 good evening thank you for coming I'm glad that storm is coming tomorrow although I'm not glad for the people who have their performance tomorrow that's further recording and the live stream if the sound is not okay just wave your hand back there and we'll project more thanks to the wood art gallery if you make a donation of ten dollars in the donation box you may take a free book if you already have our books you're still well welcome to make a donation and it can be more than ten dollars thanks to the wood art gallery this is a great place we're glad to come here thanks to the Kellogg-Hubert library who sponsors this and organizes it every year and particularly to Michelle Singer who does a phenomenal job organizing all of these events for the 15th annual poem city on that bench back there are not only our books but programs for all the events you can also get those online at the Kellogg-Hubert library and thanks to the Poetry Society of Vermont many of our members have contributed to this event Scott Parker has been a minister is still a gardener has been a state senator a gubernatorial candidate he lost a devoted father and grandfather energy analyst and brings all of these things to his poetry so I just want to say thank you all for being here I want to especially thank my grandsons for coming and their father for bringing them and coming he's a poet of his own we're trying to get him out more into the public but he's just had a chapbook published and it's just so much fun this is what the poetry is for is nights like this and a chance to do this so I have a couple of introductions the first one is you may wonder who that guy sitting behind the piano is although you may not you may know already it's Jim Thompson who's the Renaissance man of my so I did you know I didn't I don't want to do a long introduction but he's known as piano Jim how many people of here have heard him in various forums yep that's what I thought when I was a minister and we both worked together at camp we a coey in Northfield so there what your kids went there okay well that that's part of it but he's also a singer a songwriter gifted musician he called us after he read the poems that we were going to read and he was going to accompany them and he said well I think I'll bring the guitar and the harmonica as well so that just shows you his range he's a creator of a musical called halfway house how many people have seen that there you go halfway there halfway there and and then I find out he's a gifted artist you paint kind kites and like large objects and things like that right mostly kites okay so if you want a special kite with a you did one with a tiger I believe that was phenomenal and he's an actor how many people saw him as lurch in the Adams family he totally stole the the whole show as lurch could you know we're not going to let you do that well yeah sure yeah well I got and George long and echo I won't I won't take as long for him he's another institution in central Vermont he taught for years at Vermont Technical College where he was the professor a professor in the chair of the Department of English Humanities and Social Sciences he's been a leader in poetry in this area for years he has a volume called Star Root it's been published widely and he's an in he's a supports everyone in the life and work of poetry so thank you for all that you do for that and for poem city as well so now am I supposed to read something I think you are okay so we're gonna read in you know about a 12 15 minute chunk and then George will read and Jim is gonna do what he's gonna do okay we don't we don't know for sure the first poem is called in the air to Sanibel and I'm reading about community but the reality is George's poems as I listened to them the other day in our rehearsal were about artwork or photographs but they're all about community too right pretty much so this is called in the air to Sanibel the plane is full again we've let them pack our restless bodies in a sleek silver cigar a brief anonymous intimacy we exchange for quick and far every seat holds purposes and hopes perhaps regret like any walk down any street but we are close as frogs eggs breathing each other's air treading each other's feet without a word of course brief reminders of peril shared turbulence image of a lost wing terror at the delicate trick that holds us in the air the daughter of the couple behind us screams as we ascend the mother soothes calmly singing itzy bitzy spider and the wheels on the bus the father silent at first joins in their voices blend kindness gathers allies that quick impulse to annoyance seems absurd the child quiets as the song continues most of us whispering the words you can do that at the end this is one I was a minister for about 20 years in East St. John'sbury and Lower Waterford and this is the old home day parade I remember it with some joy and a great deal of anxiety I think I was always I was always performing in a sense at the old home day parade but I remember it more and more fondly over the years this is the old home day parade late in the time of dying Elms down by Rod's Exxon station where the parade always forms next to the yard of the recently abandoned school four horses scuff the highway with iron shoes 60 years ago right here the ruts of May were worn down to July's dust Elwin's hands are full of reins the horses spooked by tractors the tailor boy on his crepe paper bike the town band practicing 18 wheelers grumbling and belching behind the sheriff's car this year the theme is East Village yesterday and today same theme as last year and the year before though it never seems they will enough participants and watchers show up to make it all worthwhile there are as always floats depicting the history of the town committees have been arguing all week about the way things were improvising outfits all morning up the road on a scrap of lawn that hasn't yet slipped down to the river next to the pole where Pat Bradley used to raise the flag each morning Ralph Chaffes senior sits in an aluminum folding chair the cold of 90 Vermont Winders hides in his Afghan covered knees his hands are heavy on his lap Helen is in the nursing home this year across the road on the church lawn Irene Stanton worries out loud to Anne Smith the parade is late again like always she's glad this time she doesn't have to be a judge last year in order to include everyone they invented more categories than there were contestants next year she'll sell her home to one of the Eley kids and pack a few belongings into a single room in town the parade begins crowded into a quarter mile of route to with the ghosts of all the earlier parades and all that will follow the horses first the rubber-tired wagon so no one will get hurt if elwin loses control tartle bounty follows grinning at everyone squawking a horn of his black model A which doesn't help at all they creep past the bridge where route to used to cross the river to the mill past the granite blocks of the mills foundation guarding the opposite bank plus the clay pipe choked with knot weeds through which a few homes still contribute directly to the river the Taylor boy as usual can't stay in line racing past Joyce to wit and the ladies kitchen band we weaving in and out among the Ellis children dressed as the four seasons in East Village crepe paper tattering in his wheels he has overcome with the present it is all he can feel there is no stopping Ralph's friend Mac Ford who died four years ago sits beside him there are corners of ground all over the town that he hate by hand side and a wooden break that now grow up to burdock and willow all those places belong to him now they don't belong to anyone the barn he stored the summers in has finally crumbled back into the hillside Roland Parento on the old John dear 50 drives equipment up and down this road all summer watches the people watching the parade he wonders if he will have a stroke the way his father did and not be able to keep farming maybe in 20 years there'll be a float about the last farm in East Village the church service posed on the hay wagon he's pulling doesn't look like any that Irene can remember but it's good to see the young people who quit church so promptly after Sunday school make an effort the parade has streamed into the Parento's hayfield those who have come back for the day walk over to Irene her greeting means their visit is official she's the one who does the work of recognizing and remembering she sees them and knows them at once like the print of an old dress Alaska Ohio the next town over they each bring their private past they all want to be missed and then there are those things you wake up at night thinking how did I ever do that this is called talent show this is down in the church basement she played trumpet at the talent show in the church basement badly with enormous enthusiasm we snickered with almost no restraint at the music and her enormous heaving eighth grade breasts fragments like this come flying at me like deadly pieces of space litter still in orbit after all these years and here I am in the small safety capsule of my delicate identity frozen in time she may be a grandmother by now we might recognize each other in the checkout line at Shaw's she'd ask in her husky voice about my sister and brothers I tell them the usual something perhaps I could wait for her to go through the line walk with her to the parking lot ask her about her life and listen I've learned to do that I suspect she'd forgive easily if I had the courage to ask or she might barely remember for her it was just another bunch of stupid boys acting like they did probably much worse happened yet here she is listening to an old man explain what she's so long understood this is called barn swallows and this is here millennia before the barns they're named for they promptly claimed the beams and rafters and perpetual refuge of sun-stippled dusk moats drifting weightless through light shafts between boards fields torn from forests had exploded into daisies summer grasses black-eyed Susan's asters sprawling purple vetch and teeming webs of creatures there for lightning capture on the wing they dove through openings one a fist-sized outline of a barn cut out for them to nests pasted on hand-hewn wood each summer haymows stacked tight with fragrant bales inched toward their open mouths urgency wider than their tiny heads they hinged echoed our urgency as summer was brought in we could not tell who welcomed whom they never bragged about their longer resonance my grandson has a friend whose grandfather lives in the valley still haze some fields fills an old barn we visit swallows chatter from the rafters I embarrass him in yet another way trying to find words for the ordinary joy of being in each other's company thanks gutter thanks to or media for taping this and thanks to my wife Cynthia my poetry muse she's away for two months being Nana to her grandson they need the help but she'll be able to watch this on orca great space to do ecstastic poems poems of art can't think of a better venue still life from a painting sheep in snow by Joseph Farkinson it's still as sunsets light snow in a pastor we look west into orange sunset scattered clouds and shades of pink still enough light for long shadows from trees on a small rise shades of orange in snow she prays for what grass they can find waiting for sunset when they'll return to shelter outside the picture frame the winter is brown and gray pastures full of color peaceful at solstice sunset do sheep worry like we do about what might come when night grows cold though shadows cross their pasture they're still color still life as daylight fades what more could we cold war 19 soldiers ponchos flapping in wind perhaps they're a chosen reservoir perhaps on heartbreak winter war Korea so cold they slog on through ice and snow each clutching his weapon Frank Gaylord sculptures neither alive nor dead frozen in time like war that never ended bagpies fly over the border quiet now in the DMZ where they nest in maples so many dead there some left behind a mere dimming between life and death as sunlight fades and night grows cold war 19 soldiers frozen time necrastic poem can also be about a photograph as well as a painting those sculptures like the Korean War monument newly fallen snow covers his face body facing gray sky which he can't see one arm outstretched to the right as it reaching out when he was car key under siege everything gray another cold war in the photograph nearby troop carrier a caterpillar blackened burned tread blown off nobody alive show a mother and father will get the news death doesn't take sides all decay and return to soil traffic light street lamp burn building all dark snow newly fallen salt and sorrow a kitchen in a residence in Aleppo Syria damaged Sunday and fighting our Cisco can trace this photo the New York Times walls are blackened there's a refrigerator with rust at its bottom stickers of yellow butterflies and blackbirds on the door a dish towel hangs on the door handle and a top sits evasive purple paper flowers on shells jars of spices still stand upright we can't see what's upright in the rest of the home if its power is on or if walls and windows are intact charge ceiling plaster covers the floor no mortar shells are shrapnel though a jar of beans lies on broken in a tiny drawer maybe for salt we don't know but nobody can live without salt or sorrow no matter where on a lower shelf rest three small pairs of shoes we can't see the children the parents or the photographer must all still be somewhere outside but outside is not in the picture we can't hear if there are explosions artillery fire on the wall hangs pan hang pans a strainer and measuring spoons why do some things fall and not others all the utensils are blackened but we can't tell whether from cooking or just war in a dish strainer cups dry they'll need to be washed again if the family returns if they live they're blackened kitchen sent naked around the world his self-portrait visiting Florida this winter Van Gogh gazes forever left he's painted his hair and beard red eyes blue looks a little like his brother Theo when Vincent painted this he had only a year left to live and Theo would be gone the following year having lived so his brother could paint we never know if Vincent stepped out of his frame into Florida what would he paint I'd offer him pink grapefruit we'd paint on the beach together the day would turn red turned hazy and hot maybe we'd paint rippled scallops and let it all of us on the sand perhaps we'd float into the swamp to paint alligators and herons there's a point at which we realize we'll die but we can't know when what if we could bring our brothers back and say paint this now you have only a year left but today it's just Vincent and me we paddle out paint an alligator basking by the lock so hatchy then a tricolored heron it flies off and a feather drifts slowly down I keep the herons feather I can't forget my brother's last year he drifted like a feather through the air and was gone the heron circles and calls Vincent and I drift if only he and Theo could have known if only Keith and I could have known mixing color from his palette Vincent fills in water and sky paints red the herons eyes so when I think about community I think often what we have in mind is some kind of niceness you know everything's good but community is really about an ongoing process of joy and loss finding grieving recovering learning new things about the world we live in and the people who are part of our lives and this one is about elm trees which just feel like they have you were a part of the Vermont community and I still want them to be elves all the way from Pittsburgh to Phoenix the men behind us talked marketing and never once gave a clue what the product was in college clay Hunt said it's not what you say it's the way that you say it it was a kind of a chant by the English department something they had learned so if I want to say for instance that I miss the elm trees I should tell you they held up the sky over our North Anvil farm domed and rustling alive with Orioles dancing among raised arms perfectly trained to lift the daily weight of blue or should I just admit I can't tell you how much I miss them and it's also noticing people and connecting with them which drives my grandchildren and sometimes my wife crazy but the people on the perimeter that you don't always acknowledge this is November sunlight she and her silent companions sit in a patch of unanticipated sun on a wooden bench bundled against November's cold her companion stares down at the freezing ground but she looks up at me as I cross the park's leaf littered lawn toward their small bit of warmth nothing much her smile warns a cordial sound the greeting of a different voice her glove rests on her partner's silent mitten hands unwaveringly loyal still she claims this small permission I want to stop and talk with her but that would be too much I only say how wonderful November sunlight and when I was a minister I guess I was professionally engaged in community and kept trying to figure out what the heck I was supposed to be doing with this job this is called good work for the preacher it's a practice in humility to come to a small church in a poor state where resources for pretense are scant where need wears thin clothes pride does for hope theology is less important than good chicken pie you learn to love the details not the answers trust your heart and ears kindnesses and the embarrassments they cause in other men gaining knowledge that could give control trying not to use it again and again you eat ordinary food till it becomes the food you crave stay till they no longer ask if you'll be lead leaving soon I remember a funeral performed for a man I never knew on a hilltop in Waterford and earn a sunny afternoon a family full of silences mid-service I realized he had died of AIDS the brother who had left for San Francisco gone for years home now to be buried in his family's fears I was invited to a 40th birthday party for a friend cross dressing was required I wore a kilt black tights bean boots and dance like David till the end his cousin read a poem about growing up gay in Plainfield his mother complimented on her dress bragged she had stolen it from her son I danced in the space we'd begun to claim and as welcome for the high school friend who loved me but had no name to give his love I danced for all the dead the stories carried to the grave I danced for those who watch in waiting still for the quietly subversive the outrageously braid and this is one I think of this is Susan's poem for a family and friends gathering it's called blessing you compose a table from all the tables in the house drape them with old linen till it snakes through living and dining rooms like a Chinese dragon white metal lawn chairs come up from the basement slumber antiques from the bedroom where a week of clothes lands on the floor you dig to the back of the drawer for cheap stainless and then the family silver and tie ribbons hugging it in chamois cloth wine glasses from pewter to crystal alternate around the table suggesting a symmetry in all their history you remember the spoons that melted in the fire that no one here remembers and the fourth and missing crystal glass guests bring the cold air in each with their offering of food laughter and greeting for old friends and strangers they embrace because you love them all voices rise in the living room over wine crackers chopped liver Baba Ganoush there's that last-minute rush the comfort of it this in this out of oven or refrigerator it says you bring your coogle to the table the absence races through you the laughter here invites the laughter that is gone how can we be joyful in the company of loss your knees are weak you lean into your closest friend pause slowly start to breathe and we begin now that the meal is blessed and this one is called bandstand it's no secret it's the it's the middle sex bandstand where they have wonderful summer concerts children gulp music with the air race bare feet bare legs no sleeves sun sinks clinging to the leaves on the blanket checkered lawn adults listen or talk quietly tree swallows spill their liquid sound after the concert fiddle returns to spruce and got bow stops quivering against its strings musicians step back into the presence thanked for their commission or communion with that other place they've been children finally still like instruments slumped and lovely twined and carried in the rich noodle hug of need the drive home echoes with wild song and play fading hesitant reluctant to forsake the day and then finally this is about a trip that we took on Elmore pond and we always try not to be just on the pond but to find the marshy areas or the secluded areas or the place where the ducks might be and we went up to the where the stream flows in to the pond I have to say we went back three years later nothing was recognizable no from both flood just washed everything out Lake Elmore October 1st curled beige feathers downy at the base litter the stream that wanders toward us and Elmore's Lake beavered alder branches submerged pond hair cushions duckweed corralled by viburnum roots all strewn as though by a gentle pillow fight we paddle past managed shorelines with tidy cottages to this neighborhood of lily pads and pickerel weed hidden from their sight more happens here like the basement daycare center chorus with children always cluttered doing a better business than the church this is the waters sweet meander slow channel where merganser mallard grew it's also where the storm flood races through my grandson cried when he gave up his first and favorite bike the one he trusted enough to let his feet release the ground I had to argue with myself against the urge to dry his eyes hurry him along stop honor that lonely keening sound two young ducks try to keep one bend upstream from us trapped by our invasion they finally stop one leaps to flight the other hides behind marsh grass in a small alder pocket we paddle by eyes averted our small courtesy it quivers as we pass six summer weeks this was their home now they leave for something new I think detachment that's illusion too in the next pool a heron rises scarecrow taking flight we look for it at every bend flying its silent heron tricks again but a beaver pond opens before us flood at eye level no heron but wide water sweeping seeping through a thousand sticks this summer we went up five streams the beaver dogged Calvinists seem to insist it's the effort not the dam that's permanent we postpone leaving poke up every bull rush alley given at last stroke hard across the open reach land on the expanse of beach women in bright saris watch their boisterous men play tag joined by the youngest daughter we greet them lift the boat leave our visit this is from a photo of my wife Cynthia's mom's wedding in Plainfield wedding photo in black and white the bride and her five bridesmaids pose on the stone portico of a white shirt in Vermont in white gowns holding bouquets of flowers May 1947 all in their 20s war over for two years long lives ahead today the bride's sister died the last of six in the photo nobody knows the day they'll die unless perhaps they're in a war but war had ended now at last they could live there wouldn't be another war at least they hoped certainly not in this Vermont village with its white clabbered church all six lived near the church some in the village others on back roads were families far after the war they had to be optimistic so many dead so many now it's been over 70 years and that may they weren't thinking about war they pose six young women on the steps of a church in Vermont sending off one of their own sugar maples shade the lawn and though it doesn't show in black and white leaves are fresh green and there's a scent of lilacs maples stone steps church now are all still there but the wedding party has gone Lazarus and six horses a sepia photograph 1891 the horse's ears are perked and alert they seem to watch the photographer even in sepia tone we can see their different shades of brown and gray hitched together and used to pulling as a team to thrash winter weed my great grandfather Lazarus pageant stands to the left of his horses barely holding the reins as his horses pose overalls had in hand probably the year my grandmother was born in the only other photo his horses are hitched to threshers weed and horses now on what had been Kiowa Ottawa and Potawatomi land for a millennium and more all forced on to reservations I don't know what Lazarus thought of this some of his family were probably part Kiowa or what do you think of Kingman now just a few large farms where there were once dozens wheat from his field shipped around the globe summer day is almost always over a hundred degrees a four lane highway to Wichita his great-grand children scattered across Kansas and all over the country none of us farms and only one has horses three generations apart our lifetimes overlapped only briefly but we grew up in different worlds I look at Lazarus and his six horses and wish I could ask him their names Athena's owl at half moon pond in our tent late at night we hear three barred owls call over and over mythical owls of Athena next day at the sculpture studio an artist carves an owl from pure white marble if only the owls could know that now they're almost immortal marble quarry it doesn't sculptors have reclaimed a corner of an abandoned quarry dragon flies and swallows fly over while other creatures emerge from marble out of stone a heron an owl a white whale two ballet dancers boss relief ducks and nesting moons at night the quarry is eerily quiet an owl perches atop a rusting crane her hoots echo off walls of abandoned stone sheds with shattered windows then each morning under tents and tarps carbide chisels and diamond blaze squeal as mallard ducks take flight on marble wings dancers leap from stone white slippers barely touching the ground swans swim at dawn four swans swim circles around the small pond of reeds and cat tails across the road from my hotel room drift back and forth dipping their beaks to feed not much water but just four not yades nine and fifty swans years ago when i was 13 an amusement park pleasure island was built here on the edge of wetlands where now there are condos offices hotel it was a short lived attempt to imitate disneyland in a massachusetts swamp how much pleasure or amusement kids got i'm not sure but i saw ricky nelson play right over there not far from the pond where swans swim in low light just after dawn i wondered why the teen idol had to sing on stage near goldpen gulch and a white whale in a small amusement park in a swamp but it wasn't his swan song he performed another 23 years before flying to his death ricky nelson just like small stages where he could play for a few hundred screaming teens his voice and guitar always pitch perfect i can still hear him sing unchained melody hello mary lou someday someday i'd like to swim like a white swan go back when there were songs like lonesome town when we could be so moved by an idol so easily amused pleasure island swans still swim in low light just after dawn rain taxi soft music down a windy street worn smooth by light years of frustration and traffic the fugs 1964 two red oak leaves stuck to the side window have an old checker cab headlights reflected in dark puddles the old handcock towers light glowed red for rain and from a higher building a beacon revolved in the night horns of boats and the harbor echoed through streets where water splashed up from gutters ran down sidewalks there in a corner i thought i saw you with your bag of poetry books pens first drafts a stoplight glowed red in a puddle and when my cab finally moved ahead you were gone of course i should have known it couldn't be you we wouldn't write any more poems together i'd seen you die on the first day of spring i forgot where i was going and all this rain i didn't know why the streets were so wet why this cab was so old i forgot what you had been writing about the last time we were together the rain taxi crossed rivers of streetlights this is my poem the poem city this year you can write an ecstatic poem about a building love poem to a library how can i say which book i love the most it's like asking which is my favorite child easier to say i love the library as i walk up granite steps out of rain and sleet through the portico into the reading room paper lanterns made of poems hang everywhere i wander to fiction stacks but stop at calder's animals lithographic red and yellow cats scampering with an elephant and and glance up at a grecian freeze i head for art books move on to the history shelves then get distracted by poetry posters everywhere old library the more i check you out the more i realize it's you i love eclipse robbins already back in april begin their evening songs perhaps perplexed that it's already dark through our eclipse viewers we watch moon slide slowly over sun until stars and planets shine in the sky then slowly this brief nightfall slides back into daylight as robbins sing again some days i don't understand the world so much i love has been eclipsed by banality and uncertainty but i'm glad robbins still sing and humans too even when perplexed by darkness thank you let's hear a special for jim did i tell you that he has a mean slice on his pickle ball thank you all thanks everyone thank you for being here and uh feel free to wander around enjoy the lovely creations all around us and we're here to talk if you want to do that either i i don't think we talked about a question and answer period but if anybody has anything they want to ask ask jim okay well how how was your first time playing with musical accompaniment how do you feel it i loved it um how did you like it i thought it was a delightful yeah i thought it was a really great and brave experiment yeah well um george and i decided to do this george was the instigator and then he said what about having music and i said well i have this friend and we invited jim and that's how it happened right we did one i don't think you could call it a rehearsal one a tryout a tryout a scoping session jam yeah no it wasn't a jam it was it was it was a very small jar if it was a jim so jim did you have all the poems that you were reading along with so yeah i just had the book before and we gave him notes yeah where we wasn't not words no no that's all and when we came here to practice it was just like oh my god we just started reading something you would just start playing nice incredible gift anything else so say hi to each other great to see you and we all get a chance to say i'll give you a hug before you go and enjoy the art and only 33 more home city events to go yes i guess the programs math thank you for coming you that one's in the book portrait is in the book yeah it's in the book and it's like i i mean i was hearing your words again in a very fresh way i think that's the only one of these from the book the rest of newer there's a connection to the cold rain taxes so I know, I know. Sit down, sit down, sit down. Oh, wow. What?