The Garden of Verse: Three 'Occasional' Poems in November's Verse-Virtual

           In the November issue of Verse-Virtual, the online poetry journal, up this week at http://www.verse-virtual.com/poems-and-articles.html
I have three new poems that, one way or another, may fit the definition of "occasional" poetry. 
          Generally the term is used for poems written to celebrate, or  mark, a major occasion. A wedding, birth, death, graduation, anniversary. The inauguration of a President. The observation of a milestone remembrance -- 50 years after the end of Second World War (though now we've closing in on 75). The hundredth anniversary of the famous Armistice that ended World War I.
           The town of Plymouth, Mass. is planning elaborate observances for the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the Pilgrims in a new land and their establishment of a colony that helped create the new nation we who call ourselves 'Americans' are all part of.... as uncomfortable as that 'all' sometimes is. 
            The 'occasions' that provoked my poems are rather different. 
            The first, titled "The World According to Anne's Knee," is prompted by the (temporary, I'm really quite sure) changes in our lives brought about by my wife Anne's 'minor' knee surgery. 
It includes these lines:

Look, knee, I'm not kidding
the time for tricking up is at an end
before the pain you've put us through
sends the whole joint 'round the bend

         The second poem is a lamentation of a very lamentable event: the confirmation of critically flawed character to one of the country's most important leadership positions, Supreme Court Justice. 'Justice' has nothing to do with this appointment.
         The poem is a rant. You can read it at: 

http://www.verse-virtual.com/robert-knox-2018-november.html

          The final poem is a wider look at a piece of history that marks important and also completely ordinary events in the life of some members of my family, namely my mother [pictured in photo above] and her older sister, my Aunt Muriel. It's titled "Bowing to the Ancestors" and commemorates the occasions documented in "Muriel's Photo Album," as I call it in the poem. The album is a real enough black and white record that begins in 1925 when my mother is almost five years old.
        Here's a piece of it: 


Jean, little, sitting on an overturned boat
in the sand at Long Beach
along with our mother, in black beach dress
'Guess Who' standing behind them, with favorite scarf head-wrapped and wind-swept
My lips look so big. I didn't think they were so big.
I was thin then. Alan not born until '37
Jean, still little, in clown suit and round glasses
Guess Who again, in dark beret for traveling, standing on the wharf
Eric looking straight at the camera seated in a deck chair.
He is very dignified
Another cruise.

       You can real the whole poem and -- lots more by the rest of the journal's poets -- at http://www.verse-virtual.com/poems-and-articles.html