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| The Northeast Kingdom Wednesday Poets meet at the Barton Public Library May through October. |
the dean of my department
asked me why I would write poetry?
The audience will be so small,
she said.
she said.
I didn’t deny her claim.
I also didn't know what to say to her assertion.
I kept writing, but short stories which,
I wasn’t really any good at writing.
I also didn't know what to say to her assertion.
I kept writing, but short stories which,
I wasn’t really any good at writing.
When I got back to painting
(I had been in art school after all:-)),
I expressed some deep longings of heart and soul
through journey drawings
in pastel, craypas and oil stick!
Their stories led me back to church.
Not the Catholic church of my childhood
but the Unitarian Universalist - a Protest faith!
Different but similar:
a community of companions
traveling together
remembering the lessons
we learned in kindergarten:
hold hands as you cross busy streets
and sometimes dangerous roads,
as you bound up joyful hills
and crawl the low valleys.
(I had been in art school after all:-)),
I expressed some deep longings of heart and soul
through journey drawings
in pastel, craypas and oil stick!
Their stories led me back to church.
Not the Catholic church of my childhood
but the Unitarian Universalist - a Protest faith!
Different but similar:
a community of companions
traveling together
remembering the lessons
we learned in kindergarten:
hold hands as you cross busy streets
and sometimes dangerous roads,
as you bound up joyful hills
and crawl the low valleys.
Eventually I discovered ministry
which led me back to writing
not poetry but
songs, curricula, prayers,
sermons, eulogies, blessings
and even prophetic invocations
(Once at the Malden Chamber of Commerce
sponsored City Candidates Forum
I reminded the 7 a.m. breakfast crowd
a chaplain to the U.S. Senate looks out at the senators,
and prays not for them, but for the country!)
A small audience no doubt
but capable of unfathomable reach
in ripples and on air currents
altered by pebbles and butterfly wings
we cannot know how
to save the world. (the world will be saved
other than one encounter at a time...)
which led me back to writing
not poetry but
songs, curricula, prayers,
sermons, eulogies, blessings
and even prophetic invocations
(Once at the Malden Chamber of Commerce
sponsored City Candidates Forum
I reminded the 7 a.m. breakfast crowd
a chaplain to the U.S. Senate looks out at the senators,
and prays not for them, but for the country!)
A small audience no doubt
but capable of unfathomable reach
in ripples and on air currents
altered by pebbles and butterfly wings
we cannot know how
to save the world. (the world will be saved
other than one encounter at a time...)
These days I am happy
to reach across an aisle to share
a smile, a hug;
to pass the peace with the people
who call a sanctuary their spirit’s home;
who practice loving one another
then love others we meet in the soup kitchen,
at the march for black lives,
in the prayer warriors meeting.
to reach across an aisle to share
a smile, a hug;
to pass the peace with the people
who call a sanctuary their spirit’s home;
who practice loving one another
then love others we meet in the soup kitchen,
at the march for black lives,
in the prayer warriors meeting.
In the Barton Wednesday Poets group,
I practice the craft that I began
with my nine year old hands
when I wrote my first poem about fog.
It rhymed!
I pay close attention while Sylvia and Adrienne
encourage eighteen disparate creatives
(Jeannie who speaks the word warm
with a roundness that only a native Vermonter can
and creates comfort with her voice and her eyes)
(Mark who truly saves lives as an EMT
...
to render our tender righteous hearts
into free form, pantoum, or rhyming couplets;
to carve out
a poem that one of us will submit
eleven times until it wins first place
in that distinguished journal out of Pennsylvania,
or another poem that astonishes
our sixty year old peer
who dares call herself a poet
as she becomes runner up
in the St. Johnsbury winter slam!
I practice the craft that I began
with my nine year old hands
when I wrote my first poem about fog.
It rhymed!
I pay close attention while Sylvia and Adrienne
encourage eighteen disparate creatives
(Jeannie who speaks the word warm
with a roundness that only a native Vermonter can
and creates comfort with her voice and her eyes)
(Mark who truly saves lives as an EMT
...
to render our tender righteous hearts
into free form, pantoum, or rhyming couplets;
to carve out
a poem that one of us will submit
eleven times until it wins first place
in that distinguished journal out of Pennsylvania,
or another poem that astonishes
our sixty year old peer
who dares call herself a poet
as she becomes runner up
in the St. Johnsbury winter slam!
How big is the audience?
Anywhere from one
- the poet herself -
to an unknown many.
Anywhere from one
- the poet herself -
to an unknown many.
What matters,
I think now,
is that we wrote what we needed to say.
And in the writing we came alive
even to ourselves.
I think now,
is that we wrote what we needed to say.
And in the writing we came alive
even to ourselves.
Did that make an impact?
Oh yeah!
Oh yeah!
