September 2020

I.

All around us now are reminders that fall is fast approaching: The cooler evenings, the shorter days, the turning leaves. With so much in our human world uncertain and strained, there is particular comfort this year in the predictability of the seasons — and in nature’s utter disregard for our concerns — as this month’s featured poet, Lynne Viti, shows us so exquisitely.

Blood Moon

 By Lynne Viti

We tried to see it from the soccer field

at the school people want

torn down, no way to rehabilitate it,

poor drainage, asbestos lurking in the walls,

wrapped around pipes, Eisenhower era

construction, additions stuck on when

school aged children cropped up everywhere.

It’s dark, it’s cold for September, the moon

a bright white orb. We wait and watch.

a sliver of shadow appears at the moon’s side,

slowly creeps, almost imperceptibly, across the white.

It’s not happening fast enough for us.

We want to see the pink moon, the blood moon.

Huddled in this playground we wonder

why no one else is here. Are they watching

the blood moon on their televisions,

getting a clearer, sharper, super pink image?

I pull my sweater snug around me.

The night feels like winter’s breathing

down our backs. The shadow drags across the moon.

An hour later the moon is pink—

Salmon pink,  smaller than the white moon we saw

at first tonight. Out on the grass this night

six of us, in a tight knot, breathe in the cold air.

There won’t be another blood moon for years.

Will we be alive then, and if so, care enough

to step outside to the porch wherever we live,

tilt our heads back, marvel at the sky?

II.

 Long-time readers of this column and friends of Old Frog Pond Farm & Studio will be familiar with the annual plein air poetry walk, traditionally held at the farm one Sunday in September. Like most such events, this, too, has been impacted by the pandemic. Happily, although we will not hold a ‘live’ poetry walk this year, on Sunday, September 20th, at 3 pm, we will host a Zoom reading with the twenty-six poets who have written poems en plein air inspired by the farm on the theme of “Refuge”. Details for how to join the Zoom reading will be forthcoming on the Old Frog Pond Farm & Studio website. Instead of a print chapbook of the poems, we are publishing an online journal which will include Brent Mathison’s photos of the sites that inspired the poets. These photos also will be pinned at the Zoom event. As a preview and an enticement, here’s our featured poet, Lynne Viti’s, contribution:

Ode to a Tool Shed, at Midsummer  

By Lynne Viti

From a distance the structure promises shade, a respite,

its pull-up garage door open wide, welcoming me in.

Spades and shovels line up, and a few rakes and pitchforks.

Shelved trowels, oilcans, white plastic bottles and aerosol cans,

a coil of black plastic hose lying like a sleeping snake.

On the wooden shelves, coated with years of dust and dirt,

 metal baskets overflow with wrenches and files. 

On the floor—seventy-year-old concrete or beaten down earth? —

five-gallon jerrycans of gasoline, cloth tool bag with its mouth agape.

It would take twenty workers to deploy all these tools

to clear the land, prep the soils, rake in seed,

and it’s all been done—the evidence right outside this place,

 lettuce, broccoli astride irrigation hoses, waiting for July.

But here, this tool-chaos cries out for someone to impose order,

arrange spades in descending order of height or by estimated age,

line up the neem oil, rot-stop, spinosad in alphabetical order,

assign a hook or niche for these hundred tools and potions.

But those who wield these things know just where to find them,

 have a scheme known only to custodians of rakes and pitchforks.

Backing out slowly, careful to avoid a wayward rake’s tines,

I breathe in the scent of machine oil and earth.

Lynne Viti is the author of the forthcoming Dancing at Lake Montebello (Apprentice House Press 2020), two poetry chapbooks, Baltimore Girls (2017) and The Glamorganshire Bible (2018), and a short fiction collection, Going Too Fast (2020).  A faculty emerita at Wellesley College, she blogs at https://lynneviti.wordpress.com.

August 2020

On July 11th, the Old Frog Pond Farm and Studio poetry community lost our dear friend David Davis . Even as he battled the cancer that eventually would take his life at 73, Dave remained a frequent and much admired contributor to the annual Plein Air poetry project. This month’s featured poem originally was published in Paths Tracks Trails, Old Frog Pond & Studio's 2018 Plein Air Poetry chapbook. Of his inspiration for the poem, Dave wrote, “This poem was written on the path to the Matisse bell. After writing the first draft, I recited the last two lines to Linda Hoffman, who replied that there is a similar Zen koan: How do you go straight along a road with 99 curves? The path to the bell strikes me as a physical embodiment of that koan.” Indeed, Dave’s own life was a road with many curves — from Colorado to Morocco to Hawaii to Massachusetts; from Vietnam era conscientious objector to Peace Corps volunteer to professor of philosophy and logic to AI pioneer and entrepreneur. Add to that, of course, poet, birder, husband, father, and grandfather.

Farewell, Dave; we thank you for the wonderful legacy of words and friendship you have left us.

On the Path to the Bell

By David Davis

You could go directly to the bell,

up over the ridge and down,

bushwhacking your way.

But the path that exists

goes right, then left, then curves,

taking us by the pond

bordered by moss and flowers

and rocks with small buddhas

sitting mindfully on them.

I enjoy the bell more

because the path has taken me away from it

to show me these things

and when the path leads me back

I am filled with the pond and flowers and buddhas.

I am different, and ready.

So take the path.  Walk where the buddhas wait.

The crookeder the path the more it’s straight.

David Davis, Old Frog Pond Farm and Studio Plein Air Poetry Walk, 2016. (Photo by Jim Richmond)

David Davis was a member of the Powwow River Poets Workshop and the founder of the Poet in Residence program at Joppa Flats Audubon Center, where he served as poet in residence from 2012-2017. Dave’s four books of poetry include The Joy Poems and Market Town and Other Poems, both of which dealt with his determination to “get more joy out of life” in spite of his terminal diagnosis. The latter collection was published only days after his passing.

July 2020

How will we celebrate the 4th of July this year? How can we possibly celebrate the 4th of July this year? Certainly, undoubtedly, the still-raging pandemic will curtail the crowds of revelers: No traditional parades, free-wheeling backyard barbeques, or jam-packed community fireworks displays. But what if COVID-19 had never reached our shores? For some of us, the holiday always has been fraught. For others, long-held assumptions about just whose independence we have been celebrating all these years have been suddenly jolted loose. This month’s poem quietly but powerfully offers a different patriotic path, one marked not by the bombast of a Roman candle but by the flow of civic contemplation.

Siphon

 by Trisha Knudsen

It is late afternoon on a Friday and I feel a pull

to get home before rush hour traffic begins in earnest.

After a lovely lunch and a ride around town,

I am instead cuddled up under a warm blanket

on a friend’s cozy couch in her beautiful house.

We’re having a pleasant conversation about kids

and grandkids, work, health, aging parents

and squirrels at the bird feeder. We are catching up,

having missed each other for what seems like months.

Without warning, the talk turns to the various stresses

regarding the state of the world and the muddying

of our dear country, and the many ills and missteps

that have led us here at the hands of men

whose only true intent is amassing personal gain

and a flagrant disregard for the welfare of her citizens.

It is at this moment that my brain explodes.

My opinions and politics and even my faith remain,

at most times, silent within me in the public arena.

There are too many people to potentially offend.

Too many issues for which my answers feel inadequate,

my knowledge lacking in detail, for me to speak

with any authority. I have the conviction,

but no heart for hurting others with my words.

My friend is of the same mind.

But this afternoon in her living room,

our truth spills out between us.

It is as though a siphon has been placed

against our temples as a sort of release valve

for all we have been contemplating.

All we have been swallowing down

for these last few years which is allowing

all manner of words unfit for public consumption

to advance from cranium to mandible to tongue.

One thought, then another, and another.

An exodus of all that we can no longer hold.

Trisha Knudsen has been writing poetry for 45 years. A retired teacher of special needs and gifted children, Trisha is most recently the creator and owner of RetreatQuest, a business offering creative arts and writing workshops and retreats for women, with the hope of reintroducing them to their inner artists. Though the business is on hold for now, you can find her at www.retreatquest.com. In her spare time, Trisha enjoys playing with her three young grandchildren, writing and reading poetry, creating art and singing with her husband, Phil. Feel free to reach her at trisha@retreatquest.com.

June 2020

The month of blushing brides and mortar-board tossing grads is upon us - except it isn’t. That is, the old symbols that for so long have been shorthand for June don’t work this year in which so much has changed and remains in flux. The long, solstice-leaning days flow into each other in a blur whether we are over-worked, out-of-work, or working from home. Meanwhile, processing loss has become our full-time occupation as we await the arrival of an elusive “new normal.” In this month’s featured poem, Catherine M. Weber eloquently expresses this very human struggle to reconcile all that has been lost with all that still remains.

Reconciliation of Loss

~~ After the sculpture Reconciliation by Kevin Duffy

By Catherine M. Weber

How do you reconcile the smooth and rough, cracked and intact?

At once beautiful and broken, wonderful and tragic,

inextricably linked, uncomfortable, but the way of things, nonetheless.

Like love and sadness, tied together forever in my heart.

As my golden retriever stands with her prize,

two baby cotton tailed bunnies, hanging from her jaw,

wagging with pride. I wonder at the nature of life and death,

and their utter connection. The horror and commonness of our existence.

As my love dies but is always present,

or perhaps never dies but is simply out of reach.

As the hard stone looks soft, the rope looks real,

bound up as if to hold together

something that was never broken at all.

As my son looks to the future, while struggling with the present,

never to forget his father

but not thinking about where he might have gone.

Choosing to make a lemon tart on Father’s Day in homage.

And I sit with the notion that I will never know why

Death visits at inconvenient times

and know that it just does, that this just is.

The stone is an optical illusion,

a perception designed by a skilled carver.

Energy shapeshifting, but the same energy, nonetheless.

~~ Originally published in Old Frog Pond Farm and Studio’s chapbook of ekphrastic poetry, Speaking of Sculpture, edited by Susan Edwards Richmond.

Catherine M. Weber is an award-winning poet and artist, community organizer, and digital marketing consultant with a passion for the arts, education, and the environment. Among her many roles she teaches art, marketing, and technology skills regionally, shows her work nationally, and organizes community programs and events locally. She is a charter member of New England Wax, a professional group of artists who paint with wax, and a member of the Southborough Cultural Council. She was raised in upstate New York, Indiana, and Connecticut and now lives in Southborough, Massachusetts, where she is the founder and program director for Art on the Trails at Beals Preserve. She holds a BA in Communications from Emerson College and an MA in Critical and Creative Thinking from the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

May 2020

Earlier this week, as I was heading out for a walk, I suddenly realized why May is the perfect month to celebrate mothers. Mothers and their babies seem to be everywhere in the natural world right now. Where I live - and take my walks - the local marsh is home to colonies of Canada Geese, and the mothers among them currently are parading their downy newborns in single-file formations around the neighborhood. I smile behind my COVID mask each time I see them.

This month poet Laura Margosian writes with lush lyricism of remembered visits with her own mother on Martha’s Vineyard. In so doing, she conveys the wistfulness and longing which many of us also are feeling as we approach that “Second-Sunday-in-May” holiday this year.

MY ISLAND MOTHER

-For my beautiful Mother, Linda, and the

Martha’s Vineyard island she taught me to love.

By Laura Margosian

She wakes me with her May call

summoning my return.

Soaring geese overhead

to breaking ground.

My lovely mother

gathering her spices and gin,

for “her favorite place on earth.”

Dashing off we’d go in the fading yellow Volvo

to catch the last ferry boat,

where I’d soon be lapping away

the burning days in her gurgling tide;

with mother watching from the sand,

as my sparkling eyes turned to budding hips;

like the lines of the shore,

she sheltered my innocence

and held my pain.

There nesting in her east pasture

of morning glories’ slumbering vines,

in that pause between

the bite of early spring

and what May come…

I'd steal onto the salt-worn porch

perched at the edge of earth

in her dewy blush,

and bathe in her blackness;

moon ladled path

spilling across Menemsha Pond

and took night watch.

All was kept and quiet

tucked into her lap of sunken days;        

she knew I'd returned

and had never left,

down rolling dirt roads,

wide-eyed and watched

by the red-tail hawk,

recalling me from decades gone;

bare-backed on hazy cliffs,

weaving meadow grass, brambles & beach plums.

We held each other again,

My island mother;

cloaked in beaming blue, burnt crimsons

and spinning gold;

blanketed by her soft lullaby,

she caressed my brow

and carried my prayer.

There in her up island east pasture,

butter bees and chirping swallows

penetrating gaps in the torn screen

of the wind-worn porch;

window to the horizon

of shifting tides…

With a lover’s first embrace:

a kiss planted on an August night rain,

a secret shared in an afternoon wicker chair,

fish stew promises simmering at dusk.

Enduring love permeates

like an unspeakable ghost,

wakes me tenderly to greet the dawn…

In the wide night between

I'd slide from under his quilt

of safekeeping dreams;

casting krill & biting gulls,

ribbons of wind-swept sails

propelling me to the night porch,

to gaze on distant lights

lingering like candles-on the horizon,

stirred by the familiar haunting bell

whispering her ebb & flow.

And with the nod of tradition

blustering down the thorny sun-steeped hill

to stony, brackish-water’s edge,

where a once lover covered me

with his smile.

Beach scrubs, horse shoe crabs, and anchors

along the beckoning shoreline;

where my Island mother

will always be-

calling me

home.

Laura Margosian is a life-long student of integrative wholistic health and recently joined the path of her pioneering mother and sister as a certified yoga instructor.  Her long-time professional career includes developing and directing academic tutoring and college mentoring programs for the Cambridge public schools. She holds a bachelor’s of liberal arts in cultural anthropology from Antioch College. She enjoys co-hosting curated feasts and is passionate about artistic food blogging and culinary anthropology. Laura has lived on Martha’s Vineyard throughout various periods of her life and all seasons. She has been writing poetry since charmed by her high school creative writing teacher, with whom she still exchanges working drafts to this day. Her work has appeared in various publications, and she received the Armenian Allied Arts Association award for her poem about impressionist painter, Arshile Gorky. Laura plans to publish a collection of her poems, many inspired by love, longing, and the seasons.

April 2020

April famously is National Poetry Month; and in the world of the old normal, it was a month of special events and readings celebrating this art form we love. Perhaps, even more importantly - and now, poignantly so - it was a time of gathering and fellowship for poetry’s writers, readers, and listeners.

Poetry, of course, is with us every month of the year; and in this world we are coming to know as the new normal, poetry continues to provide balm and insight for one’s spirit just as much today as it did yesterday. That alone is reason enough to celebrate it now - no physical distancing required.

This month’s poet, Joan Alice Wood Kimball, carries readers out and away from the four walls of our quarantined abodes and into the osprey’s wild realm. Be well and know you are not alone.

Fish Eagle

by Joan Alice Wood Kimball

Sprawled on a rock I watch

the tree-walled pond

its commerce drenched

in heaven’s mirror.

An osprey mows the air

over and over

back and forth

across the still pool.

Head down

watching the dark water

over and over

she traces a grid

as regular as a chess board.

Over and over

patient as a grand master

then a hover

a check.

Fierce flight forward

driving aslant

she charges the surface

like a skipping stone.

Angling up

with a tail-jerking fish

in her talons

she climbs the air currents

levels off and lands

to work

over her prey

on the dead limb

of a living oak. 

_____________________________________________________________________

––Earlier versions published 2004 in Avocet, & “Early Light” (Kelsay Books, 2019).

Joan Alice Wood Kimball has published several books of poetry, most recently Early Light (Kelsay Books, 2019). A founder of the Concord Poetry Center and a member of the Powwow River Poets, she also runs poetry workshops in Concord and Wayland. Her limerick, “Cold October,” is inscribed on granite in Edmands Park, Newton, MA.

March 2020

By New England standards, this has been a mild winter so far. Yet, as the seasoned weather-watchers among us know, capricious March could end that trend with swift and heartless ease, leaving all inhabitants – human and otherwise – to suddenly (as poet Louise Berliner sagely reminds us) “ navigate familiar territory gone solid.”

Afternoon at Great Meadows and

by Louise Berliner

two swans stroll

on caramelized water

like prophets,

all leg and neck,

inspecting a beaver lodge. 

  each step makes a satisfying crack,

their unwieldy height forcing a slow motion waddle

as they navigate familiar territory gone solid.

 they pace counterclockwise, puzzled,

perhaps wondering why the beavers don’t invite them in.

hot chocolate might be nice.

 someone’s foot crashes through

it’s loud  and there’s a belly-flop—

proper swan pose at last.

  they turn fleet, the first inching

her prow among the icebergs

followed by her pal,

who savors the cleared path.

 they run aground,

step up again to the surface,

shake out their giant handkerchiefs.

  they could fly but

some memory tethers them to the tundra

summer, perhaps,

just below the surface,

perfect in grasses, worms, frogs.

Louise Berliner is a word wrestler and thread twister. She makes sculptures of words that sometimes look like poems or novels,  and  characters  made of waxed linen, misc. threads, beads, buttons  and fabrics. Her writing  has appeared in  VQR, Porter Gulch Review,   Ibbetson Review, The Mom Egg, Sacred Fire,  and various chapbook collections.  Her first book , Texas Guinan, Queen of the Night Clubs,  written in part thanks to an NEH grant, was a biography of a Roaring ‘20s night club hostess famous for saying “Hello, Suckers!”.

February 2020

Of all its equally precious days (29 this year!), the fourteenth is this diminutive month’s most celebrated claim to fame – or infamy.  To the unhappily uncoupled, the hype and kitsch of Valentine’s Day are more unwelcomed reminders of their single state.  To the giddily partnered, the ubiquitous displays of hearts and cards, chocolates and roses instead confirm what they already suspect – the entire world is reveling in their romance. 

Of course, most of us, most of the time, fall into neither camp.  Indeed, in a pair of brief but brightly evocative poems, this month’s poet, Jason Tandon, celebrates a type of romantic love that is at once realistic (Listen up, Giddily Partnered!) and abiding. Unhappily Uncoupled – and everyone else - read on and take heart.

Terry House, Poem of the Month, Editor

Matrimony

By Jason Tandon

We lie naked above the sheets

watching the curtains

robe the wind.

Later, in the splotch

of the small hours

I tell you,

“We’re low on dish soap.”

You answer,

“Coffee, too.”

Beatitude

By Jason Tandon

Out of oil

on a cold Sunday morning

we heap the bed with blankets.

Both “Matrimony” and “Beatitude” were originally published in the collection, The Actual World, Black Lawrence Press, 2019.

Jason Tandon is the author of four books of poetry, including The Actual World, Quality of Life, and Give Over the Heckler and Everyone Gets Hurt, winner of the St. Lawrence Book Award from Black Lawrence Press. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Barrow Street, Beloit Poetry Journal, and North American Review, among others. He is a Senior Lecturer in the College of Arts & Sciences Writing Program at Boston University.

Visit his book page and website at the following links:

https://www.blacklawrence.com/the-actual-world/

https://jasontandon.com/

January 2020

The first full month of winter is upon us; and as we arm ourselves to do battle with the elements (ergonomic shovels, telescoping snow brushes, anyone?), may we keep in mind the instructive lines of this month’s Poem of the Month by Framingham poet Carla Schwartz.  

The Art of Shoveling

By Carla Schwartz

 When you wake to the thick white quiet, don’t despair.

When you know it will take hours and hours to remove

the two-foot, and still falling shroud, don’t shy from it.

Before visualizing the entire driveway clear,

and you sailing out in your car, open the garage door.

From the dry floor, scoop up one shovelful and fling it

where you will not drive or walk — fling it in the air.

When, after a half hour, only a small square of blacktop

has emerged, and you have so much more, start singing —

Yankee Doodle, maybe — You have earned that feather.

Before you start crying you have no one you can call to help,

take out an audio book — War and Peace, Catch 22.

Something that will do the shoveling for you.

When the plow truck driver tells you to get out of the way

and undoes your last hour’s work, don’t waste your shaking fists —

return the snow to the road when the truck is gone.

When your back starts to feel the strain of the shovel,

mount your snowshoes. Be a piston. Float and sink.

Make troughs alongside your shovel area —

Somewhere to throw the snow,

a trap to catch it when it blows.

“The Art of Shoveling” was originally published in the collection, Mother, One More Thing, Turning Point Books, 2014.

Carla Schwartz is a poet, filmmaker, photographer, and blogger. Her poems have appeared in Aurorean, Common Ground, Fulcrum, Gyroscope, Long Island Review, Lost River, Mom Egg Review, and Sunlight Press, among others.  She also is the author of two poetry collections: Mother, One More Thing (Turning Point Books, 2014) and Intimacy with the Wind (Finishing Line Press, 2017).
 

December 2019

Years when oak trees produce an abundance of acorns are known by foresters as “mast” years.  Here in New England, this has been such a year; and December’s poet, Jessica Bennett, invites us to embrace the mast year as a metaphor for the ebb and flow of life, for the annual accumulation of everyday joys and sorrows, much on our minds this last month of 2019.

Mast Year

 By Jessica Bennett

Just when we forgot to expect anything

of the old oak, it produced a bonanza of acorns –

abundance and unpredictability

being solid defense for a tree.

The field below this wintered oak

has now been thoroughly rummaged.

Caps strewn about in slush, their loot

drawn up into garrets, pulled deep

into the crumble of stonewalls.

Not long ago, I found a stash of acorns

in a Christmas stocking and because it’s hard

to be the cause of disappointment,

let alone starvation, I let them roll

free in the attic eaves.

It’s no longer my house, after all.

Rain seeps through the bruised roof

and the linoleum curls in the kitchen. 

This shelter has its own agreement

with gravity. Corners of hollow

rooms are softened by dust, the rub

and chew of critters. A bit of rot becomes

an entryway. A gutted pillow, a nest. 

Burdock and bluebottles tap windows

unseen. What’s in, or out

matters less. With death comes so much

opportunity.  Even this pile of seed stowed

in your boot will win another chance.   

Born and raised in Essex, Massachusetts, Jessica Warren Bennett is a grant writer and poet now living in New York.  A common thread throughout much of her work is the close observation of bugs and small creatures.  She has learned her craft through the community of writers at the Hudson Valley Writers Center in New York and The Frost Place in New Hampshire.  She is part of a dedicated group of volunteers involved in keeping the long running (50 years) and nationally recognized Katonah Poetry Series a vibrant program of the Katonah Village Library. 

November 2019

Ah, November! As always, there is much for which to be thankful; yet, this year our celebration of Earth's bounty feels somehow bittersweet. Perhaps, it is the sight of our children striking for action on climate change. Or, perhaps, it is the sting of Greta Thunberg's poignant UN plea. Or, alas, the scientific confirmation received mere weeks ago that what we'd long suspected is true: There are fewer birds now than when we ourselves were young - three billion, to be exact. This month's Poem of the Month by Dawn Paul reflects the collective mood of urgency, anger, and sadness which tempers our festive feasting this season.

Listen

By Dawn Paul

We have for so long tried to speak to you.

Bees murmured, falcons keened, wolves howled,

but you spoke only to each other

of metal and fire.  We sent the snake to whisper,

and you cursed it.

Humpback whales sang their songs,

you threw harpoons.

Gorillas—such a family resemblance—pleaded

with their dark eyes and you cut off their hands.

Now we must speak and be heard.

We are all imperiled.

Glaciers gush meltwater sorrow,

filling the sea with their tears.

Waves gnaw the coast in frustration.

Still, you do not listen.

So we will send our oldest.  Now,

the stones will speak.

They have been pondering your ways for eons.

This one wears a face like your own.

Shyly, it turns its eyes away, facing earth.

But see its parted lips?  Listen—this stone

has something to tell you.

Peering Around the Corner by Joe Wheelwright

“Listen” is included in the Old Frog Pond Farm and Studio chapbook of ekphrastic poetry, Speaking of Sculpture, edited by Susan Edwards Richmond and designed by Lynn Horsky, featuring photographs by Robert Hesse of outdoor sculpture jurored by Nick Capasso and curated by Linda Hoffman. The poem is a response to Joseph Wheelwright’s sculpture, Listening Stone.

Dawn Paul teaches writing, literature, and interdisciplinary courses at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly. She has received writing fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, the Ragdale Foundation, Spring Creek Project and Friday Harbor Marine Laboratories.  She is the author of two novels, The Country of Loneliness (Marick Press) and Still River (Corvid Press). Her short stories, creative nonfiction, and poetry are included in the anthologies Only Connect (Cinnamon Press, Wales, UK); In the Eye (poetry to support the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina); and Going Alone—Solo Outdoor Adventures and Steady as She Goes—Women and the Sea, both published by Seal Press, New York.  Her chapbook on 18th century scientist Carl Linnaeus, What We Still Don’t Know, will be published by Finishing Line Press in late 2019.

October 2019

A Note from Our New Poetry Editor: Terry House.

It is my great honor to take up the reins on this monthly column from Susan Edwards Richmond - a poet whose work I admire as deeply as I cherish her friendship.

This month’s Poem of the Month is from Susan’s 2006 chapbook,  Birding in Winter (Finishing Line Press).

Girl with Swallows

By Susan Edwards Richmond

Sun stretches as day lowers

its boom, black flies swirling.

Having refused the hat,

having refused the binoculars,

she twirls behind a mother’s purposeful steps.

Everything about her long

and tapered and graceful,

having outgrown her youngest self,

having outgrown her fledgling wings,

she skips through blizzards of swallows.

Skimming so close, the swish of their sweep

is like breath against skin.

And all the time the green backs catching the sun,

and all the time the white bellies mirroring the water,

The forked tails pinching off parcels of blue.

Barn swallows reach down, stir feathers in the pond,

tree swallows smoothly take the middle air,

While high above, swifts chitter and turn.

Her heart plunges with every dive,

soars with every mount to the sky.

Susan’s debut picture book, Bird Count, will be released by Peachtree Publishing Company October 1st.  A launch party to celebrate will be held Saturday, October 5, at 11 a.m. at Silver Unicorn Books in West Acton. All are welcome! For updates about future readings, visit Susan’s author site at www.susanedwardsrichmond.com.  

Susan Edwards Richmond is the author of the children’s picture book, Bird Count (Peachtree) about a child who becomes a Citizen Scientist for a day in her town’s Christmas Bird Count.  A passionate birder and naturalist, Susan teaches preschool at Drumlin Farm in Lincoln, Massachusetts.  She earned her M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of California, Davis, and is an award-winning poet with five collections of nature-based poetry for adults, including Before We Were Birds (Adastra Press) and Birding in Winter (Finishing Line Press). She is happiest exploring natural habitats with her husband and two daughters. She lives in Stow, Massachusetts.