new poem with old things by Joanne Giannino

 

in the antique shop

there are the usual items

 

a child’s wooden desk                                                

Joanne after poetry session
 on October 9, 2024,
Barton VT Public Library

with a bench seat

attached to the front

from a one room school house

part of a set, a row

no longer needed

broken up after the town

built a brick graded school

with metal chairs

still in use

 

and over here a set of

1960’s dishware: cups, saucers

cake and dinner plates

Joanne outside another shop,
Victoria, Prince Edward Island, 2022

salad and soup bowls, maybe

that unmistakable white interior

and exterior unforgettable colors

the names of no one knows

but you know them when you see them.

 

but here on this shelf

a postcard – from somewhere

in New York, a scene, wooded

lake, a winding road

& on the other side a note:

to my dear Franny, we had

such a good time in the country

looking forward to seeing you soon

come for tea! much love,

with a faded signature

the date: 8 April 1921

 

who were they

and how did the card

come to be here

in a box from an estate sale?

the buyer took the whole lot

maybe she found the card

inside a book – meant to

mark a page

a memory to keep

to look at while the reader

read on...

 

what meaning might it have

for someone here

this lazy sunny Saturday

in Brandon Vermont –

who might buy it now –

and what to do with it –

a frame for the image –

or the note –

a bit of nostalgia – a glimpse

at the past of someone

who lived, loved, and is

now gone –

 

they say

we live on

in the memories

of those whose lives

we touch

maybe also in those

who never knew us personally

but only through a card

they now hold

in their hand.

 

– JMG, 9 ottobre 2024

Sugar Kelp, by Judith Janoo

 

Sugar Kelp

       Do not go gentle into that good night—Dylan Thomas

 

Sea garden of green lettuces, red mosses,                         

brown ribbons of sugar kelp caterpillared

just below the surface, spooling spores

 

around rope, above tiers of mussels, oysters—

the new farm, where hunger wraps as it grows,

eats poisons of land and air, while an old man’s

 

bent head gives years to a bed, his hopes

to the cove, the return of the herring

folding into flakes of skin, white powder

 

of Gold Bond a daughter applies for him,

keeping him at home, and the caregivers with

bird names, Phoebe and Robyn, who come

 

mornings to wash him as sugar kelp is washed

by the waves, as it washes what the sea has taken

into itself. All Rise, say those who escaped

 

the firing on the beaches of his war laid down

inside him, near-cleansed, near-resigned as new

fishing ground, where no hook, no catch,

 

only soothing of a daughter’s hands, until

she moves his lighter away from the oxygen tank,

and his pipe, his habit of reaching to ignite it.

 

He’s slid down to the foot of the bed, one leg dangling

the rail, blankets bunched beneath him.

“Can you push a little with your feet?” his daughter says.

 

“They don’t work anymore.”

She reminds him fishermen now farm the waters

he’s spent a lifetime minding. “Growing sugar kelp.”

 

“Seaweed,” he says. “Algae. That stuff?”

Letting go of the buoys, his dories, the ocean and its scales.

                                                                    Judith Janoo

I Met with Mars and Athena, a poem by Eve Fisher

 

Eve Fisher

I met with Mars and Athena
Just the other day
Just because the desire for justice
Leaves us bare
In a cold barren field
As if, really, as if
God has memory
To tally a score
I told them to go home
And change their names
It's late but not too late
There are those who are yearning
With visions of new growth
In a hot wasteland burning
God three folds the envelope of war
Athena stared me in my eyes
Mars looked away
But he held out his hand to me
I took it
And he pressed mine to his forehead
I felt his fever grow cold in three breaths
Athena never broke her gaze
This is how it started
She wanted me to be the first to look away
But I won't this time
And I wouldn't then
I'll go back to the beginning
Here I am
To have a story
She must have memory
And if she does
She's not a God
In the silence is something
Like a new day

Marche into March with Spring in Your Step, poem by Helette Gagnon

 

Helette Gagnon, Montreal

March, fighting back winter, litters and swamps
the terrain—“rain washes away promises.”

It helps to see green not the cold pink aura of Mars.
Large spruces sing again—birds as always hidden.

Dead of winter seems as far away as Mars. White
disappears replaced by grey-brown mud and puddles.

It came early unsure of itself bearing a sullen sun—
enough for a god to brandish his spear and condemn 

Global warming every Tuesday ‘till doomsday. Can’t
let the precious crops fail with testy weather.

This morning snow is back with a vengeance—
inch by inch suffocating the tired sprouts.

Dormant Royals won’t help us nor will dead planets
alone, having caused the eminent demise of another. 

I hear his statues hurling insults in the polluted
atmosphere—scrolls of painful mischief and bewares.

Humans blare with the flare of gods & goddesses—
torrents of guff and belligerent tantrums.

We made the list of extinct species several befores.
Darkness is coming with a fine wind of dust.

Consequence? We aspire for a spring transformed
into old springs—less flooding, while the mountains

Disgorge, the rivers surge.  In mighty skies, as in
desperation, downpours participate.

We are not going back. Futurists see red hazes over
cities—when bleakness overwhelms the earth

War is not far behind.

Steve Cahill's No Disclaimer

Steve Cahill at Whirligig in St. Johnsbury, autumn 2023
 [photo by Scott Norman Rosenthal]


NO DISCLAIMERS

One of the rules of the Barton poets is to make no disclaimers no tedious explanations, no long-winded stories of the origins of the poem, its provenance and lineage, its conception and conceits, because all of that prefacing chatter is a thinly disguised defense. Make no self deprecating little asides about form being clever Or about managing to sneak in a line that ended with forever No, let’s have none of that. Let’s just stand up and shut up and read the poem aloud. Let it stand on its own merits—use words with weight and gravitas, heavy words like Eternity and Infinity plugged in along the way so they will add substance to the poem. As for writing to a prompt—yes, yes, we have them—the one for today is ‘Eternity’ but we are not required to write about them so can go down any rabbit hole we like which makes a loosey-goosey escape clause out of the poetry business and we can write about anything we want. Or nothing. Which turns out to be the case here. You will remember that I made no disclaimers and embedded the prompt, Eternity, carefully in line three of verse three and so have more than fulfilled any obligations to the poetry group and their rules making me free to go off and write whatever the hell I please: so here’s a haiku all about eternity which lasts forever Which, if true, means that something exists that has no beginning and, for that matter, has nothing at the other end either so where did it come from? Like who made it? And why? Who holds the patent? And is there any possible way to prove that something can be endless? I thought not. So now I’m left with the task of nailing down a poem that began with no disclaimers or defense and I plan to leave it the same way because it’s a poem about finding a destination that does not exist and everything I nail down comes loose at the other end but there isn’t one.

Colleen O'Neill, her poems in our anthology, Ten Years Writing Together

 

Colleen sits between Adrien Helm at her left and Judith Janoo at her right, listening to Pete Blose.

Shape Shifter

 

This evening

you are the cricket song.

Most times you are the River

tumbling twisting 

joyously unique and flowing north

you sweep us along

I had to be 

out of town dear Camy

so I smile with crickets song

 

 

Slip on Down

 

slip on down to New Orleans town

where the sweepers sweep

and the willows weep for the sweet 

sweet scent of all-knowing magnolias’

blossom birth of the Lotus Child

with the secret smile granting

one more brand new day

for us

to laugh 

 

 

for Molly

 

My dear eldest sister

I don’t know where I am

let alone where you may be...

on the beach where we danced in the waves

and walked in the woods 

you giggled uncontrollably covering your eyes

when a nudie passed us on the path

we skipped on the shoreline by the towering bluff 

and laughed till our sides ached

awkward we were, and it was lovely...

 

Share the joy all you who know where you are

share the joy 

and offer love

in any way at any time in any place 

after all is after all   what does it matter?

endlessly it flows through every broken heart

 

 

Across the canvas of my life

  

Blue

and white in the baking heat

I have a rainbow!

It spills across the canvas 

of my life

full of light and color 

and rambunctious children

a tear trembles at the joy of it...

and falls

fading in the distance of time I barely touch it...

Smile and wave 

the artist (once wild with inspiration)

must have tired

 

 

 

for the sound not heard

 

38 years

she listened.

listened    listened wholly

for the sound not heard

below our range

the dull, flat impact    the quaking all cells resonate together 

of all sentient beings and earth

through the roots, the stones sand and boulders

sweeping across the savannah like wind

to rise through the soles of our feet,

the One Body in unison

created to perceive

this sound...

the language of elephants

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