Wednesday Winter Poets Meeting Again

Here they were last February.  Isn't it worth a thousand words?  2:30 p.m., Barton Public Library, Wednesdays

Dolores Chamberlain's poem, My Maple Tree

Dolores at a poetry reading by Charles Simic,
summer of 2018, the Old Stone House in
Brownington, Vermont.  [photo credit, Sylvia Manning]

MY MAPLE TREE

Your branches all around,

Green leaves clinging, still abound.

I left that morning -- you were there.

Your lofty branches filled the air.

When I returned, all I could see

Were piles of what you used to be.

I was saddened to the core;

My maple tree lived there no more.

A trunk, dismembered, stood in place

Where once you were, now empty space.

Six decades you grew and proudly stood.

Gone is your shade, and it was good.

The squirrels around your trunk gave chase.

How fast they moved!  Was it a race?

Birds sang softly high above:

The goldfinch, robins, mourning dove.

How I will miss you, lovely tree.

You really meant so much to me.

I won't forget you, maple tree,

For you live on in memory.

Maple tree across the street from our Barton Public Library where Wednesday Poets meet
at 2:30 p.m., Wednesday, for the second year of winter meetings.

Dolores' poem was published in the Orleans County Chronicle
and the Green Mountain Trading Post

For Friend Stephen, Bibliophile

Below is Sylvia Manning's prose poem for Stephen Hickey as published in the October, 2019 issue of Waterways:  Poetry in the Mainstream (NYC, Ten Penny Press)

For Friend Stephen, Bibliophile                                     

Stephen Hickey, a Wednesday Poet
and all-time, any-time bibliophile

Years ago when asked if he had a plan for what might happen to his collection, thousands of books, 65 years of his collecting them, some printed before wood pulp, books worthy of opening but handsome inside and out, he said it was his worst nightmare, not knowing.

His house has two stories, two apartments, both used mostly by these nonpaying guests – bound to his largesse for their continued existence.  Many were bought for pennies at village church rummage sales or library weed lots -- to make shelf space for mass market shiny covers -- however costly they once had been.

Someone tells him there’s a city that brags of its new library that hasn’t a single book.  He’s not surprised.  He himself has discovered online books even he doesn’t have; he reads from paper less. But if someone mentions a title he thinks they’d like to read (or even just hold), he goes right to it.

They’ve been his family and friends almost all his life, and he accepts now that they may not survive him.  They’ll hopefully become soil after they’re thrown to darkness too deep for any reader, wood pulp and pure rag, paperback and cloth. 

Recently he said he doesn’t have many nightmares anymore.

from Sylvia Manning, Couplets for 2 black men killed by police ....

Sylvia Manning on left with Creekside Poets in Seguin, Texas,
a town between Austin and San Antonio, where she winters.

Sylvia says that this poem came back rejected.  One or two in the group told her to put it on this blog, even though it's not brand new.   In her mind it met the sense of a poem we'd been given as prompt.

Couplets for 2 black men killed
by police in Texas, February, 2016:
Antronie Scott and David Joseph

For these two killed last week

in nearby cities, do we seek

justice?

But how is that done

when each of us has one

life

and only one? How then

does any justice serve? And when

will those who should be here

to save such lives be given clear

demand to stop the killing

of young black men, spilling

especially

their blood and lives needlessly

onto our city streets, heedlessly?

(Forgive these weak and rhyming lines,

but how indeed the sacrifice of lives

dear to us?)

                                                                         Sylvia Manning

                                                                         Seguin TX, 2016

Jean Morris shares her poem, A true.

Jeany read her poem at St. Johnsbury Athenaeum

A true

A true test of a stone, then, is if it feels good

            in both hands; twice enclosed.

            This and no other.

A true test of a beach, then, is what toys it shows you.

            Golden red plastic holds you, on both wrists.

            This color and no other.

A true test of a sea, then, is the song you hear.

            A wind of golden red stone;

            white wrists; enclosed hands.

A test to be true is here.

                                         

     

NEW PICTURE FOR OUR PROFILE

Barton Public Library table by the window, July 2019

by Judith Janoo

Edge of the Gorge        
           Man is by nature a political animal —Aristotle

Judith at Barton Public Library, 2018

Canyons between us we can’t understand.                                         

Tell me stranger at this political divide,

what thresholds you failed to cross,

what you lost, that there’s more

than nothing between us.

Freedom of thought, soft as Lambs-ear,

cashmere, fragrant as thyme-walked

ground. Somewhere between love & hate,

atheist & saint. Even Tolstoy wrote first of war.

Peace falls like spring rain, an eagle feather.

Tell me neighbor of thresholds you failed

to cross, what you lost, that there’s more

than nothing between us.

“Can you divide this apple into three halves?”

your daughter asked, feeding other hungry mouths

as she opened hers. Division as portioning.

Peace drops like a whisper between prairie warbler

and lark bunting, one feeder, tern and gull, one shore,

low tide and high. Over mountains, plains, drop

all your thoughts, friend, until edges give way, tell me

of thresholds you failed to cross, what you lost,

that there’s more than nothing between us. I’m wary

watching the broad-winged hawk circle, dive & rise.

Let stones shake from the ground up.

I want to feel the lift of your breath

on my cheek as you speak.

                                  ~  Judith Janoo