November 2021

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

Bittersweet

for Barbara Trainer

by Anastasia Vassos

As if the matriarch who died last year

could hear her, Barbara says sorry, Andree

as we hack away at the Oriental Bittersweet.

It’s clung to the porch’s iron railing

for fifty years. Its little orange capsules hold

red seeds that will never take hold

because of our necessary task.

We make our saddest effort cleaning up

the garden for winter. Yesterday, we pitch-forked

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

moved them down the path to the hollow

barrow by barrow, almost as far as the bridge.

Behind our backs, the red maple in the center

of the yard had dropped her yellow skirt.

The bittersweet won’t grow back -

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

non-native, and we’ve hacked it down

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

rhizomes bleached in a ten

percent solution, will take hold

once spring comes, and push their spathes

toward the sun, standards blazing, beards

almost psychedelic in their insistence.

Such is the stubbornness of nature.

She plays dead, then comes back to life

like Lazarus, who could not stay

underground for more than four days

before he was revived.

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

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

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

Nike Adjusting Her Sandal

October 2021

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

Voyager

By Linda Fialkoff

If you mount the iron horse

And its wings spread out to fly

Feel the knocking in your heart

As you lift up to the sky.

When art’s passion fuels your breath

Clouds of wonder draw you nigh

Pull back the reins of life and death

Tell the horseman pass you by.

Give up struggle and surrender

All the weapons of your flight

And the violin moon will render

Lovers rushing into light.

Here the stars remain unbroken

And the brain cannot know why

Let the words be left unspoken

Let the lips speak no reply.

Rain and thunder saints a throwing

Angels falling with the hail

Keeping watch on all that’s growing

in the dream beyond the veil.

You are shaken you are carried

Down the mountain through the storm

And the evening wind will marry

Rainbow colors of the morn.

Floating freely down the river

Laughing, drinking in the sun

Come the farmers with their darlings

Come the apple fruit and drum.

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

September 2021

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

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

Ghost Pipe

by Lucinda Bowen 

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

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

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

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

August 2021

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

After the Summer Storm

 by Don Rota

the sunset murmurs

peepers peep

fireflies mesmerize

bullfrogs deep

the crickets synchronize

bats banter about

the playful orchestra

of light and darkness

of silence and sound

dense pollen scent

wisps of fog all around

senses saturate

nature’s chorus

in droplets of time

the sultry breath

as summer exhales

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

July 2021

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

Summer Haiku

~~ by Lynn Horsky

five lines

seventeen

syllables

In a heat wave

night and day sizzle

Too hot and humid

to sleep

hot midnight

presses wrinkled

twisted sheets

Black embraces

pigments of green

stars interstice

coordinates

with leaves

Moon rings

clouds amidst

branches

cast shadows

enclose sensitive leaves

Side-view mirror scene

my sunburnt

elbow and one 

sun-glassed eye

reflects

Thick green grassy

traffic islands

asphalt to fry

an egg

sunny-side up

Hydrangea clumps

clipped lawns

concrete sidewalk squares 

ants and grubs

dig under

Sun blind

we retreat

air conditioned

in modular

similitudes

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

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

June 2021

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

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

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

How to Know the Terns

By Susan Edwards Richmond

Fat, fearless on retirement beach,

terns congregate in the pink light,

thirty, forty, in a spot,

posing for Sibley’s brush

We walk right up to them and kneel,

splay pages of the field guide

across our laps, check

marks without binoculars.

My father points to a Royal’s

orange bill, a Caspian’s blood red,

both crest feathers sticking up

in the breeze, Groucho’s wild hair.

My mother says, occasionally

they see a Sandwich, white-tipped bill

foraging the sea, and, rarely,

a Least, exactly that.

The Common, they tell me, is not

so much here, the Forster’s,

rarer still, both tails deeply

forked, bills dipped in black.

Having finally joined the migration,

six weeks over wintering each year

while the upstate New York blizzards

blow hardest, my parents gather

birds for the list, children,

grandchildren. As we watch,

a young boy runs at the flock,

scattering lengthening shadows.

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

May 2021

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

TURTLE LOVE

by Catherine McCraw

“Turtles cannot sing

and yet they love,”

wrote the poet, Sir Edward Dyer,

deep in the sixteenth century.

Was he right?

What about turtle-like people

who live in thick shells

and tuck their heads

when threatened?

What can a turtle love…

perhaps the night wind

rippling across

an exposed face,

the warm earth

under turtle feet,

or the cool sea waters

turtles submerge beneath

until they must

resurface to breathe?

Can a turtle

love another turtle…

perhaps with circumspection

gleaned from the insight

of why the other turtle

is tremulous,

and wary of venturing

very fast or very far?

Turtles tend to mumble,

while birds chirp and coo and trill,

thus gaining the acclaim

 of thousands

of prolific poets who praise

their soaring and their songs.

Turtles also cannot fly.

They only swim or trudge.

But, maybe turtles love

in a cloistered kind of way

not apparent to

the swifter flowing world.

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

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/