Invitation, a poem by Joanne Giannino

 

Invitation

“At the turning of the year...”  Ann Hills
                                                (https://annehills.com/2014/03/at-the-turning-of-the-year/)

 

Let’s decide to gather blessings to fill a basket with gratitude

Joanne

for all the gifts of the past year

though it might be easier to lament, replay mistakes,

suffer our own fool (there are other hours for that).

Instead, this day before winter solstice

let’s bring to mind and heart gifts & surprises

some of yours, some of mine

like learning twice – in a cookbook and a song

(with thanks to the cook and the singer)

that there are really six seasons in Vermont

winter, spring, summer, autumn,

and of course, mud.

But new to me, the season of the sticks –

that often grey in between time

when the golden leaves then curled and brown

fall to litter the floor of forest and yard

and the deep snow days

when the evergreens are heavy with wet, white inches of flakes

(how do they weigh so much?)

and the younger hard woods bend under the weight

Like in a dance, with a bow to one another

Did you know there is a name for the lean in between

when the trees in silhouette, naked

allow our eyes to peer through the woods

to see what is often hidden?

A seasonal view of the lake or pond

that the realtor guaranteed was there

but we never really knew ‘til now.

The tiny winter birds flitting from branch to branch

until they land just here outside our window

at the feeder bursting with newly poured seed –

the squirrels haven’t found it yet!

The fields and yards of late-in-the-year

green and brown grasses

and flowerless perennial stalks

taking a breath, enjoying a rest

from the work of spring and summer

at ease, turning inward

like the bears, for a long sleep –

there are other gifts from earlier this year

but for now, let’s rest here too

in whatever gifts and surprises have come our way

in this knowing, in the season of the sticks

for this moment, the day before the longest night

with a basket of gratitude

and a harvest of new knowing.

 – 20.12.23 JMG, Vermont

poem by Ellen Mass, The Old City

  

The Old City: from 1968- 2023

                                                            by Ellen Mass

The donkey clik claks on Middle Eastern cobblestone

carrying workman’s tools, belongings

down spice-filled passages.  I meander until lost

among an ancient culture divided from

my semitic humanity, here in old city of Jerusalem

I once knew well,

in route to my  Arab Armenian family who welcomed me with

Mediterranean mint dishes, in closeness with suppressed awareness

of centuries of west hostilities

among Aramaic speaking Jews,  Muslim Arabic language

savoring tiny stone stalls, red green and black Palestinian kafias

ambling passionate with Lover to eat pigeon and roasted bulgur -

deep within old dark dampened City walls from Roman times,

stands of fresh kill meats, bright colored souvenirs

 but eager maalik faces for dirham deals and few tourists.

Qasid secrets, a skilled Eastern haggle,

my western bargain custom shunned.

Muslims disdain this delighted face:

foreigner, Anglo-colonial --

no friend to Arab Islamists and Christians.

Explosive Israeli lid kept tight and simmering

after victory of eye-patched commander --

century’s anger held firm by soldiers till October 7,

when resounding  shock waves heard around the globe

piled rubble stories high - childrens’ cries from severed lives

before any sweet laugh could be heard.

 Life brutally mangled

 unfelt by we of daily city bustle, mindless 

 of the small child’s exact demise.

We paid to execute the innocents

 over and over, you and me

with ever greater munitions and proxy vengence.

Young naive girl,

I planted trees over the Arab villages with mom’s wish,

hiding our sins under B’nai Brith stories of magic lands.

Now safe and sound around me, I hear their wails,

see the ancient Souks while holding my Goldsmith lover

crafting my lost 24 k hair barrett - Al-abjadiyah flowing letters

shining with brilliant culture,

I visit the old city again in my dreams

awakened by powerful remorseful blasts

as Palestinian families are exterminated,

as were the Jews,

greeting their merciful Allah Akbar.

 We can remember them all in Muqawama*

                                                                                 11-8-23

*resistence

In honor of Oct. 7, 2023, poem by Barbara Hennessey-Elzohairy

 

In honor of Oct. 7, 2023

Barbara Hennessey-Elzohairy

If I could talk to You,

   If You could Listen

So Much Pain,

So much Grief,

More than we can bear

and yet we must

for there are little ones

that will not have a voice,

that never, ever have a voice.

We must speak for them for they are our legacy,

they are the life that never

got to live,

crushed upon, fired upon

dying in utero.

If I could talk to you

If you would listen

only for a moment,

thru a broken heart,

a broken arm, a broken wing.

Could you hear my words

 in the deepest part of your being?

Rage on until there is no more,

cry until there is no water for

tears,

Dissipated in a flood of remorse

never understanding, never listening

to the best of you,

the part that can only imagine

what it means to hear

the crashing of cement

all around me,

If you could hear my words

for they are your words as well,

"Please shelter me,

cover me

for I have nothing else,

but You.

 

Barbara Hennessey-Elzohairy

Another poem by Adrien Helm

 

Adrien Helm, second from left, summer 2022

September 16, 1991 – 6:45 a.m.

 

Sun warms the window glass,

The table’s butterscotch expanse,

Falling across placemats with

Indifferent grace.

 

The pitcher of milk, orange juice

Wait be-dewed. Spoons

Bowls, cereal, fruit ranked

In silence.

 

The coffee maker’s steady drip

Overwhelmed by thumping

Clumping shod feet thundering

Down the back stairs.

 

Bodies hurtle to the table

Arms jostling, hands reaching,

Sudden cacophony of hasty

Childish bickering.

 

Moments later schedules re-checked,

Packs collected, kisses delivered,

Screen door slams, the Sun resumes

It’s quiet business. 

 

            AWH @ July 12, 2023

Two responses to a prompt for rhyming couplets!

Adrien Helm

 

Salty Dog

 

She said “write some rhymed couplets,” didn’t she?

Couplets, just two brief lines, but aren’t we free

 

To lap them over spilling to the next

Like an overfull line bursting with text.

 

They won’t by result lose their couplet-ness

Just run expanding and stretching, I guess.

 

So these unruly lines are galloping --

Like a rough sea-borne shallop scalloping,

 

I have some grave doubts about this frail boat’s

Seaworthiness—will it still stay afloat

 

With only steady windy syllables

To carry it landward, sails fillable?

 

It seems right now a task too great for me,

Destined to leave me in irons at sea.

 

Sailors, take heart, I’ll soon quit this barque,

Ruing not one bit mixed metaphor’s bite!

 

              AWH@ June 27, 2023

***

Rhubarb, a true friend and free

 

Rhubarb is rhubarbe in French, soft with its final B.
Rhubarbe is rhubarb is just that, sans rivalry  

with rhubarb is rhubarbe … a rose, 
but who would dare to oppose

whatever finish you choose
in this business of rhubarb, its use.

That old Stein-line, let it loose
(or not, if she’s still a muse)

however often it’s arisen,
this of a rose and what it isn’t.

Rhubarb is sour but not bitter.
Sweeten it up, nothing’s better,

especially if you’ve no citronnier
(lemon tree, ends with the sound of long A.)

 

                                Sylvia Manning

                                06-27-23, Glover VT

Jeany Morris' poem for Poetry Town

 Poetry Town

Anne Campbell with Catamount Arts
created/came up with an idea that so pleased me,
at the outset:  Poetry Town.

So I invented an excuse to drive the 45-50 minute drive down.
Looking/shopping for rubber boots.

So there appeared in almost all shop windows
a square of paper, which I at first ignored.
Then I looked again.
In almost every shop there hung a poem!
My creative heart fluttered, not exactly leaped. 
 On this bitterly cold and blowy late afternoon,
I walked with a purpose, but slowly, eager anticipation in my steps.

Window after window, one shop had 5 or 6 papers/poems!
I became so excited, each poem promised something,
perhaps a feeling, an idea, randomly.

So I stopped at the last window.  My poem journey ended.

I recalled/remembered our writings.
And I had an epiphany:  We wrote differently, more native, somehow.
I could not be disappointed, really, with the poems
hanging there -- what an intriguing concept,
carried out with professional aplomb.

And we sit in our basement, waiting a prompt,
wiggling our papers and our feet, getting comfortable in our chairs.
We pick up a pencil, the magic begins,
and we startle ourselves with our creativity.

I hang those papers in my eyes.

 

Poems in response to lines from a poem by Jimmy Carter, March 29, 2023

This entry has some poems we heard and read, written in response to these lines by Jimmy Carter:

I learned from poetry that art

is best derived from artless things,

that mysteries might be explored

and understood by that which springs

most freely from my mind and heart.

from Itinerant Songsters Visit Our Village,  in Always a Reckoning

Jimmy Carter

                                                                                                                                

Pete Blose

The poets are the last hope.

The poets are the last hope.

When the door is slammed shut

The poets' fingers will bleed.

When the gavel cracks down hard on the bench

The poets will not sit down

And they will not stop talking.

When the stranger moans in ugly agony

The poets alone will pause

Amidst the many footsteps stiffly walking away.

Poetry is the last bastion.

Against the anguish and the loneliness

Against the algorithms of the apocalypse

Against the devils destroying our world.

When the clamorous clueless march to the cliff

The poets will cry out

With rhymes for the righteous

With couplets of compassion

With unrepentant lyrics of love.

Joanne Gianinno

Ghost in the closet

 

the closet

is locked

 

chock full

of afghans in

zippered pouches

 

shirts on

plastic hangers

 

jeans stiff from

being folded

for decades

 

the bare light

pull string

too short

to reach

 

in the dark

a pair of

leather loafers

wait for feet

that never return.

Judith Janoo

The Red Kettle—What I Learned from Poetry

 

It matters

the red kettle

 

the bell

the salvation army

 

making it

through with food

 

—only ones

says the infantryman

 

emptying his

thin pocket into

 

the red well 

Mark Creaven

SISTER MARY ROBARD’S FINAL VOWS

 

Today is the day

I become a bride of the risen Christ

I hear the bishop droning on

I know he means well,  but….

I feel nervous

“Get on with it.”

“No, don’t. I must listen.”

The novices seated next to me

smile and nod, great eye contact

with the bishop as though they

are following his every word,

“...sacrifice…..” “...holiness…..” 

“Blessed Virgin Mary….”

“...Example to the world…..”.

Am I really ready for this life?

Push those doubts away.

The devil will tempt me.

Focus.

I turn my head ever so slightly.

Out of the corner of my eye

I see my mother.

I have to be careful,

can't give any hint

I will miss her.

Are those feelings a temptation?

Giving her what she has wanted

for me all my life.

What do I want?

The devil again.

My confessor says I am

“stiff necked.”

I know I am. Why  can't that

be valuable to God?

Now the three of us prostrate ourselves.

The floor is cold and hard.

I know we practiced laying down

and getting back up.

My hands cradle my head.

My breath reflects back to me

cool from the marble floor.

The bulges of my breasts

press flat to my rib cage.

I want to shift my body a little.

I am afraid to move.

Christ suffered.  I can too,

enduring a little discomfort

in His name.

I hear the names of saints

chanted by Sister Rose.

She still sings just a little off key.

I don’t like her.

My left ankle starts to hurt.

Why isn't my father here?

My mouth is dry, no water for a while.

No  bathroom right now anyhow.

Finally the bishop stops.

The chanting stops.

The three of us swing to our feet.

Smooth.

My feet don’t tangle in the habit.

I kneel before Mother.

I read my vows off the pamphlet.

She kisses my cheek.

I feel warm.

I reach out my left hand.

I feel the coolness of the gold

as it slides over the knuckles of my finger.

There. I did it.

Here you go, Mother.

Your daughter has insured you have a place

in heaven.

I hope you are happy.

Helette Gagnon

Poetry as Beacon

 

When everything you see reveals itself

in verse

 

As story with its own future—alone—

past-present tense—special

 

Skeptic’s song on how to belong to 

this tribe

 

A world of insights—head of the class

style

 

An ocean of words slung together but

fluid

 

Exposing the earth with its deep seated

problems

 

Bits and pieces of filth in fish’s gills—

when all it wants to do is breathe

 

Wave after wave barefoot dangerous

—spill the content of life

 

See blue in every shade—wonder

if salty water cures

 

To be cured in brine—tides litter more—

try to recreate the moon

 

Every Wednesday afternoon in your

leather chair—sharing

 

Grey tunes of a moment—mostly of

peril—the time you skimmed your knee

 

The burn of sand—shells inside your

head—renew—renew

Ellen Mass

Ode to Jimmy Carter
39th US President


I grew up in Macon near Jimmy’s Plains
Truly like its name
Poor and black
No fanfare or fame
-the Georgia backwoods
from where he came

A caring man arose
from misery and strife
to guide the country to a different pose
with kindness without lies,
he brought mean spirits down to size

He toiled and lived with the ‘coloreds’

in that separated village setting
Taught and learned deeply from their hardened hands-
Its what transformed the man,
to change the country into something grand

But piles of corruption
infiltrated our would-be-saint
from governorship to president-
He was not safe; and
even at his best,
could not reach his blessed quest

Nepotism and heavy political hands
took away his will to heal our land
But after his term,
he traveled the world to understand and expand.

He vowed to heal - seeing such dismay
And bravely told the sad MidEast tale along his way,
kindling the Palestinians' saga from 1948,
Shared their story and quest-

remembering Plains, Georgia at its best
so to listen and sympathize-- And maybe, Jimmy, 

one day we'll all abide

Sylvia Manning

Some times:  justified draft of a rant with a nod to the Argument from Evil

 

Sometimes you almost all most let yourself believe be lief to accept emergence, a theory you could once intuit in-tú-it to mean surprise clarity, something like intelligently-designed epiphany.  Really.  Said to be sedative.

 

Some days are too gray even to try for the try in poetry even if it’s in there unless you’re Billy Collins calling in with his stand-up smugalug grin.  (Somewhere in all this mess his latest, already all ready late to be taken back – one is taken aback – to where it came from.)

 

Some newsome Nous Sommes Old Chum days, gruesomely glum, we’re gonna gun-ah Gun!-Ah! have news (Who knew? Who new?) an underpaid undereducated underling custodian dies beside a well-paid administrator educator and others only nine years old this time, just three this time, so that you will fear there’s no substitute for despair not in the very air we breathe in this world famous democracy this time in Tennesee you see.   Des-pair, despaired, despairing.  (It’s said to be a sin, despair, but it’s just a word made with marks -- or in the air.)

 

Or while you’re beside yourself good grief a tornado kills dozens of ordinary folk in Mississippi.  Not in Money -- one supposes, doesn’t know -- in some other towns with people out and about and without.)

 

Some days there’s no OM in some and of course there never is unless you can see it.

 

Some days – back to emergence and liefness to believe it – some 40 men detainees all but also deportees (all so-called) die from smoke inhalation after being locked out of the land of the free to be kept locked-in in another so-called Safe Country.

 

Some days it won’t work to try for the try or even the tree in poetry.

 

Some day you may have to read that Yeats was a nascent fascist.

 

Some days are even too sad for Billy Collins.  Better for a Tom Collins, if you have some gin.  But then again, better not to begin.

Adrien Helm

The Truth of Water

 

Dip a fore finger

Through the shivering

Skin stretched, from

Rim to rim.

The fragile nerves

Beneath the pad

Quake in sensory rush.

 

Or, plunge grubby fists

Under a gushing tap,

Cleansing heat,

Aerated spate,

Shimmering blanket,

Sparkling wash.

 

Skin, organ of senses

Dazzled all over

Beneath a shower’s

Needling jets,

Engulfed, ecstatic

In overload.

 

Soles bare on sand

Calluses abrade,

Then playful, foamy

Tickles the arch.

It’s too much,

You dance.

                                        

Or, dive too hot,

Cool spank, too sharp,

Bubbles erupt,

Hair streams --

Sudden reprieve,

Familial return.

                            3-29-23

poem by Joanne Giannino

 the grad student with nightmares

with thanks to the Wednesday Poets

we watched him come to realize     

That's Joanne Giannino top and center.

what he'd been reading
horror
was affecting his writing
not only
but his whole person
his waking and his sleeping
his perspective
his light, out
his gaze, down
his joy, diminished
to the point of giving up
almost
so he told us
and we listened
and he threw away the book
and he stopped watching the movie
and he turned his gaze in a new direction
his perspective shifted
his light, began to glow
like a slow kindling fire
and he woke anew
and wondering...