook Paths Tracks Trails, in which “Chercher la Piste” first appeared.

March 2022

Freeze and thaw, snow and rain, the month of lions and lambs is upon us.  From the still dormant orchard, last year’s leftover leaves rattle in the wind; while from the waking wetlands, this year’s redwings flirt and trill. Welcome, March, month of stirring contradictions, you bring us much to savor, mourn, and contemplate.

Plein Air Meditation

By Hilary Sallick

Water falls from the eaves of the hut

I stop and listen   Walking here

I was making new paths

through snow

stepping up and out

and then    as if wearing high heels

finding myself suddenly taller

on the frozen crust

The snow is hard and soft   melting now

dripping   landing   noisily

The birds are calling   redwing chickadee crow

I’ve turned off my phone

and fall silent into inner

silence   the ground where the forest

stands   so many trees leaning against

one another entangled branches and roots

I found a twig of the oak

caught by the pine

Now cold on the rising wind

last year’s leaves dangle   musical

Hilary Sallick, a poet and teacher in Somerville, MA, is the author of a full-length poetry collection, Asking the Form (Cervena Barva Press, 2020). She is also vice-president of the New England Poetry Club. Her poem, “Plein Air Meditation,” first appeared in Old Frog Pond & Studio’s 2018 Plein Air Poetry chapbook, Paths Tracks Trails.  To read more of her work, go to www.hilarysallick.com. 

February 2022

January in New England finds us reacquainting ourselves with winter’s forgotten pleasures. At the farm, a hopeful skater tests the ice with an upended hockey stick, then, satisfied, glides along the frozen pond. Above the dormant orchard, the season’s vibrant sunset pastels give way to an ebony sky spotlit by the rising wolf moon.

Ah, if only winter left us January 31st! Perhaps then, February would find us wistful for the dark and frigid month just passed rather than fully sated, impatient for light and heat.

Cold Moon

            By Lynne Viti

Winter self

longs for summer.

High winds scuttle leaves

that weeks ago seemed

frozen to the ground.

A full cold moon lights up

the mess of a front yard,

grass shreds, earth flung there

by a wayward sidewalk plow.

Summer self 

never longs for winter.

Instead fixes itself in the moments

of each long day, taking in

the soil’s heat underfoot

well after the sun

drops.

Lynne Viti is the author of three poetry collections: Baltimore Girls (2017), The Glamorganshire Bible (2018), and Dancing at Lake Montebello (2020). A lecturer emerita at Wellesley College, she teaches poetry and literature workshops in community settings, including the Westwood Public Library and the Dover Council on Aging. As an Old Frog Pond & Studio Plein Air poet, she has contributed poems to numerous Plein Air Poetry projects including Path Tracks Trails, Speaking of Sculpture, and Refuge.

January 2022

We who live in cold climates know well the fearsome wonder of a winter storm. The world simultaneously stops and swirls, narrows and expands. We are at once vulnerable and alone and yet part of a profound, communal experience. Whether we shovel, plow, or wait and watch, we are infused with awe for a force greater than our own.

Winter Psalm

by Richard Hoffman

Boston snowbound, Logan closed, snowplows

and salt-trucks flashing yellow, drifts

tall as a man some places, visibility poor,

I sit by the window and watch the snow

blow sideways north-northeast, hot cup

in hand, robe over pajamas.

You have made me to seek refuge

and charged me to care for my brothers.

How cruel. That could only be You out there

howling, cracking the trees, burying everything.

~~ from Emblem

Richard Hoffman has published four volumes of poetry, Without Paradise; Gold Star Road; Emblem; and Noon until Night. His other books include the memoirs Half the House and Love & Fury, and the story collection Interference and Other Stories.

December 2021

As we move towards the longest night of the year, the growing darkness of the approaching solstice tinges our memories of spring’s promise, of summer’s warmth, of autumn’s color with a singular sadness. Eventually, of course, winter’s delights will charm us as they always do; but for now, let us simply face this natural sense of loss, with the wise master, Gerard Manley Hopkins, as our companion.

Spring and Fall
To a Young Child

By Gerard Manley Hopkins

Margaret, are you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, líke the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's spríngs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

(Public Domain)

Gerard Manley Hopkins(1844-1889) largely eschewed publication during his lifetime. However, his posthumously-published poetry established the Jesuit priest as one of the most important and influential poets of the Victorian era. W.H. Auden and Dylan Thomas each counted Hopkins as an influence.

November 2021

By November, autumn’s giddy, gaudy glory has been spent. The remnants of October spill about us, damp and faded, like discarded streamers after the last party guest has left. November is the month of drudgery, of dimming light, of grim acceptance; and - perhaps, because of this - it is the month of remembrance, of reflection, of gratitude.

Bittersweet

for Barbara Trainer

by Anastasia Vassos

As if the matriarch who died last year

could hear her, Barbara says sorry, Andree

as we hack away at the Oriental Bittersweet.

It’s clung to the porch’s iron railing

for fifty years. Its little orange capsules hold

red seeds that will never take hold

because of our necessary task.

We make our saddest effort cleaning up

the garden for winter. Yesterday, we pitch-forked

the pile of wood chips at the top of the hilll,

moved them down the path to the hollow

barrow by barrow, almost as far as the bridge.

Behind our backs, the red maple in the center

of the yard had dropped her yellow skirt.

The bittersweet won’t grow back -

we’ve made sure of that - it’s invasive,

non-native, and we’ve hacked it down

to its stubby root. But the iris that we split,

rhizomes bleached in a ten

percent solution, will take hold

once spring comes, and push their spathes

toward the sun, standards blazing, beards

almost psychedelic in their insistence.

Such is the stubbornness of nature.

She plays dead, then comes back to life

like Lazarus, who could not stay

underground for more than four days

before he was revived.

The poems of Anastasia Vassos appear in RHINO, SWWIM, Rust+Moth, Thrush Poetry Journal, Comstock Review and elsewhere. She is the author of “Nike Adjusting Her Sandal” (Nixes Mate, 2021). Her chapbook “The Lesser-Known Riddle of the Sphinx” was named a finalist in Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize. She is a Best of the Net finalist, and reads for ,Lily Poetry Review, speaks three languages, and is a long-distance cyclist. She lives in Boston.

More information about Nike Adjusting Her Sandal, in which “Bittersweet” is included, is available at the following links:

https://nixesmate.pub/product/nike-adjusting-her-sandal-%c2%b7-anastasia-vassos/

Nike Adjusting Her Sandal

October 2021

October is magic in New England. It is the month when spring’s fragile blossoms and wee, sown seeds ripen into voluptuous apples and prize-winning pumpkins. It is a mystical month burning with the incandescence of flaming foliage, harvest moon, and candle-lit jack-o-lantern grins. It is a month when - in a certain light - it seems almost anything is possible.

Voyager

By Linda Fialkoff

If you mount the iron horse

And its wings spread out to fly

Feel the knocking in your heart

As you lift up to the sky.

When art’s passion fuels your breath

Clouds of wonder draw you nigh

Pull back the reins of life and death

Tell the horseman pass you by.

Give up struggle and surrender

All the weapons of your flight

And the violin moon will render

Lovers rushing into light.

Here the stars remain unbroken

And the brain cannot know why

Let the words be left unspoken

Let the lips speak no reply.

Rain and thunder saints a throwing

Angels falling with the hail

Keeping watch on all that’s growing

in the dream beyond the veil.

You are shaken you are carried

Down the mountain through the storm

And the evening wind will marry

Rainbow colors of the morn.

Floating freely down the river

Laughing, drinking in the sun

Come the farmers with their darlings

Come the apple fruit and drum.

Linda Fialkoff is a holistic psychotherapist in practice in eastern Massachusetts. She is a self-described occasional poet and a grateful lover of the Earth and all its beings.

September 2021

It’s true; we are no strangers to the damp. According to local meteorologists, this waning season ranks as the fourth wettest summer since records for such details have been kept - generally, not the sort of record we value in our summers.

Yet, as we are reminded by this month’s poem (featured in Old Frog Pond Farm & Studio’s 2021 Plein Air chapbook), sometimes disappointment, loss, “sorrow” can transform, revealing a certain beauty - or silver lining - if we but look.

Ghost Pipe

by Lucinda Bowen 

After another skyswell of rain, this morning the Medicine Wheel
is hosting a convocation of waters: Deep Earth Water seeps
through mud to greet her Air Water sisters Humidity and Rain, while cousin Mist
leans down from the treetops, breathless and thin.
In the sapling a song sparrow bathes in a sink of leaves,
and Dew Water tenders her fingers across his feathered young face.  

In this flush season, a rush of mushrooms has
ushered to the surface, and in the copse of trees behind the wheel
the floor blooms with fungus. Like a desert after a summer storm, the mushrooms
have emerged abundant, pink-eared and glistening, to soak the sky:
thirsty constellations of spiky puffball, saprophytes, and slippery jack.

In the deepest treedark, a clutch of little wraith flowers
haunts the footprint of a stump. Translucent white, they look like breath condensed,
like cartilage or sorrow, something not meant to be seen on the outside of things.
Ghost pipe is a parasite that begs its sips of sun. It reminds us
that Water, when it washes over, does not always quench the sorrow.
Sometimes it blooms it. 

Lucinda Bowen is a poet, writing group facilitator, chicken enthusiast, and in her spare time, a senior HR manager at a Boston-based e-commerce startup. This is her fifth year contributing to the Old Frog Pond plein air poetry chapbook.

August 2021

No single season ever could fulfill all the hopes and dreams which we New Englanders impose upon our summers. With time of the essence, nothing short of perfect weather will do. Yet, as the wet, drab days of July have morphed into ones of heat and wildfire haze, we must embrace the imperfect. After all, isn’t that what we do all the rest of the year? Indeed, as Old Frog Pond Farm beekeeper, Don Rota, reminds us in this month’s featured poem, great beauty can come of a summer storm.

After the Summer Storm

 by Don Rota

the sunset murmurs

peepers peep

fireflies mesmerize

bullfrogs deep

the crickets synchronize

bats banter about

the playful orchestra

of light and darkness

of silence and sound

dense pollen scent

wisps of fog all around

senses saturate

nature’s chorus

in droplets of time

the sultry breath

as summer exhales

Don Rota has been a beekeeper for over six years. He manages a dozen hives in Harvard, including those here at Old Frog Pond Farm, and helps mentor new beekeepers.. He advises everyone to “Find a place in nature to inhale the moment and embrace your senses.”

July 2021

Happy July! The first full month of summer is here, and we are more than ready to celebrate this year. Bring on the heat, bring on the humidity, bring on the hamburger-and-tofudog feasts. Bring out the SPF 50, and bring down the ancient box fans. What’s a little sweat when something like normality is returning in the familiar, quotidian details of the barefoot (and bare-face), sizzling season, back again for many of us, at long, long last…

Summer Haiku

~~ by Lynn Horsky

five lines

seventeen

syllables

In a heat wave

night and day sizzle

Too hot and humid

to sleep

hot midnight

presses wrinkled

twisted sheets

Black embraces

pigments of green

stars interstice

coordinates

with leaves

Moon rings

clouds amidst

branches

cast shadows

enclose sensitive leaves

Side-view mirror scene

my sunburnt

elbow and one 

sun-glassed eye

reflects

Thick green grassy

traffic islands

asphalt to fry

an egg

sunny-side up

Hydrangea clumps

clipped lawns

concrete sidewalk squares 

ants and grubs

dig under

Sun blind

we retreat

air conditioned

in modular

similitudes

Lynn Horsky works at Process, a graphics and fine art studio in Boxborough, MA.

She writes poetry on the side, and participates in Plein Air poetry events.

June 2021

June is back, and - thanks to the wonders of science - it once again is the month of celebrations large and small: A month of weddings, graduations, backyard Father’s Day barbecues; a month of empty places at otherwise celebratory tables.

The loss of those we hold dear is, of course, a part of life impossible to avoid no matter how fervently we wish it were not so. And, equally true, is the fact that each year - even those mercifully free of pandemics - carries with it this cruel potential. Indeed, it is precisely because of this truth that the necessary deprivation of grandparents from their grandchildren and adult children from their aging parents has been one of the most fraught aspects of this COVID year. One less year when there are too few remaining has been a costly price.

And so, in honor of the long-awaited, fully-vaccinated return of smiles and hugs and reunions with elder loved ones, a poignant poem by our founding Poem of the Month editor, Susan Edwards Richmond:

How to Know the Terns

By Susan Edwards Richmond

Fat, fearless on retirement beach,

terns congregate in the pink light,

thirty, forty, in a spot,

posing for Sibley’s brush

We walk right up to them and kneel,

splay pages of the field guide

across our laps, check

marks without binoculars.

My father points to a Royal’s

orange bill, a Caspian’s blood red,

both crest feathers sticking up

in the breeze, Groucho’s wild hair.

My mother says, occasionally

they see a Sandwich, white-tipped bill

foraging the sea, and, rarely,

a Least, exactly that.

The Common, they tell me, is not

so much here, the Forster’s,

rarer still, both tails deeply

forked, bills dipped in black.

Having finally joined the migration,

six weeks over wintering each year

while the upstate New York blizzards

blow hardest, my parents gather

birds for the list, children,

grandchildren. As we watch,

a young boy runs at the flock,

scattering lengthening shadows.

Susan Edwards Richmond is the author of five books of poetry for adults and the Parent’s Choice Silver Award-winning picture book, Bird Count (Peachtree). A passionate birder and naturalist, Susan teaches preschool on a farm and wildlife sanctuary in eastern Massachusetts. She earned her B.A. from Williams College and her M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of California, Davis. She is happiest exploring natural habitats with her husband and two daughters and learns the native birds wherever she travels. Her upcoming picture books include Bioblitz (Peachtree), to be published in Summer 2022, and Night Owl Night (Charlesbridge), scheduled for Spring 2023. “How to Know the Terns” was originally published in her 2006 chapbook, Birding in Winter (Finishing Line Press).

May 2021

Living next to wetlands as I do, I have become one acquainted with (to pinch a phrase from Frost) the turtle. These lengthening days when the sun’s vernal brightness invites both the warm- and the cold-blooded among us to venture out and dally in its dazzle, my hard-shelled neighbors - normally so solitary and self-contained - throng to our local fallen logs and flat-topped boulders like college kids to Miami Beach. Is it just the sun which draws them? Female turtles begin laying their eggs in late May here, Might it be something else?

TURTLE LOVE

by Catherine McCraw

“Turtles cannot sing

and yet they love,”

wrote the poet, Sir Edward Dyer,

deep in the sixteenth century.

Was he right?

What about turtle-like people

who live in thick shells

and tuck their heads

when threatened?

What can a turtle love…

perhaps the night wind

rippling across

an exposed face,

the warm earth

under turtle feet,

or the cool sea waters

turtles submerge beneath

until they must

resurface to breathe?

Can a turtle

love another turtle…

perhaps with circumspection

gleaned from the insight

of why the other turtle

is tremulous,

and wary of venturing

very fast or very far?

Turtles tend to mumble,

while birds chirp and coo and trill,

thus gaining the acclaim

 of thousands

of prolific poets who praise

their soaring and their songs.

Turtles also cannot fly.

They only swim or trudge.

But, maybe turtles love

in a cloistered kind of way

not apparent to

the swifter flowing world.

Catherine McCraw is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet and semi-retired speech pathologist. Along with her fellow Custer County Truck Stop Poets, she is the recipient of the 2014 Oklahoma Book Award for the poetry collection Red Dirt Roads: Sketches of Western Oklahoma. She lives in Weatherford, Oklahoma.