July 2025 - Trail of Song

July is the sweet spot of summer. Hopes for snaring days of ease or adventure still run high. The sun’s blazing presence, despite our recent heatwave, still holds wonder in our eyes. Indeed, early summer is a pleasant dream from which we’ve been roused but not yet fully awakened. The world and work and worry will await us always - at no time more than now. But we should also follow this month’s featured poet’s example and savor the special moments of the season, tucking them away as spiritual sustenance against hard struggles, both current and yet to come.

Trail of Song

by Dawn Paul

A veery unravels his glissade of song

from the top of a tall oak along this trail

and I am reminded of the deep forest

at Saguenay in Quebec,

filled at dusk with veery song

every night we tented there.

As the light faded, one bird would

call a few tentative notes,

then others would join in

like an orchestra tuning up in the trees.

Soon melodies poured through the air,

thrush songs like crystal

chandeliers in the wind.

One bird now, yet I hear them all,

decades ago, hundreds of miles north

on the St. Lawrence River.

Dawn Paul is the author of the novels The Country of Loneliness and Still River and the poetry chapbook What We Still Don’t Know. Paul has been a recipient of residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, the Ragdale Foundation, the Spring Creek Project, Friday Harbor Marine Laboratories and Isles of Shoals Marine Labs. Her poetry has been published in anthologies, journals and most recently, Orion Magazine. “Trail of Song” was originally published in the plein air chapbook Paths Tracks Trails.

June 2025 - Sitting Out the Solstice Under the Japanese Maple Tree

Once again, the summer solstice approaches. Five years ago, when this month’s featured poem was written, our world was masked and socially distanced; a vaccine for the virus which held us in its thrall was still a dream. George Floyd had just died. A climate apocalypse loomed. Sadly, today, many of us are reminded of the French saying, plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose: The more things change, the more they stay the same. Yet, the hope we kindled into action then remains as vital now as ever. We must, as Heather Corbally Bryant writes, “…start again/from where we are just now.” It is what nature does; it is what we must do if we wish to affect lasting change.

Sitting Out the Solstice Under the Japanese Maple Tree

by Heather Corbally Bryant

Sitting beneath green feathered leaves

with their cutout shapes —

Underneath a canopy of grace — a cooling welcome

today when it’s ninety degrees in the shade,

The experience of being — the sign out front says

Black lives matter today, now, always —

Beside slow turtle crossing, slow children playing,

the places we drive by —

Both haunted and tainted by our lives — we could

spend a lifetime redoing everything —

Feathered green leaves casting dappled shadows

on my bare white legs sitting beside

The farm stand selling garlic scapes, strawberry,

and kale — where do we plant our shoots

And cuttings—it is the beginning of grace to

retrace our roots—though we can never

Recoup the shootings, the lies, the violence—

beneath their canopy of desire, flying on

The wings of hope and deed, we can learn from

this new beginning, breathing the grace

Of longing and belonging, we can only start again

from where we are just now.

Heather Corbally Bryant teaches in the writing program at Wellesley College. She is the author of eleven books of poetry and is at work on a memoir about discovering her biological family—entitled Remarkable: A Memoir. “Sitting Out the Solstice Under the Japanese Maple Tree” was first published in the plein air chapbook, Refuge.

May 2025 - Working Mother

Mothering, as any close observer of nature knows, is hard work. Even under the most felicitous of conditions, the young and defenseless must perpetually be nourished, guided, and protected. Under siege by storm or drought or predator, that effort escalates exponentially. For human mothers, too, the work is often arduous and the threats  – and compromises – staggeringly abundant. Indeed, in all its myriad forms and manifestations, “mothering” - the care and nurturing of others - is an act of selflessness, yes, but also of hopefulness.  During times of collective despair, it is, perhaps, the most hopeful thing we can do.

Working Mother

by Kathleen Hirsch

Across the miles between us

there grows a garden,

and two seats tucked together,

backed by silver leaves.

How can I tell you from this distance

that you are dawn and day song

to me? Fire and earth,

the seed’s first leaf?

You learn to laugh

in my absence, manage

your scrapes – grow

towards the available light.

From an upper room I overlook

unfurling ferns, forget-me-nots,

observe the pair of vacant chairs

and strain to hear an echo.

Even far from home,

love has its work to do,

bearing the heart’s stalk safe

to the ravenous altar of return.

“Working Mother” is included in Mending Prayer Rugs, Kathleen Hirsch’s first collection of poems.  She also has authored A Sabbath Life: One Woman’s Search for Wholeness and offers workshops in contemplative writing online and in the Boston area.

April 2025 - Crosswise

Typically, National Poetry Month is a time of celebration here in our singularly literary neighborhood. Yet, this April is, as Joanne DeSimone Reynolds writes, “a hard March.”  For many of us now, seemingly everything from the global to the quotidian is infused with anxiety.  Even poetry, even spring’s awakening. What will be the fate of unfettered language, we wonder. What of nature? Yet, as this month’s poem reminds us, the balm of art still abides even in the most anxious of times.

Crosswise

by Joanne DeSimone Reynolds

Sometimes a pinecone on a path sometimes a trail of pine needles you track

on up past a pond a hill thicker there with trees not yet green

you wear tall boots blue jeans a long-sleeved shirt fearing ticks

like smoke signals a voice you hope will rise ‘round the pond again

a falls a small brook toward some espaliered fruit trees

buds still tight fretting a vegetable patch raspberry bramble at the back of

a farmhouse its canes its bedraggled leaves like flags

of defeat across a road at the front of the house an orchard like a crowd

posing withholding too a rutted path beside it bees hiving in a box

hoarding warmth and silence an Adam and an Eve having made all this

possible him seeding her pruning somewhere off a harmony

in relief a clearing like a scene out of Viet Nam as if you’d ever even

been there boring into you

a plow ditched a canvas cover shredded at the edges of the mouth

of a shed a stillness undercut by what could be

birdwing though you haven’t seen any today not even a heron’s stitching

a gray wool across the sky a hole a chipmunk’s near a leafing

a purplish bit at the tippy-top a maybe-soon-to-be bloom

April is a hard March and you want so much to be free of frost you’ll

kneel

pinecones pine needles dust all crushed on the path all the color of rust

flame spring rains cannot master

you heard two swans

live out their fidelity on the marsh the greening is just beginning she’d said

a trail a path the tracks you double back on past the orchard toward the road again

Joanne De Simone Reynolds was a long-time participant of Plein Air Poetry at Old Frog Pond Farm. More recently she has been an ekphrastic poetry participant in Art On The Trails at Beals Preserve in Southborough, Massachusetts. She won first prize in poetry in 2022 and was poetry judge in 2023. Her series of sixteen ekphrastic poems for 2020 Art Ramble, in Concord, Ma, can be viewed online alongside images of the sculptures at theumbrellaarts.org. 

March 2025 - No Registration Required

MARCH 2025

Much about this now waning winter has felt fraught. From the quotidian to the global, it often seems as if the unpredictable has become the disconcerting norm. Yet, meteorological spring is here, friends; and the vernal equinox is fast approaching. As poet Lynne Viti elegantly reminds us, the natural world still “unfolds according to nature’s blueprint” inexorably and for all.

No Registration Required

By Lynne Viti

Princess pines shake off the last spring snow

stand majestic in their miniature forms

multicolored fungi erupt from tree trunks

ferns unfurl into lacy green sheaves

methodically, steadily, trees leaf out

all unfolds according to nature’s blueprint

birds and spring peepers follow suit—

the conductorless spring orchestra

tunes up for summer’s performance.

This event is free and open to the public.

Lynne Viti is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Westwood, Massachusetts. Her most recent poetry collection is The Walk to Cefalù (Cornerstone Press, 2022). She was selected for the 2023 Miriam Chaikin/Westbeth Artists Poetry Award and has also received recognition in the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards, Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Contest, and Fish Publishing Poetry Contest. A faculty emerita at Wellesley College, she serves on the advisory board of the New England Poetry Club.

February 2025 - Into Love

You are not alone. This message is poetry’s great gift. Other generations, too, have wondered how to find joy in a world on fire, how to spare love for a world seemingly bent on destruction. You are not alone, the poem whispers and lights the way.

Into Love

By Nadia Colburn

Every kiss that was ever kissed—

every smile, every baby’s delight,

a first step, a face that hides

and comes back, a belly laugh—

every morning of gladness,

gladness, that selfsame word we

know because we’ve felt it,

every today, every yesterday

for a hundred years, a thousand,

ten thousand years

in languages now

no one speaks—

every grace, every kindness,

every head that bends down

close to another to listen,

every unchronicled act

of bodies helping bodies

so long gone we cannot

even begin to count

the occasions—

every one is framed

by great suffering,

by deceit, by threat,

by death.

No open plain

of justness,

of rightness; no guarantee

of tomorrow.

But still your lips upon

my lips,

your hand on the small of my back,

my neck, my cheek—

just so, outside

of language, in every

language, across every inch

of time and space:

joy, beauty, thanks—

on the long path

through the meadows

where the forests burned,

through the grasslands,

the stands of evergreens,

the dark woods,

through cities, abandoned lots,

old minefields,

oil fields, we make

our journey. On and on we go,

again stumbling into love.

Nadia Colburn is the author of the poetry books I Say the Sky (winner of the 2024 American Bookfest Book Awards for Best Poetry Book: General and Best Poetry Book: Nature) and The High Shelf. Her poetry and prose have appeared in numerous publications, including The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, and The Yale Review. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Columbia University; and she is a yoga teacher and the founder of Align Your Story Writing School, which brings traditional literary and creative writing studies together with mindfulness, embodied practices, and social and environmental engagement. Find her at nadiacolburn.com, where she offers meditations and free resources for writers. “Into Love” is included in the collection I Say the Sky. It previously was published in Pangyrus.

January 2025 - The Winter Wood-lot: A Found Poem

Winter is an acquired taste, one which no one ever has savored more than Henry David Thoreau. As another winter settles in and a new, uncertain year approaches, I’ve been turning to Thoreau’s journals for reassurance that beauty still can be found even within the darkest of days.

In a departure from the usual Poem of the Month offering, this month’s featured poem is a “Found” one from HDT’s journal entry of December 3, 1856. The words and images are all Thoreau’s own; only the ordering of the lines and stanzas is mine.

The Winter Wood-lot: A Found Poem

Henry David Thoreau, journal entry 12/03/1856

For years I fed

On the pine forest’s edge

Seen against the 

Winter horizon.

I ranged like 

A gray moose

Looking at the spiring

Tops of the trees

And fed my imagination

On them, far-away, ideal

Trees not disturbed by the axe

Nearer and nearer

Fringes and eyelashes

Of my eye.  

Where was

The sap, the fruit,

The value of the forest

For me, but in that line

Where it was relieved

Against the sky?

That was my wood-lot;

That was my lot in the woods.

The silvery needles of 

The pine straining the light.

Henry David Thoreau, was born in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1817 and died there in 1862. In between, he observed and reflected on nature as no one had before nor has anyone since.

Thanks to the dedication and generosity of The Walden Woods Project https://www.walden.org/collection/journals/ , Thoreau’s journals are available to all who wish to plumb their wisdom.

December 2024 - Coyotes

The year has dwindled down to days. How do we not tote up our gains and losses, our quotidian triumphs and catastrophes? How do we not wonder which will fade and which will remain as we sidle into the unknown wilds of 2025?

Coyotes

by Cammy Thomas

bent on prey

sidle into the woods

near my house

soundless indifferent

gray among grasses

what have they taken

from me at the edge

of the field what

part of me stays

with them in the brush

Cammy Thomas’s most recent book is Odysseus’ Daughter (Parkman Press, 2023), poems written in response to the Odyssey. Three previous poetry collections were published by Four Way Books. Cathedral of Wish received the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. Tremors received 2022 Poetry Honors from the Mass Book Awards. She teaches literature to adults and lives near Boston. “Coyotes” originally appeared in Flush Left (Indolent Books). www.cammythomas.com.

November 2024 - November

The season of brilliance known as Fall Foliage is now past its peak. Nature, never one to indulge in instant gratification, will keep us waiting until next year for such glory to return again. Indeed, as October fades into November, the comparison to the morning after a much anticipated celebration is difficult to avoid. Whatever emotional let-down we might feel is physically reflected in the dull, dry leaves skittering and piling around our feet. Yet, as this month’s poem reminds us, “The loss of beauty is not always loss.” The trees’ (and our) restorative chill hours await.

November

by Elizabeth Drew Stoddard

Much have I spoken of the faded leaf;
Long have I listened to the wailing wind,
And watched it ploughing through the heavy clouds;
For autumn charms my melancholy mind.

When autumn comes, the poets sing a dirge:
The year must perish; all the flowers are dead;
The sheaves are gathered; and the mottled quail
Runs in the stubble, but the lark has fled!

Still, autumn ushers in the Christmas cheer,
The holly-berries and the ivy-tree:
They weave a chaplet for the Old Year’s heir;
These waiting mourners do not sing for me!

I find sweet peace in depths of autumn woods,
Where grow the ragged ferns and roughened moss;
The naked, silent trees have taught me this, —
The loss of beauty is not always loss!

Elizabeth Drew Barstow Stoddard, born in 1823 in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, was a poet, novelist, essayist, and literary critic. Her work appeared in such notable publications as Harper’s Monthly and Atlantic Monthly and was hailed at the time by such literary luminaries as Nathaniel Hawthorne (a distant relative) and W.D. Howells. She died in 1902. Her poem, “November,” is in the Public Domain.

October 2024 - Darshan - Visions of the Divine

Poem of the Month followers are, in great probability, people who care about the environment and the arts. There is an equally great probability that you, dear readers, are fully aware of the impending election. Therefore, for this last, long month before the first Tuesday in November, we offer you a wise and calming meditation inspired by the beauty of our favorite farm. 

Darshan – Visions of the Divine

The word is the ultimate silence ...

From Suniai by Ajeet Kaur

—by bg Thurston

near the pond’s edge

the stillness of a frog sleeping

with one eye open

I remember now

gazing upon the lilies—

no mud, no lotus

moored to the bridge

a green boat rocks in silence

waiting to be free

bright blue dragonflies

compose cursive poems above

the pond’s reflection

only one day each

orange daylilies trumpet

among the brown reeds

stones stacked upon stones

obey laws of gravity

as countries topple

a plain gray bird sings

his gift—this present moment

of pure melody

the curved stone path

ends where a small black figure

sits, hugging his knees

we live here, amidst

a world forgetting its purpose

lost in our pretense

bronze temple bells hang

no breeze visits the quiet porch

oh, to hear them ring!

bg Thurston lives on a sheep farm in Warwick, Massachusetts. She received her MFA in Poetry from Vermont College in 2002. She has taught poetry courses at Lasell Village, online for Vermont College, and conducts poetry workshops. Her third book of poetry, The Many Lives of Cathouse Farm/Tales of a Rural Brothel, is forthcoming in 2025 from Cervena Barva Press and is the culmination of a decade of historical research about her 1770’s farmhouse.

September 2024 - The Hike

September is a liminal time. Some days, summer still lingers in the air.  Yet, there are other days – increasingly so - when the suddenly chilly winds stir the changing leaves and send us scrambling for our sweaters.  Indeed, along with the inevitable equinox, change is coming; to quote this month’s poem (and its echo of a line by Galway Kinnell), “what we don’t know” - both the wonderful and the not quite so wonderful - is waiting for us in the weeks and months ahead.

The Hike

after a line by Galway Kinnell, and for my son

 by Jason Tandon

We squat

on a bench

missing its middle slat,

tear jerky with our teeth.

What we don’t know

is the fountain a mile off,

the pistol spigot

that will ice

our spines at the root.

What we don’t know

is the sight of the first chalet

sloped above town,

shutters flung wide to the open air,

and the boxes beneath them

frothing with flowers

in the sop

of summer’s heat.

Jason Tandon is the author of five books of poetry, including This Far North (Black Lawrence Press, 2023), longlisted for the 2024 Massachusetts Book Awards, and The Actual World (Black Lawrence Press, 2019). His poems have appeared in many journals, including Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, North American Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review. He teaches at Boston University, where he is a master lecturer in the Arts & Sciences Writing Program.  https://blacklawrencepress.com/books/this-far-north/

August 2024 - I Am the Storm

August is sun and heat. It is vegetation, sere-edged and crisp underfoot; and it is fruit nearing ripeness on the tree.  And sometimes, often with little warning, it is the punch and wonder of a late-summer thunder storm.

I Am the Storm

by Catherine Weber

The air is still.

No roo-roo-room of the bullfrog,

No drone or bellow. No caw.

I wait on the steps as the weather turns.

Now, I am the storm.

I am the raindrops pelting the ground,

I am the thunder and the rage

of all that has come before.

So we sit in the webbed lawn chairs

sheltering from the onslaught, waiting it out.

Working through a litter of thoughts,

treading to the other side of the storm.

Ghosts arrive, reminding us how we got here.

The wash of loss, a shroud of bitter sadness,

a rush of kindness, and blurry hope.

Finally, the sun arrives

and we walk the path home, still

sorting out what comes next.

Catherine Weber is an award-winning storyteller (3X Moth StorySLAM winner), poet, visual artist, community organizer, and marketing executive. In 2017 she founded Art on the Trails, a juried art exhibition and poetry program in Southborough, MA. Catherine is also owner of Southborough Free Art Gallery, a tiny gallery at the end of her driveway. Learn more at catherinemweber.com.