April 2023

Happy National Poetry Month! In honor of this annual celebration, I bring you two poems for double your reading pleasure.  In each, poet Jason Tandon encapsulates the quiet delight which both poetry and our New England spring engender.

Terry House, Poetry Editor

I Finally Tried It

in memory of Mary Oliver

By Jason Tandon

On a hot spring day

when midges spawn and spasm

above the raked plots of dormant grass,

I filled the feeder

with an Eastern songbird blend—

black oil sunflower, cracked corn and millet—

removed my shoes, my socks,

laid down,

wiggled my toes

and waited.

Man Paddling Canoe with Dog

by Jason Tandon

The sky so white

there is no sky.

The water,

a tarnished plate of silver.

The dog sits dutifully.

No, sits like a king

who says nothing,

who looks around

unmoved,

his golden robe

shedding.

Jason Tandon is the author of five books of poetry, including This Far North (Black Lawrence Press, 2023) and The Actual World (Black Lawrence Press, 2019). His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, North American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. He teaches in the Arts & Sciences Writing Program at Boston University. For more information, please visit  https://blacklawrencepress.com/books/this-far-north/. 

March 2023

Spring awaits.

Survival Instinct

 by Carla Schwartz

I want to walk the esker

but with each step

in snow

my feet sink deeper.

The wind—so cold

it burns my fingers.

I look to the slope

but find daunting

the prospect of snow

swallowing more of me

with each step of climb

and so, with regret

I turn, and on return

I trace the hollows

where I stepped before—

follow once more my own trail

that I might soon

be warm. 

Carla Schwartz is a poet, filmmaker, photographer, and blogger. Her poems have appeared in Amsterdam Quarterly, Fulcrum, California Quarterly, Ibbetson Street Press, Mom Egg Review, Paterson Literary Review, Smoky Quartz Anthology, Solstice, and Zingara Review, among others.

Her books include Signs of Marriage (2022), Intimacy with the Wind (2017), and Mother, One More Thing (2014).  More information about Carla and her work can be found at www.carlapoet.com. 

February 2023

Still in deep mid-winter despite the unseasonable thaws, how can our thoughts not turn towards spring, towards love? It is the month of valentines, after all…

Palm Warblers and a Yellow Rumped

            for Jim

 by Susan Edwards Richmond

Through needle shadows and branches whippling

a patchwork floor, a traveler interrupts

the pattern, plants on twig, dandelion bright, 

red stippling, cap. Tail bobs, then moves

left to right to make room for another

silhouette who preens and gleans and flickers

through.  Another another another.

Then one is black and white, a yellow

handkerchief tucked in a pocket on the sleeve

and a flash on the rump as it spirits away. 

Singly, two together then split,

then a wave, from forest floor through

mid-canopy, each a sun-washed citrine.

You are hungry, devouring insects

that alight on my arm, caterpillars

dangling on mid-air trapezes. May

breezes don’t deter you.  You are what brings

me out, my early risers, my dawn arrivers,

my sweepers, beamers, and feather dusters,

brightening the dark woods before it finds

its rooted color, before it draws deep

green shades, when the sun and all its dancers

stream through, shine through, flurry, flit, and flirt

with careless, ignorance of your royalty,

you usher in the season. 

And I am new each year because you are here.  

Susan Edwards Richmond is the award-winning author of two community science adventures for children, Bioblitz! Counting Critters and Bird Count, and the preschoolers science activity book, Science Play. She has published five collections of poetry for adults, including Before We Were Birds, and has organized more than a dozen plein air poetry events. A passionate birder and naturalist, Susan teaches preschool on a farm and wildlife sanctuary in eastern Massachusetts and earned 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.

January 2023

I savor my visits to the farm in January.  It is here that I find the crystalline beauty and Zen-like quietude that epitomizes winter in New England. Amid the piercing cold, the deep snow, and the long slog of blank days ahead, lies an unbroken trail of fresh possibilities - mystical in their potential and promise of renewal.

For Lola

by Lila Linda Terry

The orchard is asleep.

All the weetness of the berries

is driven deep in the ground,

and is alive in the frozen roots.

The warm juices are brewing even now

in the deepest of winter

under a cloak of white.

The farmer rests.

She can sleep in the morning,

and she doesn’t watch the sky,

the soil, the pickers.

A frost does not matter.

She may allow herself a winter’s nap,

a crossword puzzle,

to read the pruning book.

She sits.

The world is white.

The night is deep.

Quiet presides.

Rest begets earnest labors.

The deepness of winter,

the crystalline icy night sky

will bring forth our

summer’s rich sweetness.

An original Old Frog Pond Farm & Studio plein air poet, Lila Linda Terry has been dabbling in poetry since she was twelve. She lives in Cambridge, Mass., where she has had a practice in medical massage therapy and alternative health counseling for forty years. She is a certified Sageing leader in the conscious ageing movement. Lila oversees the growth of a unique plant called the Light Root which is at different locations in New England. Light Root (Dioscorea batatas) is known for its ability to strengthen the inner light in human beings. “For Lola” was first published in the plein air chapbook, An Extravagant Canopy.

December 2022

The twelfth month of the year is a time of singular reflection. There are the plans which have gone awry, the expectations exceeded or met or dashed, the vagaries and vicissitudes of fortune. There are the joys however fleeting - the longed for rain in a summer of drought, the clean bill of health, the first smile on a beloved infant’s face. And there is hope, that most forward-facing of emotions, driving us on into the coming winter and the new year which awaits.

Birds in the Construction Zone

~~ by Lynne Viti

Seven degrees, snowdrifts

against the patio fence.

The screen porch a scene from

Hans Christian Anderson—

Wicker chairs outlined in snow,

The cat’s cardboard scratching pad ruined.

We moved here in May,

A hot spring became a blistering summer

We saw no birds—

Instead of birdsong

We heard the roar of heavy machinery

Up and down the dusty road.

The hydrangeas drooped by midafternoon,

Deer tongue lettuce in our raised bed wilted.

The noise of hammering twelve hours a day,

The loud flapping of Tyvek all night long—

No wonder the birds stayed away.

The earth movers, the compressors

Exiled all winged creatures except the pollinators.

In the fall, when seed heads

Were ready for the birds to feast on

An overzealous landscape crew

Cut back every spent bee balm

Cosmos marigold stonecrop

Leaving little for finches and sparrows.

Our slender garden, devoid of low shrubs

The patio too much like a wide city sidewalk—

Gave no shelter.

But today our luck turned.

Two juncos at the feeder,

Three more on the cedar fence,

And later, sparrows on the ground

Found something to eat in the snow.

Nothing to complain about—

The birds have arrived.

Lynne Viti‘s most recent poetry collection is The Walk to Cefalù (Cornerstone Press, 2022). 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 contributed poems to several Plein Air Poetry projects including Path Tracks Trails, Speaking of Sculpture, Refuge and Emergence.

November 2022

The season of gathering is upon us. Amid the cooking, the congregating, and the gratitude - some of which, let’s face it, can feel performative or forced - let us remember this November to pause and savor our memories of the season so recently passed and to honor the “good harbor” which the natural world offers us all, all year round.

Good Harbor

 by Mary Bonina

Sun too optimistic for Fall,

when vines at the arbor release

their perfume, the ready grapes,

bursting for harvest, waiting

for pies, sorbet,

or for the birds to eat them up.

On the beach, a sporty breeze

jets a spritz of scent: sea roses, pine.

The roses all fuchsia,

twitch: bees troubling them.

Scrub grass where terns nested,

gone from upright stalks

like hay, now downed and twisted

into golden threads, the sign still

there, warning “Stay Off!”

Boardwalk dry and sandy:

no more drippy swimmers.

At sunset, a shift.

White gull feathers go to pink

and off shore the light

paves a silvery path.

Air and water turn chilly then.

The roses dim, but eager bees

still fluff their warren of petals,

make those roses go wild.

Too fast, it’s twilight.

Mary Bonina lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is the author of two poetry collections: Clear Eye Tea and Living Proof. She is also the author of the chapbook, Lunch in Chinatown, and the memoir, My Father's Eyes. She has been a fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, where in 2002, she was named finalist for the Goldfarb Family Fellowship, and has since had several residencies, including one at the Center's retreat, Moulin a Nef, in Auvillar, France. Her work has appeared in Salamander, Hanging Loose, Poets and Writers, the Worcester Review, and many other journals. Poems are forthcoming in The Lowell Review and Mom Egg. Her completed novel, My Way Home, is in search of a publisher.

October 2022

The autumnal equinox has come and gone; and last week the heavens opened at long last - a harbinger, we hope, for this spanking new October. Water, the true elixir of life, alters us all - from the parched pond to fall’s un-greening leaves. May it continue to flow.

Pond Alchemy

by Linda Hoffman

sheets of angled rain

pierce the pond

water meets water

lily pads

host their guests

a frog and beads of water

attentive to water

a blue heron

waits —

the wise say,

‘the way of water

is to flow’

a black cormorant

grasps a snag

winging water droplets

tree swallows

pluck insects

splash of water

the wise teach,

‘water never

harms water’

weaving threads

of iridescent water

dragonflies hover.

Linda Hoffman’s artwork includes bronze sculpture, outdoor installations, watercolors, and digital prints. She is the fruit grower at Old Frog Pond Farm and the author of the memoir, The Artist and the Orchard, from Loom Press.

September 2022

The equinox of autumn approaches. And, as always, the ending - even to this singularly fraught, drought-seared summer - is bittersweet. There will be much to miss in the generous canopy of the catalpa tree and the cobalt swooping of the swallow. Yet, there also will be much to embrace in the coming chill hours and the clamorous vees of Canada geese.

The Power of 9

by Didi Chadran

I still dream of the book of numbers you

Shared with me that day at Old Frog Pond Farm

When you led me to the water’s edge to

Sit and gaze into the nacreous brown.

You asked what exactly I saw, and

I started to render pond froth as if

Tiny white foam flotillas. I pointed,

“See how some surge and halt, impounded by

Eddies, while others glide resolutely past?

How some cleave, like amoebas, while others

Divorce, to find new paths, new rivulets?”

I looked up towards your face. You just smiled:

“It’s time to turn this off, open your eyes.

Surrender full to this instant in time.”

“No story, no metaphor,” you told me.

“Practice watching, not weaving. Hold onto

Each still second - not montage - in your heart.”

Just pause, you said. Just feel. Let what is be.

This moment is all. There is no origin

Or destination. The froth. The water.

That lily pad. The sun. This rock wall. Us.

The power of 9. The enigma of 1.

We. Together. Separate. Connected.

Our breath. This breeze. The thrum of life adored.

Didi Chadran is a doting father; a dabbler in poetry, prose, and storytelling;

an unapologetically liberal microblogger on Instagram and Twitter; a

corporate content strategist; and the alchemist of a

sambal

-style hot sauce

whose flavor arcs from sweet and umami to scorching in the span of two

seconds. A vociferous adherent of the ideas that Black Lives Matter,

democracy is fragile, and community is destiny, Didi lives and works in

Downtown Mill City Lowell.

August 2022

Is there anything more invigorating than August rain? That steady shower on a steamy afternoon; blue sky still rimming the clouds; the ground and all that grows from it parched with a thirst only this sweet, fresh downpour will slake?

Staccato Rain

by Joanne DeSimone Reynolds

In August it bears repeating

like the tales of a thousand and one nights

that kept a king from sleeping

like an ancient drumbeat:

feet stomping the ground,

the pond’s surface tension sprouting

a field of coronets like Old Cole’s crown

like that plash of milk Edgerton photographed with a strobe:

elemental in its refrain

the exaltation of jumping beans

of the untrammeled on a trampoline

Settle down boys…

The farmer loves to see another day:

frogs leaping in…in rounds.

Joanne DeSimone Reynolds is the author of two chapbooks: Brought To Our Knees, from Art Ramble 2020, and Comes a Blossom, by Main Street Rag. She lives in Scituate. “Staccato Rain” first appeared in the Old Frog Pond Farm & Studio Plein Air chapbook, Splash.

July 2022

One of my favorite childhood memories is of a morning in early July when my friends and I were stopped by a normally grumpy neighbor, the grandfather of a schoolmate, and entreated to “Look! Look! Look there!” When we followed the line of his gnarled finger, we saw a blue we’d never seen before, not even in the bucolic hills of the surrounding Berkshires.

That memory is from the 1960s, a time of great social, cultural, political, and ecological tumult, a time when the grown-up world felt fraught with discord and danger, a time not unlike our own, a time very much in need of a bluebird.

Old Frog Pond Farm Poetry Editor, Terry House

BLUEBIRD

by Wendy Drexler

Blue as sapphires. As Monet’s blue

water lilies. Put-down-your-burdens blue.

Stay-here blue and blue clear through. Lapis blue

of the Virgin’s robe, the deep-sea’s untrammeled blue.

Blue as my valley, my shelter, my twilight mist, my thou-shalt-

not-want. Blue perches on the garden fence, sun catches the bright bead

of its eye. Blue swoops down to the sea of lavender bee balm,

crown vetch, Black-eyed Susans. Bustling bees, bundled

in yellow sweaters, dip

their tongues into

the fringed petals

that sway with

the weight of the bees’

own bodies. I’d forgotten

beauty, its take-your-breath away, its

unexpected grace. How I’m helpless before it.

After days and days keeping the outside out, the inside in,

my heart retracted like a snail. So haggard at the heart, so care-coiled,

as Hopkins calls it. Come, sweet scent of mown grass, come, nectar

of my own sweet sweat. Come bluebird, flying now,

flown—carrying sky on your back.

 Wendy Drexler is a recipient of a 2022 artist fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her third poetry collection, Before There Was Before, was published by Iris Press in 2017. Her poems have appeared in Barrow Street, J Journal, Lily Poetry Review, Nimrod, Pangyrus, Prairie Schooner, Salamander, Solstice, Sugar House, The Atlanta Review, The Mid-American Review, The Hudson Review, The Threepenny Review, and the Valparaiso Poetry Review, among others. She’s been the poet in residence at New Mission High School in Hyde Park, MA, since 2018, and is programming co-chair for the New England Poetry Club. Her fourth collection, Notes from the Column of Memory, will be published in September 2022 by Terrapin Books. Her website is www.WendyDrexlerPoetry.com

June 2022

June throbs with life. As I write, a mother robin feeds her gaping, zesty newborns in the nest she’s built on my window sill. On the farm, too, new life abounds in orchard, garden, pond, and wood. And wending amid these fresh beginnings are piquant memories of past joys, past dreams, past rites, past Junes,

A Widow’s Tale

by Moira Linehan

Across the pond, twenty chairs for a wedding.

Mine, ever in mind. Later today, a June wedding

on the pond’s other side. The sky, something blue

for the bride. One frothy cloud. Their vows will wed

the couple now forever to this pond. A Great Blue

drifts down over it in time to a wedding

march. Deliberately sure. The wings’ cold blue

undersides almost skim the water. Our wedding

in a stone chapel in winter. Then brilliant blue

the next morning’s sky as we skated. We, too, wedded

to a pond, the one behind our home. Dan hummed The Blue

Danube Waltz to me. With this ring I thee wed.

When I took it off, I broke out in hives. My great blue.

I wore it for another year. My art of being wed,

the art of memory. A second Great Blue

arrives. Last month I moved from our pond. My wedded

imprinted world has come with me. The two Great Blues

fly off together. Later today, a small wedding.

Moira Linehan had two collections of poetry come out in 2020: TOWARD from Slant Books and & COMPANY from Dos Madres Press. She has two earlier books: IF NO MOON (2007) and INCARNATE GRACE (2015), both from Southern Illinois University Press. “A Widow’s Tale” first appeared in the Old Frog Pond Farm & Studio Plein Air chapbook, Memoir.

May 2022

May is the month when spring sings. The flute song of the oriole zings through air heady with the scent of lilac and lily-of-the-valley. And in the orchard, amidst apple trees newly be-leafed and be-blossomed, spring’s aria of rebirth reaches a transcendent, soul-shimmying crescendo.

Born Again in the Apple Orchard

by Cheryl Perreault

While I walk shy in my own quiet human skin,

suddenly with new eyes I see

the revivalist nature of all these trees

amidst this verdant, vibrant church of apple orchard.

All arms extended out in welcome,

converting my human reticent feet to change their cautious pace,

to want to dance as they resonate with all this

celebration of tribal vibrant pounding sound

holy-rollering from this fertile sanctuary that surrounds,

like the wild summer finch twitter and the blackbird call of oak-a-ree,

like the breeze howling out vespers of sacred songs of poetry.

This place of congregation hallelujah life force

of every effervescent single cell of thing — all welcome and all welcoming,

even the chanting multitude of a million tiny swaying grasses,

even the viridescent katydid with outstretched praying legs.

All here focused on the infinite arboreal blue that peeks and preaches

among every living thing reaching skyward.

Suddenly this orchard becomes my religion and ancestry.

Suddenly I feel tree prayers from deep within the roots of me.

Suddenly I surprise myself with my own newfound voice

belting out loud hymns of rejoice amidst this choir of apple trees.

Cheryl Perreault hosts programs of poetry, storytelling, and song and is a long-time participant in Old Frog Pond Farm & Studio’s Plein Air Poetry projects. Since the start of the pandemic, she has taken to sitting outside for long durations to applaud the poetry of birds, squirrels, and trees.

“Born Again in the Apple Orchard” first appeared in the Plein Air chapbook, Memoir.