 I'm Mary Rose Doherty. I am the editor of the Mountain Troubadour and I am a member of the PSOV editorial board and George Longenecker who is also a member of the editorial board is here tonight serving currently as executive secretary. He can do everything. Welcome to the Poetry Society of Vermont's 75th anniversary celebration and reading. This is the fifth and final event in a series which has seen our members read across Vermont in Burlington, Bennington, Rutland and Woodstock. We extend a special thank you to the Kellogg Hubbard Library which supports and promotes literary arts programming with gusto and adult programs and outreach coordinator Michelle Singer in particular for her work in supporting poets. Where are you Michelle? There she is. Yay! heartfelt thanks for bringing poetry to a wider audience through Poem City. Also thanks to Orca Media for recording tonight's event. A few words about our gathering tonight. We feel like separate water droplets but we are also ocean. This quote from Jane Hirschfield reflects Rumi who said you are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop. We are here tonight because I reached out and connected you to libraries statewide. It was important to me that we mark our 75th anniversary in a public way. What better way than to give members a forum for their work? The creation of statewide hubs through this reading series was not entirely my idea but that of Ann Day, longtime board member and our longest member who joined PSOV in 1958, just 11 years after PSOV was founded. When I first joined the Executive Council as Troubadour editor four years ago, I spent some time getting to know the rest of the board through a phone call to each. I learned it was Ann's desire to cast seeds and foster the kind of personal touch she experienced in her early days as a PSOV member through friendships seated at our regular workshops. I saw the importance of Ann's vision and gave it legs. While we encourage you to participate in all of our events, we wanted to find other ways to help you deepen your poetry friendships in your own backyard. Thus the hubs. We're hoping PSOV poets will use this opportunity to grow connections with each other. Remembering we are both droplets and ocean. Take out your phones tonight and record contact info of people with whom you want to continue conversations. As members we are droplets and ocean too. We ask you to consider how you can strengthen PSOV. Each of us has the option of giving our time or money. You may have received or soon will receive a request to support PSOV financially. We know you'll respond as you are able. We also ask you to consider how you might give your time to support PSOV. Right now there are formal roles such as the need for a treasurer and a contest chair that we seek to fill. Please reach out to George Swanganekker who's a past president and current executive secretary or to me if you're interested. There may be informal ways that you want to give your time to. Bring your ideas. The members of the executive council are Bianca Sonelli, Carol Milcune, Nate Ingham Prist Bilack, Andrea Kravici Kramer, George and myself. What do you imagine PSOV might be? We want to hear from you about your wishes for PSOV. Please reach out tonight or email any one of us with your thoughts. And now our program. So our first reader, we had somebody who is number one not coming tonight. So Robin, you are our first reader. And should I read the list so you remember who's before you? Would that help? Okay, so we've got Robin Joy, Cindy Hill. Just remember the next person in the line. Cindy Hill followed by George Langanekker, followed by Linda Quinlan, followed by Buffy Akkash. Akkash, thank you. Followed by Scutter Parker, followed by Carol Johnson Collins, followed by Christine Corman and punctuated by Mary Rose Doherty. So our first reader is Robin Joy. Robin Joy's chapbook, Tumbling Through, was published by Budget Press in 2022 and her work has been or will be featured in the 2022 and forthcoming 2023 Mountain Troubadour. Her poems tell personal stories in the context of nature, addiction, sexual identity, trauma, and chronic and mental illness. She's the founder of Rabbit and Wolf, which currently hosts a monthly poetry reading series at the front in Montpelier. She resides in Montpelier with her husband Lloyd and Thomas, their genius cat. And she is our newest member of the editorial board. Welcome, Linda. I mean, sorry, Robin. I'm going to start with Dream House, which is in the upcoming Mountain Troubadour. Dream House. Build me a house by a river, a lake, the ocean in the morning fog, I will ask the water and the animals to hold my grieving whispers so I can float into the day. Build me a house where I have space to cry until I'm screaming and breaking without interruption, a soft bed for when it's over. Build me a house in the rain so I can be productive and in the sun so I can breathe it in. Build me a house with secret doors to secret tunnels, but not small ones because I need room to think. Build me a house where there's magic, bowls of water and flowers taking in moon rays to pour over our bodies when they are dirty. Build me a house so when I step out the back door, my bare feet sink into the earth and meet my roots. Build me a house in the past so I can tell myself it doesn't get better but it gets easier to not be okay. Build me a house in the sky so I can look down when I'm sleeping and take photos of my dreams. Build me a house in the mouths of deities so I can feel what it feels like to be holy. This one's called when I'm hungry. Try to keep my voice going. My thighs hang inward after I've starved them and I still don't have the gap. Some are too powerful to flatten like the tire of my bicycle when I was nine. When I'm hungry, the lambs are no longer born of rams and yews but live within my peas and queues until my wet mouth releases saliva in wanting like the watermelon that gets sticky then itchy as it dries down my arm in the sun in a memory I don't actually have. The table knife sinks into the moldy rind of my soft cheese abdomen when it is warm glistening with butter and honey teeth aching with sweetness sharp like a spoon to mercury. I don't think it'll help. This is called a thin slice of silence. This morning I used yarrow to extract truth from the hovering fog thick with bird voices. I ran under a murder of ravens not privy to my own telltale tail feathers signs of belonging somewhere without being common. I've been staring into the red boat of glass on my altar every day inhaling the satisfying sting of sage wanting to live there. I wish I could find religion in the flickers and smoke crawl inside to see how it works. I wish I could become a minnow in the river see the bottom where my feet might plant themselves find roots of an invasive sort where I can wander across and over always knowing where I started. I wish I could live on the edge without being in it where my belly can safely be soft and tender. When I was little it didn't occur to me that water birds had legs. They were magic floating home without struggle. Every time I see animals I cry lately because when we make eye contact I find redemption. Last night I saw a deer with caramel fur I woke up with dream sand on my fingers to fairy tale. The beans sprouted from their hands when I emerged from fluids and eggs. Growing into a stalk I was clinging to until something better emerged from my scalp and I let down my hair from the top window. But the sting of the feet digging into split ends was too much and so I grew taller with while bees buzzed out rhythms and my hips shook my legs open and what did I have to say for myself except that the one that said this one makes you small had never worked the way I wanted so was it really my fault that the rabbit lived in such an old tree and when the sky really did feel like it was falling no one believed it because my wolf had already cried so much it drowned all this empathy but the hunters only said they cut out my heart because they were hungry for a chest to pin their shame on. This is called summer 2013. My father and I didn't talk about it but we knew that I needed to hear waves every day that summer understand the tide and how the undertow could scoop up all the old crustacean houses leave behind leave some behind as a record of what happens but take the rest to be archived in deep water below where I could feel. When my toes were numb in the foam where the sand turned dark and heavy I called out to him to come see the dolphins playing. We could almost touch them it was as close as I could get to coming back to myself. Thank you. Cindy Hill where's Cindy? Cindy Hill is an environmental attorney writer and obsessed gardener living in Middlebury. She's the author of two sonnet chap books wild earth and elegy for the trees and her poetry has been widely published in literary and environmental journals. She is presently pursuing an MFA in poetry from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Welcome Cindy. Thank you so much for including me in this wonderful event it's so nice to be here. So yes I write sonnets. I'll start out with a simple one from my book wild earth standard Italian sonnet. In praise of weeds grass among the roses ox eye daisies blooming round green cabbages and corn vex the gardener's eye and arouse scorn in those who seek to order earth and sky who plant in rows sterile square and neat violets and purslane won't emerge for those who separate pathways from verge and curse the wildness springing at their feet so much depends upon the hum of bees dancing pointing soaring over the vetch from elder current vine and basswood trees to dandelion clover and sedge so let us rather sing in praise of weeds and everything that grows along the edge so this next one is a a double sonnet it's 28 lines it's just two sonnets mashed together it's also in wild earth and it recently got picked up by a new england poetry checkbook anthology i'm sorry called jim gallagher jim gallagher bought about 36 wild acres back in 1985 he was young then and the land was near his work outside among the trees he felt alive the ground rises and falls everything does like the stream cutting through rock ravine and these sky scraping stands of tall white pine he never thought those pines would ever lean until they logged next door right up to his line the wind the blow downs it's not like it was jim walks each acre every single day rain or shine sleek cold it makes no matter from here this point of land he can survey the deer down in the browse watch them scatter when a rifle fires across the clear cut his own land is posted there's the hemlocks where they bed down in deep snow the fisher cat likes to climb out on that branch and fox get in that brush where all the rabbits are every year the bear goes for those beach nuts he picks up deadwood for the cabin stove he used to pull his water from the spring then they built a manufacturing above it on the hillside cold black pipes leaking the ground beneath his boots rises and falls at night in that old oak the bard owl calls he found a fawn asleep behind that stone out in these trees jim never is alone and then elegy for the trees is a bunch of strange sonnets primarily about trees i've i've known or that played a role in my life and the first one is actually called tree of knowledge i didn't personally know the tree of knowledge but even before my time um but it is a modified terza rima sonnet it all started with talk about a tree didn't it eve did not pluck an apple but fruit of knowledge of good and evil the tree could have been doomed botanically before it had begun unless that fruit probably parthenocarpic took root because at least according to the screed there was only one ah there's the lesson humans might have avoided secession from that premier gated community had they not clutched at human centered views but had instead took times to think things through from the perspective of ecology the greatest sin was not to plant the seed and i'll read one last one hot off the uh ink ink still drying um it's a senato rinter zado which is a 13th century form it's called a reinforced sonnet there are some extra lines in it blame lupo guido not me it's called jenny hickey screen porch skullville new jersey summer 1973 and jenny hickey was my great grandmother the weegee board melts letters out across the low rattan table where our outstretched hands slow dance with the planchette like figure skaters in a spin glider springs croak rhythmic time below limp floral cushions beetles longing to get in bang against barriers unseen then fall to the white sand mosquitoes hum an incessant rain of phrases written beyond the veil from hidden condensation and heavy air to fingers held within transparent walls you believe in this communication in eternal affection pondering vague messages i find ice in the kitchen and bring us cold mint tea silver sugar bowl a long spoon you've closed your eyes lost in dream of twilight and jazz bands and harlem you were just 18 under sparkling dance for lights when he slept swept you off your feet now he's gone home and left you in this place of in between of longing behind a screen your line face forms an image of repose in love serene at your feet on scraps of paper among jumbled words strewn and thin pencil lines you have traced his promise see you soon george longenecker wanders woods i love that and roads with his wife synthia and her dog ico they live in middle sex you can find his poems online this spring in sixfold and his latest book review online in rain taxi welcome george thank you gazelle's giraffes and grizzlies cocker's poodles and muts walk on leashes in hubbard park a few run in the woods but most return to their owners when called on a porch near the park gate a cat watches disdainful of dogs dogs who are so easily controlled by humans people successfully train dogs oxen and horses domesticate cats sheep and llamas but other animals run wild a gazelle giraffe or grizzly bear could carry me through the park faster than a horse or borrow but humans like being in control we don't like animals who can outrun or eat us maybe i should pair up with a panther and watch other walkers shock and fear as i saunter down the park path with my 200 pound kitty who pauses now and then to eat a squirrel or cocker's spaniel we should realize most animals are wild like that red fox leaping through oak leaves into the woods and out of sight so i must admit i as an english teacher and writer i'm a little bit intolerant of punctuation errors missing apostrophe without it we can't possess each other or even associate though at times you told me i was too possessive can we really throw it away that forgotten punctuation mark on my keyboard while it may not seem like such a catastrophe to leave out an apostrophe without it we can't write can't and couldn't ever write contractions which are handy and were badly needed for the birth of informality but they're not essential it's in possessiveness that an apostrophe is at its best except for its one exception it hurts me when you're left out and forgotten please stay please possess me apostrophe i have souvenir cards of that one which i leave at the table with the refreshments for your reading pleasure later if i pass them out now you'll read them during the next person's poem the bold faced hyphen protest the extinction of the bold faced hyphen but once numerous hyphen is all but extinct i have seen them flying in pairs making a mad dash to safety fly fly away quickly before you too become extinct and forgotten or held captive and misused for that's the apostrophe's fate held prisoner and plurals on road signs in mis-punctuated ads mourn the apostrophe's demise solidarity save the apostrophe save the hyphen free them from their sentences now free the apostrophe now save the bold faced hyphen now into quinland won the wicked woman poetry prize for chelsea creek her book of poems reflecting on her upbringing in a blue-collar new england town she has been published in sinister wisdom the north carolina literary review and the new orleans literary review she was poet of the year in wisconsin and presently lives with her partner ann in mom piliar thank you um thanks everybody for coming out this is great um and thank the poetry society for doing it and um the first poem i want to read is i'm going to read two old ones in one new one so um this is and for people who don't know if you're younger when we were kids we had roller skates that you had to tighten with keys and you had to put the uh metal on your foot and then tighten them up so anyway there's a reference to that in here so i just want to make sure everybody knew okay popping frogs in the 50s beside the soldier's home the knotted wing the knotted rope swing pulled between our legs as our bodies swung and our toes touched the leaves below this was before the boys opened us like the names they carved on bark they gathered frogs from the pond and threw them under cars just to hear them pop us girls held each other's hands and tightened our roll skates with keys on the stoop our fathers played polka and laughed at the frog crackers as the heat exploded into twilight the porch light and shirts went on i saved as many frogs as i could but most weren't quick enough to hide in the summer grass they slipped in oil as thick as mud i sat down by the pond making mud pies listening to my mother yell about polio as if that were the only danger this is a new poem that i've been working on it's called baby sitting danie danie was my cousin and i was 14 and he was like nine so this is about him danie and i met for the last time at a fifth street bar two doors down from his mother's old pond where i ran numbers for her to the bookie joint across the street my hand reaches for him then retreats he is a tear waiting to fall on my cheek i taught him to steal at willwards he emptied his pockets and delivered his hall to all the girls he wanted to please balloons eyeliner candy lips that bled into our mose his mother was 43 when she was found dead empty pill bottles beside her no last words in an apartment above cats bagels i wanted to steal something for him to give his give him his mother's laugh the way she held a martini and a cigarette i paid for his beer and offered nothing more he legged behind me my car door opened and shut six months later he's dead beer bottles on his floor california sun on my face when i get the call a gun in his hand no suicide note a long picture of his mother on the nightstand and i was going to read um ann and i lived in new orleans for about 17 or 18 years and so this poem is called a new orleans farewell you left me an african mask left me to enter the please you cafe on lower st charles bacon grease settling on our skins were short round waitresses older than we leave work swiftly on a washed out saturday night where torus wander street excuse me where torus wander streets they shouldn't a rato chapatoulas clio past charity hospital where a broken banana tree slaps at the heat of july making not a bit of difference to anyone and i can't remember you there no money grab beads around your neck no music to sell lying in a hallway gurney stomach so bloated that tears are often here and the stifling air has no arms so i carry your ashes to the mississippi river and remember to be an outlaw to ripple through people's lives with a soft rebellious wave thank you growing up around hills and lakes in new jersey west of new york city buffy akash has been moving between small towns big cities and intentional communities for the last 30 years he has been writing poetry most of his life and came out as a queer man in 1988 he earned an mfa in playwriting for color from columbia university his poems have been published by swede cat press main street rag the north magazine and his first chap book untangling the knots was published by kelsey books in december thank you to the poetry society of vermont for giving us the space to share i have this thing about mics and i know what it is just because okay so can you hear can you hear me better this way okay so i do need to adjust this mic so it will actually work there's a piece hanging over the edge maybe that's okay i'll just hold it like this okay um so this first poem is um uh was the winner of a contest this year by the poetry society of vermont the um the the marsh what was it was the name of that um i can't remember the name of the contest that it won but um it's called the beauty before us we must fall in love with beastly things lascivious brash and pity things bend our knee in grace of circumstance braid misgivings in tales of radiance forgiveness received offenses softened surrender to expanding beauty and gendering bonds give birth belonging falling down before our calling falling down before our calling to see the beauty in all the living resting breathing brave and grieving this one is from um my chap book called untangling the knots and i have one copy i forgot to bring more copies if anyone wants to to purchase a copy this evening otherwise it's available online um it's called this one's called how to look at the stars remember how very small we are crouched on the edge of night when the home of these distant beings throws open its pearly gates for all to see the last of the sun's light a creek of the hinges opening wide wide open so wide it's hard not to resist what pulls you up and away out of yourself for i've heard we are stardust million-year-old karma and the night sky our garden in which we grow our dreams from seeds of wishes we never knew we made and look how our lives shower down from a single shooting comet whose tail disperses light in dark matters helping us grow up from where the seeds were planted like the aftermath of our great day star which calls from the earth the verdant lushness we know as home so too our home is in the stars and while tiny and wrapped in it all so large our souls we can barely keep our feet on the ground this one um this is a new poem that i'm working on and um hopefully it will be in it's part of a collection that i'm putting together about my experiences with love this is called one tennessee summer i remember the whipper wills early morning they kept saying this is life this is the way life goes i hadn't slept much my bed was still empty and i so did not want it to be my beloved bastion of domestic bliss was out later he said chasing the person he loved who was chasing the person he loved it was summer but the morning cool and the whipper wills said to stop taking this lying down so i went out barefoot to the moonlit garden insects abuzz and walked down the rows of pea blossoms smelling that bucolic feculence the manure we've laid down under the swelter of the day before and grazed on the shoots an early morning breakfast of sorts all the while the whipper wills like shamans singing this life into being with the sunlight rising the roosters arousing spirits of langer i dreamed my way back to bed and fell into sweet sleep hardic mollified and again the whipper wills this is life this is life this is life scutter parker grew up on a family farm in north danville his book safe as lightning from rootstock publishing was awarded the best poetry book of 2020 by the independent publishers of new england scutter's poetry has also appeared in sun magazine cross wins oh french the la cow last cow the last i forgot the s i knew i would the last cow review northern woodlands sky island journal and vermont life his poem the poem of the world was recently selected as a finalist in the tom howard margaret reed poetry contest so i do have copies of the book that have been lingering in the bottom drawer of a file cabinet and there my lovely assistant is holding them up they're yours for ten dollar contribution to keloch hubbard library okay you don't get a commission although you deserve me that's right no overhead on this project the first poem is called this and beyond snow and minus zero how is the sound is this i'm yelling down into this thing which seems to be going for my chest um um this and beyond snow and minus zero clamp midwinter in an iron rut the gashawk we have never seen erupts into our ordinary slate blue wings ferocious eye black talons on jaunty yellow claws severe white breast thrill of visitation from the murder god red squirrels vanish ten blue jays shriek hopping limb to limb self-righteous clerics announcing terror in the neighborhood they think they rule and this is a poem for my brother who passed away of an aneurysm you would have loved this the strawberries are greatly appreciated by a committee of 12 cedar wax wings who elegantly adorn the wire tomato cages they take turns sampling the goods paws like aristocrats celebrating after a winter of wizened crab apples and sumac an elm is thriving as its neighbors raise arms overhead twining dry branch trip tips in elm's gesture of surrender this tree has woven roots in compost pile and garden i'm content to share no porcupine for years but here's one snapping elm twigs gobbling lush leaves preoccupied as a spiky panda 30 feet above its death once we might have said though we still think it sometimes they just come for the food as though scorn was our entitlement but you would love this every creature of it we'd share the light gift of their presence knowing grief is not just a human muscle though you have thinned your throne of ground hogs and appreciated fence to guard your family share you'd welcome them as you would have old friends at the reception after the service after the river erupted in your brain after that long swollen silence wrapping brownies in a napkin slipping finger rolls into their coat pockets as helpers in the kitchen watched knowing you would approving and then um susan and ian the state um lost a lovely lovely friend and beth danon whose service was last this saturday and i wrote a version of this as a blessing at the end of the for the end of the service and it just somehow changed a little bit but it felt right to share it and sort of welcome her spirit and accept our loss again tonight sorry i want to have uh this is called blessing let's love like children fearless in their hope let it surgeon us mighty as tides in the bay of fundy and if our bloom of optimism and sense of inevitability ebb choose our human work practicing intimacy with this earth and with each other patient attentive learning vulnerable and daring willing to struggle with ourselves and be brave with our beloved let love's determination fuel compassion awaken our imagination unleash our gift for creation knowing this is what the conspiracy of the universe makes possible for us let's share riotous irreverence a hilarity for the absurdity that surrounds us laugh at the pompous ponderous pretentious self-appointed mighty expose not just the cruelty and immorality of injustice but its illusion of inevitability remembering what it has destroyed how much it continues to steal dismissing its clever excuses saying no building something better let's acknowledge the dark weight of suffering and grief that pervades even our greatest joy and triumph our hard-won confidence admitting how much we need each other the stitch of generosity the heel of forgiveness accepted let's forsake quick judgments go give dismissals learned blindnesses that stumble and bumble us into each other shrinking and cheating us all let's be astonished by life in the vastness of its being doing and inventing stunned to humility grateful for this earth our wellspring let's quit the game of bargained mercy the wasteland of grumpy entitlement let us hold each other in our hearts with porosity delight and laughter with tears and ache unashamed of grief bold in joy let our goodness become a vast shared breathing thank you carol johnson collins teaches spinning knitting crocheting felting and circular weaving in her studio in south duxbury her work has been published in the mountain troubadour and pebbles from the stream and anthology featuring the work of mad river poets and psov members carol served on the editorial board for 14 years and the year of our founding is the year of her birth happy 75th husband's birthday yesterday mine is not until mother's day but so i'll start with my husband's to honor him i think that worked pretty well scutter or whoever was you you are holding it up mad door poll number one friend you can't stretch the daylight run around the sun pull your muscles beyond their born length triple your strength or mine we can't climb Everest when we haven't even climbed the tiny hill behind our house yet you proceed to try okay that's right but i'm i make books lots of lots of different kinds of books and i'm going to read one poem from several of those little books this is called book book making i haven't i haven't figured out this microphone book making whenever i make a book the book makes me a little a little better at saying oh saying what i feel or see so this one is called family song number two and this dates way back 47 years ago our two children our two sick children lying in bed with us are so glad to be close to two people who care what else matters really for a good beginning in this life than being close to two people who care about you they will grow up caring for their two who lie beside them knowing they are cared for this is dear dear Naomi this is a friend from 40 years who lost her son just in October and i wrote this poem for her about her son in 1997 when she and her son came to visit dear Naomi what a burst of sunshine your broad smile hearty voice and yellow gloves bring into our wintered spirits it doesn't seem right for life to run us around the way we let it i wanted to give Madison days and days of just sliding on our snowy hills older folks say they grow up too fast it's true but there's more there's no way later to give them the time we don't give them no a tear and this was written 23 years ago it is hard not being able to talk with you much it is hard not being able to picture your life there books and magazines are one thing but your life will be different from what i see in these articles about Alaska your life will be fuller richer more wonderful than any full color poster a tear comes now as i realize we are 30 years apart and 3,000 miles away we are like the baskets in my shop like the clay pots that you have turned like my vases in our kitchen like the blank books that you make when you come back all these empty vessels we will fill with our shared spirit dreams i have one this is the last one it's called and this is a little book featuring a a dear friend who passed away about 10 years ago the poem is the poem is called in dad's strong arms i was in bed with a very high fever worried mommy called the doctor bring her in right away he said i don't remember my age what vehicle we owned being carried to the car or the car ride to the doctor's office i remember the way my father's long strong arms gathered the blanket that wrapped me up cradled all of me and the weightlessness as we flew toward the doctor's office the penicillin made me well in ours but the way my father carried me made me well for my whole life thanks a lot christine corman lives in warren she participates in writing groups through the joslyn library she says she's fairly new to the world of poetry though she's been reading and writing it on and off most of her life and was an english lip major in college she writes a lot of essays and fiction and nonfiction she has adult children and two grandchildren with one on the way thank you very much and i'll appreciate your patience and the one good thing about my poems is that they are short so i'll start with park boys before drugs and death took the boys who played basketball the grocery store had dirt floors the milkman delivered milk the farmer with horse drawn wagon sold vegetables on the city streets we watched the same shows at the same time coke was a fountain treat then the boys on the basketball court became the park boys they listed a drift day and night eyes closed hands feebly scratching pinprick skin neither alive or dead the zombie walked beneath the basketball rims where no ball was their numbers shrank they were shot in the fields of war or in the alleys of crime blown up in tanks or in car crashes the needle killed the rest in the sought stupor given disease and death instead uncle the screened in ports smelt of wood bathed in salted mist my uncle built rough chairs and heavy round table on which we ate our meals outside but inside with the ocean breezes cooling the hot day plates of steaming corn chicken pot pies breaded fresh breaded fried low fish fill the table my aunt's love jeweler child cans of cherry coke orange and blackberry soda wash down the feast our voices rising and falling like a breeze laughing about the day jumping off the boat swimming in the wavy bay after a day of catching fish and meeting boating friends my uncle would drink not the colorful soda but a dark bitter liquid as the plates were cleared he'd grow weepy talking about his buddies lost in the war the war to end all wars his wounds opened tear streaked his mournful face his purple heart bled for the fallen the soul breeze would call him back from the bloody war this is my last one it's called circle prayer cradling you in my arms i carried you about you watched my face i whispered stories about birds and clouds listen to the breeze it's lyrical insects buzzing wind sighing the sun's rays singing down on you later we walked hand in hand you asked me about the frogs peering from the pond the baby birds chirping in straw beds the strong trees swaying in the warm breeze hugging me in your arms you carried my heart i watched your face telling lyrical tales the sun's rays singing down on you you straightled in your arms you carry my frail body i study your face as you whisper it will be all right listen the birds and breezes are lyrical the sun's rays singing down on you my dear my dear from baby to man from baby to old woman be calm you say and hold my hand the song is forever the sun's rays singing down on you thank you our last reader tonight mary rose darty brings our poems to fruition and publication in the mountain troubadour and has turned it into a beautiful journal she teaches poets and poetry through her business lotus writing writing practice and collaborates with mindfulness practitioner bicky wenchenter to present embodied poetry community workshops which are really fun she lives in waterbury where she walks daily with her zen black lab mix Hudson who has the softest ears of any dog i've met she explores new recipes and movies with her son jacob whenever he's back in mary rose i think we might have a love triangle me you and um putson i have two things i want to say before i read one is that your submissions to the troubadour are due by the end of day Wednesday February 1st please be sure to renew your membership so we can have your work accepted and i'll be looking forward to seeing everybody if you haven't already um sent in your work and the second thing is on your name tags there's a little number and we're going to have door prizes after i read so don't go anywhere okay two poems saturday matinee it's a reward of its own kind sitting in the dark of the high school theater waiting for the story about a robot makes me quietly giddy story movie just us kids freedoms layered on freedoms the summer rains comforting and warmed in luwala's high school's auditorium built the year the stock market crashed i settled into the velvety seat look up at the screen stretching from proscenium to the high ceiling and with a whir a flickering light throws up the images of a boy and his bff tobor the great a walking talking vestige of the cold war tobor which of course is robot spelled backwards looks almost goofy metallic clap trap somewhere between knight in armor and astronaut a hungover relic who's going to save his boy i'm thrilled forward by the menacing discord which sounds like the cold war commies looming in the background later at home the music reverberates in me stirring that darkness i've sought to escape beyond this theater on this this day and this movie though a giant less friendly my father looms like tobor lashing with the belt his tongue i'm silenced after the movie behind the stage we found two staircases at the top a door that went nowhere and a little haiku tinny drops of rain pinging against metal spout joyous to soul's ears and since it's so short i think it deserves a second tinny drops of rain pinging against metal spout joyous to soul's ears thank you and