July 2022
One of my favorite childhood memories is of a morning in early July when my friends and I were stopped by a normally grumpy neighbor, the grandfather of a schoolmate, and entreated to “Look! Look! Look there!” When we followed the line of his gnarled finger, we saw a blue we’d never seen before, not even in the bucolic hills of the surrounding Berkshires.
That memory is from the 1960s, a time of great social, cultural, political, and ecological tumult, a time when the grown-up world felt fraught with discord and danger, a time not unlike our own, a time very much in need of a bluebird.
Old Frog Pond Farm Poetry Editor, Terry House
BLUEBIRD
by Wendy Drexler
Blue as sapphires. As Monet’s blue
water lilies. Put-down-your-burdens blue.
Stay-here blue and blue clear through. Lapis blue
of the Virgin’s robe, the deep-sea’s untrammeled blue.
Blue as my valley, my shelter, my twilight mist, my thou-shalt-
not-want. Blue perches on the garden fence, sun catches the bright bead
of its eye. Blue swoops down to the sea of lavender bee balm,
crown vetch, Black-eyed Susans. Bustling bees, bundled
in yellow sweaters, dip
their tongues into
the fringed petals
that sway with
the weight of the bees’
own bodies. I’d forgotten
beauty, its take-your-breath away, its
unexpected grace. How I’m helpless before it.
After days and days keeping the outside out, the inside in,
my heart retracted like a snail. So haggard at the heart, so care-coiled,
as Hopkins calls it. Come, sweet scent of mown grass, come, nectar
of my own sweet sweat. Come bluebird, flying now,
flown—carrying sky on your back.
Wendy Drexler is a recipient of a 2022 artist fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her third poetry collection, Before There Was Before, was published by Iris Press in 2017. Her poems have appeared in Barrow Street, J Journal, Lily Poetry Review, Nimrod, Pangyrus, Prairie Schooner, Salamander, Solstice, Sugar House, The Atlanta Review, The Mid-American Review, The Hudson Review, The Threepenny Review, and the Valparaiso Poetry Review, among others. She’s been the poet in residence at New Mission High School in Hyde Park, MA, since 2018, and is programming co-chair for the New England Poetry Club. Her fourth collection, Notes from the Column of Memory, will be published in September 2022 by Terrapin Books. Her website is www.WendyDrexlerPoetry.com
June 2022
June throbs with life. As I write, a mother robin feeds her gaping, zesty newborns in the nest she’s built on my window sill. On the farm, too, new life abounds in orchard, garden, pond, and wood. And wending amid these fresh beginnings are piquant memories of past joys, past dreams, past rites, past Junes,
A Widow’s Tale
by Moira Linehan
Across the pond, twenty chairs for a wedding.
Mine, ever in mind. Later today, a June wedding
on the pond’s other side. The sky, something blue
for the bride. One frothy cloud. Their vows will wed
the couple now forever to this pond. A Great Blue
drifts down over it in time to a wedding
march. Deliberately sure. The wings’ cold blue
undersides almost skim the water. Our wedding
in a stone chapel in winter. Then brilliant blue
the next morning’s sky as we skated. We, too, wedded
to a pond, the one behind our home. Dan hummed The Blue
Danube Waltz to me. With this ring I thee wed.
When I took it off, I broke out in hives. My great blue.
I wore it for another year. My art of being wed,
the art of memory. A second Great Blue
arrives. Last month I moved from our pond. My wedded
imprinted world has come with me. The two Great Blues
fly off together. Later today, a small wedding.
Moira Linehan had two collections of poetry come out in 2020: TOWARD from Slant Books and & COMPANY from Dos Madres Press. She has two earlier books: IF NO MOON (2007) and INCARNATE GRACE (2015), both from Southern Illinois University Press. “A Widow’s Tale” first appeared in the Old Frog Pond Farm & Studio Plein Air chapbook, Memoir.
May 2022
May is the month when spring sings. The flute song of the oriole zings through air heady with the scent of lilac and lily-of-the-valley. And in the orchard, amidst apple trees newly be-leafed and be-blossomed, spring’s aria of rebirth reaches a transcendent, soul-shimmying crescendo.
Born Again in the Apple Orchard
by Cheryl Perreault
While I walk shy in my own quiet human skin,
suddenly with new eyes I see
the revivalist nature of all these trees
amidst this verdant, vibrant church of apple orchard.
All arms extended out in welcome,
converting my human reticent feet to change their cautious pace,
to want to dance as they resonate with all this
celebration of tribal vibrant pounding sound
holy-rollering from this fertile sanctuary that surrounds,
like the wild summer finch twitter and the blackbird call of oak-a-ree,
like the breeze howling out vespers of sacred songs of poetry.
This place of congregation hallelujah life force
of every effervescent single cell of thing — all welcome and all welcoming,
even the chanting multitude of a million tiny swaying grasses,
even the viridescent katydid with outstretched praying legs.
All here focused on the infinite arboreal blue that peeks and preaches
among every living thing reaching skyward.
Suddenly this orchard becomes my religion and ancestry.
Suddenly I feel tree prayers from deep within the roots of me.
Suddenly I surprise myself with my own newfound voice
belting out loud hymns of rejoice amidst this choir of apple trees.
Cheryl Perreault hosts programs of poetry, storytelling, and song and is a long-time participant in Old Frog Pond Farm & Studio’s Plein Air Poetry projects. Since the start of the pandemic, she has taken to sitting outside for long durations to applaud the poetry of birds, squirrels, and trees.
“Born Again in the Apple Orchard” first appeared in the Plein Air chapbook, Memoir.
April 2022
If the pandemic can be compared to a long and fretful hibernation, then this fresh, new April finds us tentatively, hopefully, stepping out into the world again. With an optimism tempered by awareness, we seek familiar paths, old haunts, new joys. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, indeed - and for that, this time, this spring, let us be thankful.
Chercher la Piste
By William Lenderking
In the quadrant, four directions beckon
teasing varied potentials:
studio, falls, orchard, deck…
I search for the path between memoir and possibility:
I thought first to walk the curving arm of the pond
to see the sticks I saw last winter gone -
suspended over the ice—sheathed in silver glaze,
bringing eerie stillness to the place.
Then I thought to find the ginseng patch
to search for the leaf that never yet showed.
But under my first step, a garter snake stirs
and slips into the moss
as if its languid pace were camouflage -
while elsewhere a raptor swoops a lightning loop
over an elusive dove.
And then it comes to me.
I receive all I need from here.
It is enough today to sit with friends,
filling up with afternoon.
William Lenderking is a musician, yoga teacher, blessed father, and consultant/psychologist, who uses his love of words and poems to bring soul into his life as often as possible. He is a frequent participant in Old Frog Pond Farm & Studio Plein Air Poetry projects including the chapbook Paths Tracks Trails, in which “Chercher la Piste” first appeared.
March 2022
Freeze and thaw, snow and rain, the month of lions and lambs is upon us. From the still dormant orchard, last year’s leftover leaves rattle in the wind; while from the waking wetlands, this year’s redwings flirt and trill. Welcome, March, month of stirring contradictions, you bring us much to savor, mourn, and contemplate.
Plein Air Meditation
By Hilary Sallick
Water falls from the eaves of the hut
I stop and listen Walking here
I was making new paths
through snow
stepping up and out
and then as if wearing high heels
finding myself suddenly taller
on the frozen crust
The snow is hard and soft melting now
dripping landing noisily
The birds are calling redwing chickadee crow
I’ve turned off my phone
and fall silent into inner
silence the ground where the forest
stands so many trees leaning against
one another entangled branches and roots
I found a twig of the oak
caught by the pine
Now cold on the rising wind
last year’s leaves dangle musical
Hilary Sallick, a poet and teacher in Somerville, MA, is the author of a full-length poetry collection, Asking the Form (Cervena Barva Press, 2020). She is also vice-president of the New England Poetry Club. Her poem, “Plein Air Meditation,” first appeared in Old Frog Pond & Studio’s 2018 Plein Air Poetry chapbook, Paths Tracks Trails. To read more of her work, go to www.hilarysallick.com.
February 2022
January in New England finds us reacquainting ourselves with winter’s forgotten pleasures. At the farm, a hopeful skater tests the ice with an upended hockey stick, then, satisfied, glides along the frozen pond. Above the dormant orchard, the season’s vibrant sunset pastels give way to an ebony sky spotlit by the rising wolf moon.
Ah, if only winter left us January 31st! Perhaps then, February would find us wistful for the dark and frigid month just passed rather than fully sated, impatient for light and heat.
Cold Moon
By Lynne Viti
Winter self
longs for summer.
High winds scuttle leaves
that weeks ago seemed
frozen to the ground.
A full cold moon lights up
the mess of a front yard,
grass shreds, earth flung there
by a wayward sidewalk plow.
Summer self
never longs for winter.
Instead fixes itself in the moments
of each long day, taking in
the soil’s heat underfoot
well after the sun
drops.
Lynne Viti is the author of three poetry collections: Baltimore Girls (2017), The Glamorganshire Bible (2018), and Dancing at Lake Montebello (2020). A lecturer emerita at Wellesley College, she teaches poetry and literature workshops in community settings, including the Westwood Public Library and the Dover Council on Aging. As an Old Frog Pond & Studio Plein Air poet, she has contributed poems to numerous Plein Air Poetry projects including Path Tracks Trails, Speaking of Sculpture, and Refuge.
January 2022
We who live in cold climates know well the fearsome wonder of a winter storm. The world simultaneously stops and swirls, narrows and expands. We are at once vulnerable and alone and yet part of a profound, communal experience. Whether we shovel, plow, or wait and watch, we are infused with awe for a force greater than our own.
Winter Psalm
by Richard Hoffman
Boston snowbound, Logan closed, snowplows
and salt-trucks flashing yellow, drifts
tall as a man some places, visibility poor,
I sit by the window and watch the snow
blow sideways north-northeast, hot cup
in hand, robe over pajamas.
You have made me to seek refuge
and charged me to care for my brothers.
How cruel. That could only be You out there
howling, cracking the trees, burying everything.
~~ from Emblem
Richard Hoffman has published four volumes of poetry, Without Paradise; Gold Star Road; Emblem; and Noon until Night. His other books include the memoirs Half the House and Love & Fury, and the story collection Interference and Other Stories.
December 2021
As we move towards the longest night of the year, the growing darkness of the approaching solstice tinges our memories of spring’s promise, of summer’s warmth, of autumn’s color with a singular sadness. Eventually, of course, winter’s delights will charm us as they always do; but for now, let us simply face this natural sense of loss, with the wise master, Gerard Manley Hopkins, as our companion.
Spring and Fall
To a Young Child
By Gerard Manley Hopkins
Margaret, are you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, líke the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's spríngs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
(Public Domain)
Gerard Manley Hopkins(1844-1889) largely eschewed publication during his lifetime. However, his posthumously-published poetry established the Jesuit priest as one of the most important and influential poets of the Victorian era. W.H. Auden and Dylan Thomas each counted Hopkins as an influence.
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/
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.”