The Garden of Verse: Magic Moments in Verse-Virtual's December 2020 Issue

Is the fraught year 2020 actually coming to end? 

A troubling year ends on a high note for the poets who contributed some of the year's best work to December issue of the online journal "Verse-Virtual," which every months publishes new work by some 50 contributors. Here are a few of the poems that offered word magic in the waning days of 2020.

Among the poems in the December issue that got deeply inside me and stayed there are two poems by Steve Klepetar. “Thin Air” speaks to the  Election Day anxiety many of us felt (I did: trying to decide whether to flee to Costa Rica), but takes us to a fantastically dark place made beautiful by its depiction. It’s hard to call out the great lines here –

“Your sister hides in the attic.

She has broken the necks 

on all her dolls.

There will be much to discuss.”—

for example; there are so many of them, and they build on one another. The

fractured dolls follow:  

“Your father has limped home late.

His briefcase has torn, his shirt 

hangs in rags. Could it be dogs 

again, or the human gang?”

It’s the ‘human gang’ that’s really scary, isn’t it?

The second poem “Reading Quantum Physics and the End of the World," 

takes us to a similar place. Though the atmosphere is rarified, the landing 

is familiar: 

“But now I have a headache and my Facebook friends/ are 

weeping. Those boots again, and now a rustling in the trees.”

I’m down with Tamara Madison’s strong poem on aging, "The Last Rain," for some of the same reasons. It addresses, beautifully, effectively, things I don’t even want to think about. So the poem sings them to our hearts: 

“Tonight when I hear the rain

slap the sidewalk as they say that it will,

I will stand in the street with my arms

outstretched and let my face go wet

and my clothes stick to my sides

because the way things are now,

this may be the last rain ever.”

 

Marilyn Taylor's poem “The Four Who Would Be Will” may well be the last, best words we will ever hear on the bizarro, upper-class-twit conspiracy theories over who ‘really’ wrote Shakespeare’s plays. The comic zingers keep coming, with the wit and agility that would have pleased the master.

 

“My Lord Francis Bacon, let’s open with you:

a scholar you were, and a scientist too;

you wrote of enlightenment, back in the day—

but nary a poem, and never a play.

It’s likely that we would be sadly mistaken

to look for a Hamlet along with our Bacon.”

 

A poem that serves Hamlet and Bacon on the same dish, the latter as a strong, stanza-clinching rhyme, deserves a bust in Westminster Abbey.

 

Michael Minassian’s poem "Dressing the Buddha” finds shadings of divinity in the street scenes of our secular existence. Even if finding Shakyamuni barefoot on the side of a road was only an “illusion,” the poem’s speaker takes him home for tea and a bowl of soup.

 

Both funny and profound, the poem winks at its metaphysical storyline, suggesting (without preaching) that we should care for someone in need because we never know when we might be driving an angel from our door.

 

The speaker gives the Buddha his favorite clothing “along with my wife’s warmest boots.” And she, arriving home, gets to the heart of the matter: “have you been meditating again?” but then embraces the same wisdom-with-humor philosophy:

 

“she ran after him and gave him her saffron

colored scarf, wrapping it gently twice

around his bare neck.”

 

That’s the bare neck we should all be seeking to save. 

 

Some poems are simply great stories, such as Sharon Waller Knutson’s poem about reliving old loves and losses, “I get an email from a former co-worker on a Montana newspaper in the mid 1960s.” The magic is in the detail: 

 

“It is two am and 44 below zero

and my 1956 Ford Thunderbird

won’t start and he has locked his keys

in his 1961 Chevy Impala. He kicks

in the window and his car chokes

and coughs but finally starts

and we slide over icy streets.”

If you haven’t done so already, you need to read the rest. 

The same is true of “Vietnam Vet,” a poem about a soldier who has

been reported dead. The story is told with spare gallows humor: 

“As the barber cuts his hair, he says:

Aren’t you that soldier on the news?”

The poignancy of these period particulars are the poetry.

These, and the many other fine poems in the December 2020 (my god, are we really at the end of this year?), are still up there for us to make a first, or subsequent, visit.

Here's the link Verse-Virtual December

  

The Garden of Verse: On the Theme of Gratitude, I'm Grateful for the December 2020 Issue of Verse-Virtual

My thanks to editor Jim Lewis for including three of my poems in the December 2020 issue of Verse-Virtual. The issue includes work by 60 poets, including strong efforts by Jefferson Carter, Steve Klepetar, Betsy Mars, Sarah White, Marilyn Taylor, Carole Stone, Barbara Crooker, Robert Wexelblatt... and so many others. 

Of my three poems in this issue, titled The Morning After the Morning After, There Will Be Consequences, and That November Feeling -- 

all written in the immediate aftermath of the Nov. 3 National Election, the one with the most impact for me is the first. "The Morning After the Morning After" refers to the changes in the outlook for the the final result in the 2 days following Election Day. When I went to bed on Election Day, the hosts on all the networks were speaking in dour tones about the strong Republican turnouts in the traditional "swing states" that would no doubt determine the result of the Presidential election. Texas and Florida, two states in which I'd had (foolish, it appears) hopes for the Democratic candidate were already in the wrong column. Others states, which had handed the Monster a victory in 2016 appeared to be following similar paths this year.... Well, you know all this. 

So on the "morning after" Election Day I was not feeling very good. Psychologically hung over. What would i do? Find another country to live in? Express my frustration with my country's affection with a veritable sick and evil nut-job by doing something stupid that I would immediately regret? Break a window somewhere?  

Happily, I began to reacquaint my paranoid brain with the pre-election prediction that the still uncounted mail-in votes were likely to run strongly Democratic. 

By that second "morning after," that trend was already well in evidence. Hence the emotional recovery in the poem that states in its first line, "I'm stepping from the ledge..." Here's the whole poem:

The Morning After the Morning After

I’m stepping back from the ledge.
The view from there is sickening,
a landscape roamed by entitled monsters
on whom we have pinned badges of honor 
for so much crapping on the landscape. 
 
Specimen days in a ravaged land:
sticks with dead flowers, stones with the faces
of people one might have known.
Today, a week from a killing freeze, 
the sun shines on the still-breathing leaves
and the compost bin keeps churning.
 
We walk the edges of a fault line
burned by the frost of a dead man’s embraces,
watching spellbound as the monster bleeds out,
but dare not yet descend
into the pit. 

To read the other poems, see Two More Poems 

To find poems by all 60 contributors to December's issue, 

see Poems and Articles 

Calendar Days: Anne and I Begin to Put Together Next Year's Calendar. Here Are Some Pages

 

Sonya in the Field: August 2020

We’ve emerged from the hills of Jug End into the paradise of the open fields 

Will butterflies appear, ex nihilo, in bursts of Super HD?

Birds sing like articulate brush-strokes from the fertile fingers of animators?

Flags fly in a sky of puffy clouds like the thoughts of heroes, doers, actors on the stage

of events: women 

Clouds pass above, like hungry souls praying for the gift of speech

 

Our daughter, a light into the future,

leads through fields of memories

All the green truth of the living world her truth now

What it means to live       this turn of the wheel

Images of Autumn: October 2020

Anne walks on a carpet of fallen leaves 

in the last days of autumn

From autumn to autumn,

from year to year,

the road leads on.

The leaves emerge in spring,

ripen in May

Hang large and languorous

in summer months.

Then turn the green blanket

of the forest to the farewell costume party of

October

Later, we find them underfoot

No need for the broom

We are walking the trail of the seasons

Each footfall landing on time 

What the Reeds See

The thing in itself. The thing in reflection.

Isn’t this what the painters have so often sought to do? Paint the light. And, as here,

the light on water. The reeds are not painting themselves. 

The water is painting them? Or the light.

Who can paint on water? The light. Only the light.

Who sees by light? Us. All of us. This sentient brotherhood. Deer drinking in a stream. Mallards floating by. Fish leaping to visible rumors of winged protein

All of us children   Of light 

Fog on the Marsh

A salt marsh by the shore. Impressions of a Great Egret and a couple of Mallards on an estuarial stream called Furnace Brook, as fog swirled through an afternoon disguised as some place else.

Who painted the colors? Who wielded the brush?

Concealment blew in the from cold saltwater, an arm of the sea stretching, a few hours lingering here

Inland, a five-minute stroll to the land of Everyday, blind to the occlusions of the shore.

Will that fuzzy white egret ever be the same? Will those mallards be taken back by their friends? Or hooted off

as the by-blows of some illusion?

 

The Garden of Verse: November Poems in a Season of Uncertainty

Back before what happened at the beginning of this month -- and which of course is still happening -- the November 2020 issue of Verse-Virtual published three of my poems. My thanks to editor Jim Lewis and the issue’s guest editor Michael Minassian.

But everything feels irrelevant, doesn't it? 

In the very last days of October a surprisingly persistent snowstorm dropped five inches of wet snow on the Boston area. Forecasts for snow in October have never meant very much here in the past, so I expected the "slight dusting" we sometimes get. Probably followed by some rain. 

Instead we ended up with five inches of very wet snow, that hung on the green leaves and weighed down the heavily freighted branches. Some trees in the neighborhood lost branches.

The temperature wasn't very cold, but it took over a day for the snow to melt, and then the temperatures at night plunged below freezing. Plants died, massacred; turned gray, lost their stuff. I didn't respond fast enough. I had left most of the large houseplants outdoors; they always came indoors in November. It was too cold and snowy and wet for me to deal with them then.

I waited for the snow to melt before trying to bring them indoors. It was too late, 

I had failed them. My plants died, including some that I'd watered and cared for over decades. It was a bad sign.

I got another bad sign when my desk computer's hard drive died, after I gave in to some ridiculous anti-virus program and allowed it to shut down the computer. It would not restart. The drive was "degraded." It's been 'repaired,' and is working. But it's not the same. I don't know where things are.

And then it was election day. And four days later we're still counting. 

During these troubled days I forgot about my poems, and my poetry community. My 'garden of verse' that blooms anew each month. 

But, guess what, it's been there all along. There for me, and for anyone else to walk through, and sample, and smell the roses. 

Here's one of my three poems, written during the month of October, which feels like a long time ago. Not about politics, not about my failure to take better care of my garden. But the title is, nevertheless, fitting: "Powerless." 

Powerless

I am a refrigerator,
my accumulated coolness weeping away.
I am a kinship group of fully extended oak leaves
swaying and spinning ceaselessly
in the punctuated gusts of the new-season storm
that walks in among us
(like the uninvited guest at the neighborhood mixer
we have not, in fact, ever held)
to turn off the lights and the machines 
that keep us all ticking. 
 
I am the sound of the distant tires
huffing off to a place where things can still get done.
I am the silence of things not getting done.
I am the wind deep-breathing after a calculated pause 
as if to remind us who is lord of this condition.
I am the emptiness of the silent house,
the shadows in the room's missing corridors,
the powerlessness,
the sound of one pen writing.

To find work by more than 50 poets in the November Verse-Virtual, see

 November 2020 
          

 

  

All the flowering annu 

The Garden of the Seasons: Big World, Little Me

 

Little, Big

Too big for golden dreams, too many golden hills, 

stunning views at each new bend of the trail,

a field theory of vantage points

Too many long looks

too far above, beyond me, all so little now

 

Where are the little words to hold the big moments?

A little life: a forever mountain range sculpted by the glaciers and all those millions of years 

in which Earth dreamed itself up,

the slow grind of time 

I get as big as I can,

imagine as much, see as far an ocular nerve routed to a brain cell can manage

I can't do it, I can't cut it down to size

It's out there still, larger than life, the place and time I can only be

as anyone can,

and come up short: little me, Big World

The Garden of Verse: "Unmasked Men" and the "Justice Issue" poems

I am grateful to editor Pratibha Kelapure, who states on her 'about' page for the journal, "The Literary Nest," that "Poetry matters," for including my poem "Unmasked Men" in her excellent journal's new issue. I think poetry matters too. 

I'm grateful also for the generous comments on this poem I received from a number of readers. 

If you haven't read it, here's another chance:

 

Unmasked Men

Trust only those with masks

the unmasked are stealing your future,

or your children’s or your grandchildren’s futures

Freedom is scarce

They will take yours

and they will not share it,

or give it back

They will consume it alone, down some hole

When you meet them, years later

      -- if there is a later, if there are years --

at a highway rest stop

their children will be hungry

their faces lined with fear

The sky will explode with apologies

from the management

All boats will be leaky

Posters will warn of a man in a red hat

The leaders of the coup will be arrested

Trust no one with a camera

Truth rides a bicycle

Zip codes will be randomized in the new

     post-P.O.

Bird will fly the wrong way in winter

Ants have colonized your neighbor’s back yard

They are sending scouts, parties of militarized true believers

into yours.

 

The unmasked ones will tell you all is well

“You can see by our faces that we are honest”

When they approach for an embrace, they have their hands

in your pockets

Their eyes on your daughter

They want to know your boot size

The time to hesitate is through

You can see the future by their smiles

The executioner’s face is not always well hidden

They steal your chickens in broad daylight

They cannot agree on what year it is, or even what day

Their leaders have not approved

the new calendar

Each day is called “now”

by which is meant “never”

 

Do not trust the ones without masks

Or agree to the toss of a coin

They keep their tails on both sides

They have no masks for the best of reasons:

They have no faces

 

To see the rest of the issue here's the link The Literary Nest

 

I am grateful also to Ruben Baca, editor of Necro Magazine, for including four of my poems in the journal’s fall issue devoted to the theme of “Justice.” 

My poems, and those of the other contributors include lots of contemporary comment here. Unhappily there's lots of ‘injustice’ to go around these days. 

 

My poems are “America 2020,” “I Have Lost a Country,” “What Democracy Looks Like,” and “Last Days of the American Empire.” 

 

To see my poems and the rest of the magazine, here's the link 

Justice Issue  

The Garden of the Seasons: October Gold on Stockbridge Bowl

The Golden Bowl

Every autumn we walk down here to the place where can see 

that the world glows deeply golden

and the water's blue as blue can be.

When the sky is open wholly

and the sun sits on the hillside, glow on glow,

everything is in its place, and the place is one we know.

Every evening come the shadows, and the glow begins to fade, 

still we come again the next day

to see what autumn gold has made.  

=

October Poems: Verse-Virtual keeps turning a new page and revealing beautiful moments, like the colors of the autumn hills

My thanks to editor Jim Lewis for producing another excellent issue of Verse-Virtual, the online poetry community and monthly publication, that this month offers work by 46 poets. 

Here's what Jim has to say on how poets respond to the difficulties of a full-blown pandemic and the political chaos of our day, even as October, arguably the most inspiring of months, has begun to turn its autumn lights on us:

"Poets have always been active participants in the struggle to survive difficult times. We write to persuade. We write to denounce. We write to document. We write to challenge the wrongs that we see. What we do NOT do is throw up our hands and surrender to despair. "this is not the time to howl" is my personal poem of defiance. If yours has not been written yet, write it. Share it. Use the gift of your words to encourage everyone you can reach to stand up and be counted in this conflict."

As a contributing editor for Verse-Virtual, going on five years now, I have the fortunate opportunity to publish new work each month in the online journal. 

I have three poems, my standard quota, in the October issue. The first is my comic take (as I hope should be clear) on a trailside warning posted at Notch View, a beautiful nature preserve and one of my favorite woods-walking sites in Berkshire County,  Massachusetts.The poem plays on a misunderstanding of the sign's use of the phrase "classic style." The site managers are, of course, speaking of the trail's use by cross-country skiers.

The poem's speaker (that's me), as the poem indicates, is thinking about everything else to which the term 'classic style' might apply.  The poem begins this way:

Classical Style Only

My daughter slide-steps sideways 
down the path at Notchview Reservation,
arms akimbo, see-sawing in stately fashion
She’s ‘walking like an Egyptian,’
so the cant phrase goes,
because of course the trail sign clearly states:
“Classical Style Only”
I am trying to imagine a fashionable Athenian 
or Augustan way of proceeding
while lacking a toga, or a tunic,
or whatever cloaked sublimely homely Socrates
when he paced up and down the Agora
directing flights of reasoned disputation
to mind-unfogging peepholes into the ‘World of Forms,’

... 

The second poem "October Rain" attempts to describe some

of the characteristics of its subject, and, I hope, needs 

no further explanation. 

The final poem is an attempt to put into words the feelings

produced by an instrumental song entitled "As Times 

Change" by Kathryn Toyama that I find almost 

(but not quite) inexpressibly moving. 

It's at least my third try at offering a

written response to this piece of music, which 

(of course) does not require one. 

Please take a look. The poems can be found 

at Verse-Virtual Oct. 2020