September 2023 - Now Ripening at the Frog Pond: Crops That Feed the Soul

Basho knew it. Wordsworth knew it. Hopkins and Dickinson knew it, too. Mary Oliver definitely knew it: Poetry is nature given language. It is breath and vowels ripening on the tongue. Indeed, September presents a metaphorical harvest of poetic inspiration on the farm.

And, as this month’s poem suggests, artistic inspiration turned to very real, three-dimensional installations of metal, wood, stone, and more abound on the farm this fall, as well.

For more information about “The Stuff of Dreams” Outdoor Sculpture Exhibit 2023 (now through October 8th) featuring the artists from Artisans Asylum Boston, click here Sculpture Walk. For a pumpkin-spiced dose of poetic whimsy, simply read on…

Now Ripening at the Frog Pond: Crops That Feed the Soul

by Georgia Sassen

What is this farm

that grows sculpture, and poems?

Over here is a field of haiku;

be careful where you step,

they’re very small.

And that’s the grove of sestinas.

See how regular they are?

Over here are two orchards of sonnets.

The Petrarchan ripen first;

down there are the Shakespearean.

See how their leaves

rhyme?

We need the trellises to hold up

free verse:

it doesn’t have its own structure, you see,

but taste the sweet variety of its forms!

And down by the pond, the dam is shored up

by a modern form poetry: it’s concrete!

In the woods and by the house are the sculptures,

but I don’t know that much about those.

You could ask the sculptor.

I think she’s in the orchard, firing up the tractor.

And wander down there -

that’s the vineyard of villanelles.

Look how the first leaves and the third leaves

alternate, but at the end they come together.

Come together! Let us gather

in the kitchen of the farm house.

The list of poems

are on the refrigerator.

Georgia Sassen is a poet living in Harvard, Mass., where she is inspired to write and paint by the nature around her. She continues to practice psychotherapy, where she is inspired by the resilience of human nature. “Now Ripening at the Frog Pond: Crops That Feed the Soul” originally appeared in the chapbook, half a peck.

August 2023

Last August, bone-dry in drought, New Englanders prayed all manner of prayers for rain. Now, this summer, it is as if all petitions, a year-delayed, have been granted at once. Still, we can’t help but be grateful; the primal memory of water as life-force, thankfully, continues to flow sweetly, deeply within us all.

Memoir of a Pond Watcher

by Helen Marie Casey

Feathers among the flowers,

water cascading over the spillway,

lily pads, tangerine goldfish, reflections,

Almost hidden, milfoil - intricate

work of art - and then the daylilies,

nonchalant as Venus Ascending.

As if it could matter that no one

is watching, I kiss you right there,

the fern-riddled path conspiratorial.

Mushroom, arrow, leaf, tree roots,

a path diverging. Coral bells and astilbe

nudge me to wonder: What gods do I know?

Dried pine needles underfoot, stillness

rock-like, even the little cocoa-colored caps

the acorns wear remain petulant and stubborn.

A sculpted heron reigns, the pond’s silent

deity, and then a shadowed bench almost

beckons, You come, too. Peace abides.

Lacework meadow, cottonball clouds,

marguerites in full abandon and I,

like them, begin to dance, exultant.

Helen Marie Casey's chapbooks include Fragrance Upon His Lips, Inconsiderate Madness, Zero Degrees, You Kept Your Secrets, and Mums, the Tongue, and Paradise. She has also written My Dear Girl: The Art of Florence Hosmer and Portland's Compromise: The Colored School 1867-1872, which is now part of the Smithsonian Collections. She has won the 2005 Black River Chapbook competition, the 14th National Poet Hunt of The MacGuffin, and the Frank O'Hara Prize. Her work appears in several poetry journals, including The Laurel Review, CT Review, The Worcester Review, Paterson Literary Review, Prairie Schooner, The Comstock Review, Westchester Review, Greensboro Review, and The MacGuffin.

July 2023

July is a busy month in nature which means it is a busy month on the farm – the two intertwined and inextricably linked. In garden and orchard, the farmers till, weed, plant, and cull; while all around them, in woods and wetland, grass and sky, the non-human habitants carry on with urgent summer labors of their own.

—Terry House, Poetry Editor

Turning Light

by Mary Pinard 

What kind of underworld

weaving could they be working on

so busily? These ten gangly-necked

goslings, mottled shuttles plying

a zigzag wake in the reedy pond

as their sleek heads turn and angle,

then dip - here, there – appearing

to disappear through slits in the watery

surface, yet just as quickly they are

back up from some distant loom,

their bills draped with the thinnest

green strands that glisten, splash –

like tiny diamond stitches made

and unmade in this turning light.

Mary Pinard, a long-time plein air poetry contributor, is the author of two books of poetry: Portal (Salmon Press, 2014) and Ghost Heart (Ex Ophidia Press, 2022).  She lives in Roslindale and teaches at Babson College. 

June 2023

Another summer shimmers on the horizon. Already, the days lean long into evening and yards (and vacation plans) bloom bright. Yet, the specter of 2022’s drought and searing heat looms large in spite of our ingrained infatuation with the season. Somehow, though, we sally forth towards the solstice, our “two-part” brains now both blissful and on-guard.

Milt & Louise’s Whale Show in Dana Point

by Paul Marion

After we paid for tickets, senior discount,

A woman led us to a barn-like space on the

Harbor where a couple had been talking about

Whales, a show they could take to Las Vegas,

The tall man, Milt, a clone of old Bill Clinton,

Down to tilted head, bitten lip, precise

Pauses, and long fingers shaping the tale.

Louise, his partner, sat near, popping

Out of her seat with crucial details and

More hand language. They asked if we

Knew that whales never fully sleep and

Have a two-part brain that can’t shut down,

because half must always remember to

surface for the next precious breath.

Paul Marion is the author of the poetry collections Lockdown Letters and Union River and editor of Jack Kerouac’s early writing, Atop an Underwood. He, also, is the founder and publisher of Loom Press. Paul Marion lives in Amesbury, Mass.

May 2023

Is there a more surreal month than May, with its neon green leaves; its confetti bursts of apple blossoms; its warm, lilac-perfumed breezes; its oriole flute solo high in the canopy of a catalpa tree? “Art can make us airborne, sometimes,” observes this month’s featured poet, Mario Cardenas. Oh, friends, this month as you amble or cycle or simply sit within the dreamscape that is May in New England, breathe in this singular, cyclical beauty and let yourself soar.

Terry House, Poetry Editor

Borne Again

by Mario Cardenas

I found myself on the roof of the Casa Milá in Barcelona

Among the tan walls of Gaudi’s decorative turrets and chimneys

Following someone I knew, I entered a descending stairway

Which became a wriggling passage

Through something like a rolled up brisket of beef

(Glad, in retrospect, that a marinade of oil, lime, garlic

And Serrano pepper did not coat the sides)

After some difficulty I emerged into a vast empty room

On a grid of white tiles with black grout for a floor

It does not take a professional to analyze this dream:

Being birthed to the blank slate of life

I thought of this while riding uphill on my bike

Through the tube made by foliage from overhanging trees

In the shade from this enclosure

And my labored breathing

From the four kilometer climb back into town

One journey was coming to a beginning

While this one was simulating

The final gulps at life’s end

My kinship with these hypoxic moments is greater

Than the writhing, into uncertain surroundings, of birth

This journey through the canopy of trees

Seasoned in effort and sweat

Brings me no closer to any epiphany, or conclusion

Beyond gratitude from having another breath to take

Mario Cardenas lives in Harvard. A sound recordist for motion pictures, his creative interests extend to art, literature, music, and photography. “I started writing poems driven by the need to give expression to thoughts and feelings, to solve—even momentarily—the challenge of living through words,” he writes.

April 2023

Happy National Poetry Month! In honor of this annual celebration, I bring you two poems for double your reading pleasure.  In each, poet Jason Tandon encapsulates the quiet delight which both poetry and our New England spring engender.

Terry House, Poetry Editor

I Finally Tried It

in memory of Mary Oliver

By Jason Tandon

On a hot spring day

when midges spawn and spasm

above the raked plots of dormant grass,

I filled the feeder

with an Eastern songbird blend—

black oil sunflower, cracked corn and millet—

removed my shoes, my socks,

laid down,

wiggled my toes

and waited.

Man Paddling Canoe with Dog

by Jason Tandon

The sky so white

there is no sky.

The water,

a tarnished plate of silver.

The dog sits dutifully.

No, sits like a king

who says nothing,

who looks around

unmoved,

his golden robe

shedding.

Jason Tandon is the author of five books of poetry, including This Far North (Black Lawrence Press, 2023) and The Actual World (Black Lawrence Press, 2019). His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, North American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. He teaches in the Arts & Sciences Writing Program at Boston University. For more information, please visit  https://blacklawrencepress.com/books/this-far-north/. 

March 2023

Spring awaits.

Survival Instinct

 by Carla Schwartz

I want to walk the esker

but with each step

in snow

my feet sink deeper.

The wind—so cold

it burns my fingers.

I look to the slope

but find daunting

the prospect of snow

swallowing more of me

with each step of climb

and so, with regret

I turn, and on return

I trace the hollows

where I stepped before—

follow once more my own trail

that I might soon

be warm. 

Carla Schwartz is a poet, filmmaker, photographer, and blogger. Her poems have appeared in Amsterdam Quarterly, Fulcrum, California Quarterly, Ibbetson Street Press, Mom Egg Review, Paterson Literary Review, Smoky Quartz Anthology, Solstice, and Zingara Review, among others.

Her books include Signs of Marriage (2022), Intimacy with the Wind (2017), and Mother, One More Thing (2014).  More information about Carla and her work can be found at www.carlapoet.com. 

February 2023

Still in deep mid-winter despite the unseasonable thaws, how can our thoughts not turn towards spring, towards love? It is the month of valentines, after all…

Palm Warblers and a Yellow Rumped

            for Jim

 by Susan Edwards Richmond

Through needle shadows and branches whippling

a patchwork floor, a traveler interrupts

the pattern, plants on twig, dandelion bright, 

red stippling, cap. Tail bobs, then moves

left to right to make room for another

silhouette who preens and gleans and flickers

through.  Another another another.

Then one is black and white, a yellow

handkerchief tucked in a pocket on the sleeve

and a flash on the rump as it spirits away. 

Singly, two together then split,

then a wave, from forest floor through

mid-canopy, each a sun-washed citrine.

You are hungry, devouring insects

that alight on my arm, caterpillars

dangling on mid-air trapezes. May

breezes don’t deter you.  You are what brings

me out, my early risers, my dawn arrivers,

my sweepers, beamers, and feather dusters,

brightening the dark woods before it finds

its rooted color, before it draws deep

green shades, when the sun and all its dancers

stream through, shine through, flurry, flit, and flirt

with careless, ignorance of your royalty,

you usher in the season. 

And I am new each year because you are here.  

Susan Edwards Richmond is the award-winning author of two community science adventures for children, Bioblitz! Counting Critters and Bird Count, and the preschoolers science activity book, Science Play. She has published five collections of poetry for adults, including Before We Were Birds, and has organized more than a dozen plein air poetry events. A passionate birder and naturalist, Susan teaches preschool on a farm and wildlife sanctuary in eastern Massachusetts and earned 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.

January 2023

I savor my visits to the farm in January.  It is here that I find the crystalline beauty and Zen-like quietude that epitomizes winter in New England. Amid the piercing cold, the deep snow, and the long slog of blank days ahead, lies an unbroken trail of fresh possibilities - mystical in their potential and promise of renewal.

For Lola

by Lila Linda Terry

The orchard is asleep.

All the weetness of the berries

is driven deep in the ground,

and is alive in the frozen roots.

The warm juices are brewing even now

in the deepest of winter

under a cloak of white.

The farmer rests.

She can sleep in the morning,

and she doesn’t watch the sky,

the soil, the pickers.

A frost does not matter.

She may allow herself a winter’s nap,

a crossword puzzle,

to read the pruning book.

She sits.

The world is white.

The night is deep.

Quiet presides.

Rest begets earnest labors.

The deepness of winter,

the crystalline icy night sky

will bring forth our

summer’s rich sweetness.

An original Old Frog Pond Farm & Studio plein air poet, Lila Linda Terry has been dabbling in poetry since she was twelve. She lives in Cambridge, Mass., where she has had a practice in medical massage therapy and alternative health counseling for forty years. She is a certified Sageing leader in the conscious ageing movement. Lila oversees the growth of a unique plant called the Light Root which is at different locations in New England. Light Root (Dioscorea batatas) is known for its ability to strengthen the inner light in human beings. “For Lola” was first published in the plein air chapbook, An Extravagant Canopy.

December 2022

The twelfth month of the year is a time of singular reflection. There are the plans which have gone awry, the expectations exceeded or met or dashed, the vagaries and vicissitudes of fortune. There are the joys however fleeting - the longed for rain in a summer of drought, the clean bill of health, the first smile on a beloved infant’s face. And there is hope, that most forward-facing of emotions, driving us on into the coming winter and the new year which awaits.

Birds in the Construction Zone

~~ by Lynne Viti

Seven degrees, snowdrifts

against the patio fence.

The screen porch a scene from

Hans Christian Anderson—

Wicker chairs outlined in snow,

The cat’s cardboard scratching pad ruined.

We moved here in May,

A hot spring became a blistering summer

We saw no birds—

Instead of birdsong

We heard the roar of heavy machinery

Up and down the dusty road.

The hydrangeas drooped by midafternoon,

Deer tongue lettuce in our raised bed wilted.

The noise of hammering twelve hours a day,

The loud flapping of Tyvek all night long—

No wonder the birds stayed away.

The earth movers, the compressors

Exiled all winged creatures except the pollinators.

In the fall, when seed heads

Were ready for the birds to feast on

An overzealous landscape crew

Cut back every spent bee balm

Cosmos marigold stonecrop

Leaving little for finches and sparrows.

Our slender garden, devoid of low shrubs

The patio too much like a wide city sidewalk—

Gave no shelter.

But today our luck turned.

Two juncos at the feeder,

Three more on the cedar fence,

And later, sparrows on the ground

Found something to eat in the snow.

Nothing to complain about—

The birds have arrived.

Lynne Viti‘s most recent poetry collection is The Walk to Cefalù (Cornerstone Press, 2022). 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 contributed poems to several Plein Air Poetry projects including Path Tracks Trails, Speaking of Sculpture, Refuge and Emergence.

November 2022

The season of gathering is upon us. Amid the cooking, the congregating, and the gratitude - some of which, let’s face it, can feel performative or forced - let us remember this November to pause and savor our memories of the season so recently passed and to honor the “good harbor” which the natural world offers us all, all year round.

Good Harbor

 by Mary Bonina

Sun too optimistic for Fall,

when vines at the arbor release

their perfume, the ready grapes,

bursting for harvest, waiting

for pies, sorbet,

or for the birds to eat them up.

On the beach, a sporty breeze

jets a spritz of scent: sea roses, pine.

The roses all fuchsia,

twitch: bees troubling them.

Scrub grass where terns nested,

gone from upright stalks

like hay, now downed and twisted

into golden threads, the sign still

there, warning “Stay Off!”

Boardwalk dry and sandy:

no more drippy swimmers.

At sunset, a shift.

White gull feathers go to pink

and off shore the light

paves a silvery path.

Air and water turn chilly then.

The roses dim, but eager bees

still fluff their warren of petals,

make those roses go wild.

Too fast, it’s twilight.

Mary Bonina lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is the author of two poetry collections: Clear Eye Tea and Living Proof. She is also the author of the chapbook, Lunch in Chinatown, and the memoir, My Father's Eyes. She has been a fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, where in 2002, she was named finalist for the Goldfarb Family Fellowship, and has since had several residencies, including one at the Center's retreat, Moulin a Nef, in Auvillar, France. Her work has appeared in Salamander, Hanging Loose, Poets and Writers, the Worcester Review, and many other journals. Poems are forthcoming in The Lowell Review and Mom Egg. Her completed novel, My Way Home, is in search of a publisher.

October 2022

The autumnal equinox has come and gone; and last week the heavens opened at long last - a harbinger, we hope, for this spanking new October. Water, the true elixir of life, alters us all - from the parched pond to fall’s un-greening leaves. May it continue to flow.

Pond Alchemy

by Linda Hoffman

sheets of angled rain

pierce the pond

water meets water

lily pads

host their guests

a frog and beads of water

attentive to water

a blue heron

waits —

the wise say,

‘the way of water

is to flow’

a black cormorant

grasps a snag

winging water droplets

tree swallows

pluck insects

splash of water

the wise teach,

‘water never

harms water’

weaving threads

of iridescent water

dragonflies hover.

Linda Hoffman’s artwork includes bronze sculpture, outdoor installations, watercolors, and digital prints. She is the fruit grower at Old Frog Pond Farm and the author of the memoir, The Artist and the Orchard, from Loom Press.