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.

April 2021

Happy National Poetry Month, friends. Together we’ve made another trip around the sun - in moods of joy and moods of sadness - with the goodfellowship of poetry as our comfort and our guide.

This April, following as is does a particularly hate-filled March, let us celebrate poetry’s singular, transcendent power to illuminate - across time and borders - the human heart which beats in us all.

GOODFELLOWSHIP

A Fragment by Li Po (李白)

Hast thou not beheld the Yellow River

Which flows from Heaven?

It runs rapidly down and empties into the sea,

Nevermore to return.

Hast thou beheld the mirror in the hall

That reflects the grief of white hair?

In the morning it is like black silk,

In the evening it will be covered with snow.

While we are in the mood of joy,

Let us drink!

Let not the golden bottle be lonely,

Let us waste not the moon!

translated from the Chinese by Moon Kwan; Poetry Magazine, June 1921

Li Po (李白), also stylized in English as Li Bai, Li Bo, and Li Pai, was a Chinese poet who lived during the 8th century CE. Revered as one of the most important poets of the T’ang Dynasty, considered the golden age of Chinese poetry, his work influenced such modern American poets as Ezra Pound, James Wright, and Gary Snyder.

March 2021

Here in New England, the month of watchful waiting has arrived. As the lengthening days lean toward the equinox, our eyes scan the ground for shoots of green and sweep the sky for the flash and swell of bird and bud. Yet, this March also marks for most of us one year since the COVID-19 pandemic first upended our lives.

And, so, as we watch and wait for spring, we, also, hold our breath - awaiting a thaw that is at once literal and metaphorical.

Forecast: Thaw

By Jeanne LeBaron Sawyer

Dark yields to dawn,

and the poplar, each bud tipped

with last night’s frozen rain,

stands gaunt and still.

No branch is stirring as light grows

and birds come, leading gray morning

on to blue day. Mist hovers between cold snow

and faster-warming air. Even the birds

are silent, listening, waiting.

I know the silence, too,

waiting for warming sunshine

and for you.

Jeanne LeBaron Sawyer, 1927-2018, was a librarian, poet, and amateur naturalist. She began writing poetry in high school in Brockton, Massachusetts, and wrote her way through New York, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Maine. Even in the last years of her life she continued revising poems for her first book, Evolution: Poems across Seven Decades, which was published in 2017 by Heron Pond Press, and is available through heronpondpress@gmail.com.

February 2021

Happy February! The month which brings us Leslie Knope's “best day of the year” (Galentine's Day) is here.

During this pandemic year, many of the partner-less among us (and even some of the partnered) have found the loving companionship (virtual, perhaps, or masked and socially-distanced) of our friends continues to be what best sustains us. This month’s featured poem speaks eloquently to that point - and most specifically to the unique gift of female friendship.

For Cheryl

by bg Thurston

We are Poetry Sisters,

who walk year upon year

past the young apple trees.

This farm keeps to its own

company, far from the world

with its industry of war.

Hot sun, not a ripple reflects

upon the pond’s silence.

Our pens scratch on paper

while a heron preens feathers

in the tallest dead tree.

The pine-needled path ends

at a wooden hut, sitting silent,

empty of intent. Hidden

amid hostas, small statues

reveal themselves, still

mindful on their stones.

We search for Buddha.

Alone on a rock, we find

a hunched green figure

shaded by two trilliums

with their trinity of leaves.

Passing a pile of bleached stones,

I hold one to my chest and feel

its heat against my heart.

As we leave, the heron takes flight,

flapping and fluttering above

peace flags, frayed and torn.

After a career in computers and finance, bg Thurston now lives on a sheep farm in Warwick, Massachusetts. In 2002, she received an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College. She has taught poetry courses at Lasalle College, online at Vermont College, and conducted many poetry workshops.

 Her first book, Saving the Lamb, by Finishing Line Press was a Massachusetts Book Awards highly recommended reading choice. Her second book, Nightwalking, was released in 2011 by Haleys. Her third book about the history of her 1770’s farmhouse titled Cathouse Farm will hopefully be published this year. She hopes to return to teaching and editing poetry as soon as the pandemic recedes.

January 2021

Happy New Year!

To say we are happy to see the back of 2020 is an understatement. More than ever, we meet this new January with jubilation - and rightly so. Yet, what exactly changes with the turning of this terrible year? The inflection point on which the pundits have had us poised these many months has taken on the feel and shape of permanent residence. We want to be optimistic, but…

Several weeks ago, in thinking about this month’s column, I realized what I most want to offer you right now is the inspiration to sustain your optimism. I myself derive my own inspiration these days from the seventh graders I teach both in person and remotely. These twelve- and thirteen-year-olds buoy me every day with their hopefulness, humor, flexibility, and wisdom.

And, so, in a departure from the usual, this month’s Poem of the Month is a modified pantoum comprised of my students' many, varied voices. Here’s their advice for how to carry on during this still difficult time. They and I wish you a healthy and gentle 2021.

Pantoum for the Pandemic

Wear a mask so COVID will be over soon

Keep positive, stay calm, breathe

Dance with your friends on Zoom

Savor time with family

Keep positive, stay calm, breathe

Find fun things to do

Savor time with family

They understand what you are going through

Find fun things to do

The not-so-great stuff will fade when you focus on a task

Everyone understands what you are going through --

A totally different way of living, socially distanced, in a mask -- 

The not-so-great stuff will fade when you focus on a task

Stay in touch, set goals, go for walks in the sun

Yes, it’s a totally different way of living, socially distanced, in a mask

Look forward to good things (like new anime releases!) in 2021

Stay in touch, set goals, go for walks in the sun

Hop on Tiktok or Insta, dance with friends on Zoom

Look forward to good things to come in 2021

And wear a mask so COVID will be over soon

“Pantoum for the Pandemic” incorporates the direct words, lines, and sentiments generously volunteered for this project by Miri B., Mitra A., Lucas G., Ben C., Makenzie M., Kyle D., Jack C., Jill C., Giuliana A., Gabby R., Ali P., Carmen P., Anthony S., Adam L., Kyle R., Olivia M., Peter P., Matt M., Ava C., Taylor O., Maya M., Emerson M., Amelia I., Emily L., and Julia G. All attend public school in the Boston area.

December 2020

Soon, the longest night of this long, dark year will be behind us; and, less than a fortnight after that, 2020 itself will be gone. We are not the same people we were a year ago. So much has been lost, unraveled, rearranged.

In this month’s Poem of the Month, poet Polly Brown’s spare, elegant lines movingly evoke this sense of loss and disorientation that is universal to all who must navigate the new normal of survivors, to all of us “still here.”

Still Here

by Polly Brown

Remember when the tree men came,

cut down the spruce

all in an afternoon —

remember, as twilight settled,

how birds swooped out

from nearby trees,

trying to open a doorway through the air

into rest they knew

they ought to find there:

again and again, swooping, hoping,

lost. I keep trying to arrive

on a branch

of your understanding:

in some other world close by

still whole,

still rare.

Polly Brown's most recent book, Pebble Leaf Feather Knife, from Cherry Grove Editions, includes several poems first written at Old Frog Pond Farm. She's a member of the Boston area group, Every Other Thursday Poets, grateful to be zooming with them through the pandemic. Other poems appear this fall in Naugatuck River Review and Appalachia. More at http://pollybrownpoet.blogspot.com/

November 2020

We’ve been hurtling towards November all along, haven’t we? And now it is here - the deepening Eastern Standard darkness, the dreaded second wave, the white-knuckle election, and the Thanksgiving like no other. Anxiety edges ever closer as we prepare to enter the long night of this long, long year.

Yet, a sense of peace is still within our grasp. Alexandria Peary, the Poet Laureate of New Hampshire, leads mindful writing workshops in which she encourages participants to think, as they inhale slowly and fully, “Here;” and as they exhale just as slowly, just as fully, “Now.” To focus on the breath in this way is to momentarily remove oneself from the fear, despair, pain, and anger which swirl around us this November. So, too, is perspective-taking, as this month’s featured poem by Zachary Bos so masterfully reminds us.

Self-Portrait from a Remove

by Zachary Bos

I saw it painted on the pines and oaks.

— Thoreau

Maybe the stars look down and see us here

like silverfish resting on the top page

of a book whose words we cannot read, let

alone make sense of. To us, this book is

bread and board, meal and meadow, a vast hall

of linen, gilt leather and letter-shapes;

but seen from that celestial vantage point

the land is a book of annals telling

the memoir-story of nature itself,

which is the deep calligraphic memory

of nature, the stage on which nature mums;

the murmuring of nature in its sleep

which is the book of the dream of nature

dreams to dream itself into mere being.

(originally published in the 2017 Plein Air Poetry chapbook, Memoir )

Zachary Bos lives with his wife and their dog in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, where he has recently hung out a slate as the proprietor of Bonfire Bookshop. He is an alum of the poetry workshops of the graduate creative writing program at Boston University, and coordinator of the BU BookLab. His writing has appeared recently in Arts & Letters Magazine, Iowa Review online, and in the chapbook Rising Up, published by the Arts on the Trails initiative in Southborough, MA. Find him on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram as @zakbos or @bonfirebooks.

October 2020

Is there a month more full of sensory delights than October? Certainly, I can’t think of one. Scarlet leaves against a cerulean sky, the cool crispness of an autumn evening, the first taste of a just-picked mac. The scents and sounds, the sights and flavors, even the textures all abound.

In this month’s featured poem, poet Heather Corbally Bryant evokes the particular October joys known to those who have a home which boasts an apple tree.

Apples

By Heather Corbally Bryant

Sometimes, they say, deer come at night to munch

Apples—we would pay our children pennies to pick

Up newly fallen ones—the ones without crunch marks—

We would mash these beauties into amber-colored

Cider; wasps would swarm on warm autumn days—

Sweetness trickling down from the red wheel of the

Machine we shared with our neighbor—we would fill

Our wheelbarrow with piles of crushed apples and

Take them to the woods where we toss them—they

Would lie there, undisturbed, until the stags would

Wander through our forest in herds, loping through

Dusk to pick up the leavings; still, the smell of apples

Recalls early twilight October Evenings—our years

There came very close, or so I thought, to days of Eden.

Heather Corbally Bryant’s ninth collection, Practicing Yoga in a Former Shoe Factory, came out with the Finishing Line Press in August. Finishing Line Press also will publish her tenth poetry collection, Orchard Days (from which "Apples" comes), in the summer of 2021.

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.