Marie Ponsot, poet, translator, teacher, stroke survivor, nonagenarian writer of acclaim who wrote for twenty-five years in obscurity, single mother of seven (six of them boys!), lifelong Catholic, writer of my all-time favorite poem “Among Women” and co-author of one of my all-time favorite childhood books, The Golden Book of Fairy Tales, died a few […]
MoreA two-poem salute to fathers on this Father’s Day 2019. With poems as wonderful as these, that’s as good as twenty-one guns. This excerpt from Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” belongs in the wild, in air cleaned fresh by summer rain. But with no countryside excursion possible, I taped the poem to the edge […]
MoreIt’s a good thing I passed by a playground before I found the cemetery I was on the hunt for. Because “Happy Mother’s Day, I see dead people” is twisted, even for a twisty elf like me. But I do see dead people this Mother’s Day—my mother who died the week before Mother’s Day […]
MoreMy eighth grade year was the Bicentennial year, and to celebrate our class put on a play. Our ever-enthusiastic music teacher Mrs. Enright put together a musical revue of U.S. history. The only part of the play I remember was singing the give-me-your-tired-your-poor portion of Emma Lazarus’ “New Colossus.” I can still sing it today, […]
MoreSometimes, the Field by Holly Wren Spaulding Sometimes I bring my hunger to the field. I sidestep the soft mounds, the ants at their labor, their back and forth with grains of sand. I wait in the milkweed and withering thistle, all of it turning and rustling in the wind. I mean […]
MoreIf I had any sense I’d be in the kitchen right now, chopping and endlessly washing mixing bowls and spatulas. Instead I’m sitting at the computer. I’ll pay for it tomorrow with panic and exhaustion, but meantime, here’s a few poems for Thanksgiving. At the grocery store I left Czeslaw Milosz’s”Encounter” in an empty […]
MoreFor My Daughter by Grace Paley I wanted to bring her a chalice or maybe a cup of love or cool water I wanted to sit beside her as she rested after the long day I wanted to adjure commend admonish saying don’t do that […]
MoreThere’s a sad nip in the air this morning, a reminder to get the rest of my summer beach posts up before they’re as out-of-date as puka shells and jellies. I count myself among the most fortunate of souls that I got to return to Maryland this summer to spend a week at the beach with […]
MoreBriefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks by Jane Kenyon I am the blossom pressed in a book, found again after two hundred years. . . . I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper…. When the young girl who starves sits down to a table she will sit beside […]
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