CERTIFIED ORGANIC SINCE 2006
Poem Of The Month is a monthly poem blog curated by naturalist and poet Susan Edwards Richmond. Each nature-themed poem abides by the Farm's philosophy.
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.
Read MoreLast 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 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.
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.
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.
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/.
Spring awaits.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
