AVOCET The Weekly
Issue No. 6 | January, 23 - 2013
Weekly Avocet - January 23, 2013 - Issue No. 6 Aspen Angels Golden leaves flutter and fall like descending angels dropping to earth holding undelivered prayers between their collapsed wings. The chill wind blows causing the quaking aspens to tremble as golden leaves flutter and float like one winged butterflies I wander an old abandoned road which leads to a fools hollow where I am protected from the arctic wind The earth here is carpeted with autumn leaves. There are rows of wooden benches, old tree bones nailed together and arranged like pews in Sunday school. I sit in silence, listening for the echoes of undelivered sermons. surrounded by fallen golden leaves and in a way I welcome the cold wet winter, the short days and dark nights and whispered promises of rest from weary labors. Gary Every garyevery@gmail.com “I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” - Pablo Picasso
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Weekly Avocet - January 23, 2013 - Issue No. 6 Cold Snap Pond brown skin of ice: North Carolina winter: Nothing else happens. «Cold Snap» appeared in The Aurorean, Fall 2006. Robert Demaree rdemareejr@triad.rr.com “I like good strong words that mean something.” - Louisa May Alcott THE DRAGONFLY AT SEATUCK It was no longer alive when the boy spied it on the oak tree while we walked through the woods in mid-December, the sky, clear and bright, sharpened itself toward afternoon when he stopped us holding his prize above our heads, our leader explained the long slender body, two pair of veined wings, a frozen symmetry of segmented parts motionless in his hand, a dragonfly, crafted in permanence, distinct and regal, passed among us while we whispered praises to its beauty, for the boy, praise as well, whose sharp eye found the creature caught in the season’s first frost before its summer ended, placed in a plastic bag for safe keeping before we began our walk again over green moss where quiet was fashioned to our feet, marching single file past the salt marsh, silent as we were, our eyes focused on a fixed spot in the distance, we made our way the length of the path to the beginning breathing our powdered breath into winter’s thin blue air. Karen Schulte krnsch1@gmail.com “I am following Nature without being able to grasp her. I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.” - Claude Monet -3-
Weekly Avocet - January 23, 2013 - Issue No. 6
Winter Woodland Gods I’m not a hunter with bow and arrows or shotguns or anything. I don’t know how to start a campfire or which berries or roots to eat if I’m lost in the woods. I don’t know how to get a hunting or fishing license or what sort of orange or yellow or red jacket to wear to not get shot by mistake. And yet I do enjoy walking through the woods with the dog, especially the winter woods, soft powdery snow all along the trail, thin ice crackling beneath my feet, just me and the dog and the wood gods there unseen behind the stumps beneath the tall pine trees watching and protecting me (I hope) from the real hunters and wood-people who might be lurking about. Michael Estabrook mestabrook@comcast.net “To be or not to be/ a poet, that is the question?” -4-
Weekly Avocet - January 23, 2013 - Issue No. 6
The Winter Solstice
After the winter winds blew the poems across years and years I scooped them up and invited them to a holiday party. All pages came! They milled about meeting some with like interests others as strangers but it was obvious they were enjoying themselves; from one to the next they ate thoughts and drank words. At one point I hinted strongly that they leave, but here they are clustered together around the warming fireplace in no particular order still partying in the winds still blowing Lois Batchelor Howard poetlois@live.com “We are the lucky ones, the lucky poets, who have nature for inspiration. Nature is everywhere, like poetry is everywhere, in every one.”
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Weekly Avocet - January 23, 2013 - Issue No. 6
WITH AN EYE UPON THE SPARROW In a country where Lapland, Lithuania and the Arctic Circle come up in casual conversation, Finland’s icy winds wake me into cold June mornings of islands that look like bubbles on maps. You belong to the weather in a place where Arctic cold screams naked upon midnight winds leaving sparrows staring up at you from early morning windowsills. Finns build thick walls against melancholy that blows in off frozen surfaces of hidden lakes. Like images of the heart, ubiquitous blood red granite graces suburbs and city centers, warming ice slick streets and endless ebony gloom. They joke darkly about their “house of night”, but study the light─sun, moon and stars, the manmade light emanating from high rise buildings, the literacy they demand of their children─any light they can add to tiny bit the earth allows them. No light is taken for granted here, not the rose glow from the homes they pass by in early dark of January afternoons, nor their faith in art and design, breath of life to those willing to live in a wintered world where there are no pigeons or stray dogs. I‘m not smart or strong enough to live in the clamoring cold of a place where the people find enough music in sixty summer days to last a year, and people, warmed by blood red stone, find freedom in the burden, and build more statues to poets than generals. for Martti Mikkola Larsen Bowker bowkerlj@comcast.net “Everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” - Sylvia Plath -6-
Weekly Avocet - January 23, 2013 - Issue No. 6 Ineffable
A water’s rhythmic murmur Laces through our conversation, Adorning our words, Assuaging my ears, Water swaying just beneath my feet— Ancient world of support, Grayish blue and green— A placid dream. I see it arrest and flow, arrest And flow, push and play itself Along its way, as I watch Through the iron wrought interstices Of the bridge’s floor. How you and I Fit so snugly In this vastness! With the water gently lapping on, Here and after, beyond and before, To the far blue mountains born— A misty promise in the near horizon— Under a crystalline white winter sky! Here, where the Earth Is not too great To listen to our voice. published in “Decanto,” a British poetry journal. Catharine Otto CatharineOttoStefens@gmail.com “Unclamp my wings untether me/Like Pegasus let me soar” - Mary Jo Balistreri
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Weekly Avocet - January 23, 2013 - Issue No. 6
From the Editor
From one of our own: Please read my review of Mary Jo Balistreri’s new collection of poetry, “gathering the harvest.” A stunning poetic achievement! Click on the Attachment at the top of this e-mail. Thank you. We hope we provoked you to thought; that you leave having experienced a complete emotional response to the poetry. I want to thank our poets for sharing their work with us this week. And, “Thank you for reading, dear reader!” Again, if you haven’t, yet, sent in one nature winter-themed poem (please, only one) please do! Please remember it is one poem, per poet, per season for The Weekly Avocet’s submissions. Be well, see you next Wednesday Charles Portolano Editor of the Avocet, a Journal of Nature Poetry Please visit our website www.AvocetReview.com To know it, that you are a poet, you must write, read other poets, subscribe, buy poetry collections, and bring poetry into the lives of those who don’t know of its beauty. Please think about sending a subscription check for just $24 for four issues, (60 pages of pure poetry) (shipping in the U.S.A.) made out to: Avocet, a Journal of Nature Poetry Charles Portolano, Editor P.O. Box 19186 Fountain Hills, AZ 85269 Sample copy - $6 With your subscriptions, The Weekly Avocet, every Wednesday, is sent by e-mail to all the friends of the Avocet to read and enjoy nature poetry for the-middle-of- the-week-blues. I love getting poems sent to my computer. What a great way to start any day. A wonderful website is Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, every day one poem and lots of Art history. Please check it out: http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/ I start everyday reading it, great fun!!!! Hope to see you next week on Wednesday, thank you! Be well, keep warm, Charles Portolano Editor of the Avocet If you want off of this emailing list, please write Unsubscribe in the subject line. Thank you for reading... -8-
Editor’s Review by Charles Portolano, Editor of the Avocet, a Journal of Nature Poetry “gathering the harvest” poems by Mary Jo Balistreri Published by Bellowing Art Press 76 pages – 58 poems $18 + $2 shipping
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hen I sit down with a new collection of poetry, I want two events to happen: I want the poems to provoke me to think beyond myself and I want to grow as a poet, and, possibly, if the poems are that powerful grow as a person. Mary Jo’s new collection, “gathering the harvest” far exceeded my expectations. This collection is about courage, a life lived, with all the pain and suffering that life throws at us, curveballs and all, and, all the love and memories that life graces us with. Mary Jo takes us deep into the meaning of life. She is an emotional mover; one is taken by the power of her poetry to move us to a greater understanding of ourselves and the world around us. Let’s start our journey with the foretelling cover design by Chrys Heidel. In the bottom left hand corner there is a photo of a young girl, with her back to us, walking through a field of wild grasses, with another photo above it of a woman, with her back to us, walking through a similar landscape, letting us know this is a gathering of memories that a person collects from a young age to middle age. The first poem we come upon is the fine, fine, poem “Gathering the Harvest,” which will set the stage for all the poems that follow. A couple is having a picnic, en-
joying the day together, their time alone: Your fingertips move lightly over my face as I linger, suspended between here and there, the heartbeats of all the living and the dead, drumming within me. The poem ends a few lines later with:
adini Sits for her Portrait” telling of the fascination between the artist, da Vinci, and his sitter, his Mona Lisa. Desires, mine, his. How that canvas yearns. Mary Jo gets us into the mind of Ms. Gheradini so we can better understand the mystery of this masterpiece.
We scoop them up into the net of memory, Winding back upon itself, moving forward.
“A Stillness Gathers in Autumn” ends
Just wonderful how the poem has so many memories that are gathered over the course of a lifetime that allow us, the reader, to know that the poet has lived an examined life, there is something to learn from this poet. “Saturday Matinee at the Lyceum on Superior Street,” tells the tale of two 13-year-old girls watching Natalie Wood in Rebel Without a Cause, pretending they are as kissable as Natalie. The poems last two lines:
as the family waits by her Mother’s bedside for death to come take her. I had an instant emotional response when I finished reading that last line that I read the poem over again and again.
Smoldering in yesterday’s ashes, The secret suddenly leapt into flame I won’t let on what happens, but these last lines allow us an insight into the beginning of puberty for a young woman. Mary Jo’s love of art and her eye of an artist allow her to take three paintings by Edward Hopper to use as metaphors for the isolation and loneliness that Hopper painted perfectly of the 1930’s in America, which she uses to express these same emotions that are very much a part of our own era. Or the wonderful “Lisa Gher-
The silence that will hold us all.
“Sunset Over the Mill Pond” is a haunting poem about the ending of a day connecting in the poet’s mind to the lives and deaths of her two grandsons. It ends: So short these signals of love. says it all. Mary Jo’s powerful ability to end her poems with such perfect last lines, bringing a punch so strong as to knock the reader out for a count of ten, while uttering a “Wow.” These are deep, deep poems with layer upon layer of meaning that surfaces for the reader upon the first reading and being driven deeper with each addition reading. “My Prayer of Becoming,” that comes towards the end of the book, ends with the lines
Unclamp my wings untether me Like Pegasus let me sour This is a poem for everyone to read. A poem about being human with all our faults, all our guilt, fears, and shame, so we can learn to live life as if today might just be our last day. There are so many meaningful poems in this collection, but the last poem’s last lines of the book are We carry them forward even as they vanish Into the blur of distance Carry them with us to another harvest sums of the essence of this book. The theme of looking back, looking forward, permeates this collection from cover to cover. This is a stunning achievement of what poetry is about, how a poet has the ability to move the reader to become someone greater that they thought they could be. The collection works on a visceral level, as well as on an intellectual level. I loved it for its courage, grace, and I will visit these poems again and again. Thank you, Mary Jo. “gathering the harvest” poems by Mary Jo Balistreri Published by Bellowing Art Press 76 pages – 58 poems $18 + $2 shipping Please make checks out to: Mary Jo Balistreri P.O. Box 35 Genesee Depot, WI 53127 You can contact Mary Jo at: joeybfl@gmail.com
Guidelines for
The Weekly Avocet every Wednesday, an email of Nature Poetry Please send only one poem, per poet, per season. Let’s do winterthemed poetry for now. Please no more than 38 lines per poem. Please use single spaced lines. Please use the Times New Roman - 12pt. font. Please send your submission to angeldec24@hotmail.com Please remember, previously published poems are fine to send. Please always put your name and email address under your work, thank you.