The love of bare November days

 

Everhart Park in the fall.  The park of my childhood.

more November poems:

 

My November Guest

by Robert Frost

My sorrow, when she’s here with me,

Thinks these dark days of autumn rain

Are beautiful as days can be;

She loves the bare, the withered tree;

She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.

She talks and I am fain to list:

She’s glad the birds are gone away,

She’s glad her simple worsted grey

Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,

The faded earth, the heavy sky,

The beauties she so truly sees,

She thinks I have no eye for these,

And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know

The love of bare November days

Before the coming of the snow,

But it were vain to tell her so,

And they are better for her praise.

 

 

another one of Everhart Park, this time in the  golden hour.

November

by Elizabeth Stoddard

 

Much have I spoken of the faded leaf;

Long have I listened to the wailing wind,

And watched it ploughing through the heavy clouds;

For autumn charms my melancholy mind.

When autumn comes, the poets sing a dirge:

The year must perish; all the flowers are dead;

The sheaves are gathered; and the mottled quail

Runs in the stubble, but the lark has fled!

Still, autumn ushers in the Christmas cheer,

The holly-berries and the ivy-tree:

They weave a chaplet for the Old Year's heir;

These waiting mourners do not sing for me!

I find sweet peace in depths of autumn woods,

Where grow the ragged ferns and roughened moss;

The naked, silent trees have taught me this,—

The loss of beauty is not always loss!

"Our long national nightmare is over"

 

Who is old enough, besides me,  to remember this?

and we thought Nixon was our national nightmare... he was a boy scout compared to Trump.

On this day in 2020, Trump lost the presidential election to Joe Biden.  Here are some memes from that event:

and more recently, the Infrastructure Bill was finally passed, just in time for President Biden's one year anniversary of being elected:

and for any readers who do not agree with me and do not like these images, tough!  This is my page!

On this day in 2016

 

In 2016, this house was the home of the West Chester University Poetry Center.

I'm not going into the long and sad story of the decline of the WCU Poetry Conference, which I had attended for about seven Junes from 2001-2016.  But in 2016, Sam Gwynn was the director, and he invited me to be the reader at their Poetry Salon, on November 6, 2016.

I wish I had a photo of this lovely event, but I don't .  Here's one of me in another conference, another year:

Anyway,  the poetry salon took place on a brilliant sunny Sunday in 2016.  I , however, was coming down with a very nasty upper respiratory infection.  I stayed over until Monday afternoon, and then drove back to Emmitsburg on Route 30, through all the little towns.

I had a car crash on the way home, which was my fault.  I rear-ended a pickup truck , which was stopped suddenly because the car in front of it had stopped to make a left turn, and i wasn't paying enough attention.   I was ok, but I totalled the car.

It was a bad omen for the next day, which was the day Donald Trump was elected president.

It wasn't funny for four years, and continues to not be funny.

Every line is sharp

 

Evergreen Cemetery, Gettysburg    Photo by Chris Muldowney

I love this poem by May Sarton

Poem in Autumn

 

 

Now over everything the autumn light is thrown

And every line is sharp and every leaf is clear,

Now without density or weight, the airy sun

Sits in the flaming boughs, a an innocent fire

That shines but does not burn or wither.

The leaves light-penetrated, change their essence,

Take on the gold transparence of the weather,

Are touched by death, then by lights holy presence.

So we, first touched by death, were changed in essence,

As if grief grew transparent and turned to airy gold

And we were given days of special radiance.

Light-brimmed, light-shaken, and with love so filled

It seemed the whole heartbeat of the world was in our blood,

And when we stood together, love was everywhere,

And no exchange was needed, if exchange we could

The blessedness of sunlight poised on air.

 - May Sarton 

The Terrace at Mount Saint Mary's      photo by Teresa Rupp

Booster Shot

 

I got mine last night.  Today I have a very sore arm and many achy muscles and chills.  But I'm ok now.

Here are some poems related to COVID:

In the Time of Plague

We keep indoors.
When we dare to venture out
We are cautious. Our neighbors
Smile, but in their eyes there is
Reserve and suspicion.
They keep their distance,
As we do ours, in mute accord.
Much of our fear is unspoken,
For there is at last the weight of custom,
The tender of rote consolation.
We endure thoughts of demise
And measure the distance of death.
Death too wears a mask.
But consider, there may well be good
In our misfortune if we can find it. It is
Hidden in the darkness of our fear.
But discover it and see that it is hope
And more; it is the gift of opportunity.
We have the rare chance to prevail,
To pose a resolution for world renewal.
We can be better than we have ever been.
We can improve the human condition.
We can imagine, then strive to realize,
Our potential for goodness and morality.
We can overcome pestilence, war and poverty.
We can preserve our sacred purpose. We can
Determine who we are in our essential nature
And who we can be. We are committed to this end
For our own sake and for the sake of those
Who will come after us. There is a better future,
And we can secure it. Let us take up the task, and
Let us be worthy of our best destiny.
N. SCOTT MOMADAY
Santa Fe, N.M.
The writer is a novelist as well as a poet and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1969 for “House Made of Dawn.”

and this:

The Soul Selects Her Social Distance

 

The pandemic has prompted me to consider how Emily Dickinson might feel about social distancing.

 

The soul selects her own society,

Then shuts the door.

She keeps her social distance of

Six feet or more.

Unmoved, she notes the careless crowd

Outside her gate;

Unmoved, she notes the feckless folk

Still tempting fate.

I’ve known her from those foolish people

Choose none

Then turn her mind to friends she’s meeting

By phone.

FELICIA NIMUE ACKERMAN

Providence, R.I.

and  one more:

The Before Times

 

Before we were living in a pandemic, we went to lunch with

our friends in restaurants & slurped soup with crackers

we crushed with our bare fingers, our ordinary fingers

that did not ignite terror, that were not vectors of disease.

 

Before the days of self-isolation, shopping was just another chore,

sometimes a pleasure, a stroll through Costco sampling

from little paper cups protein bars & chocolate candies &

popcorn & potato chips, strolling & sampling & buying

big bags of broccoli & spinach & Asian cashew salad

& giant containers of gourmet cheese & yes, toilet paper.

The Before Times have receded deep into memory as if

all of that happened ten, no, twenty years ago

when we lived in another land of freedom & movement

& laughter & hugging & sitting in each other's

living rooms, living, alive, chatting for hours without

measuring the social distance, without wearing N95

surgical masks or nitrile gloves, without anxious fear.

 

Now we are living in another land, frightened & confused,

our minds always tasked with remembering to wash our hands,

not touch our faces, not touch packages or mail without

gloves & Clorox wipes & yes, remembering to worry,

as if anxious worry could create a high wall surrounded by a moat

of reeking & fuming disinfectant to keep us safe in this new land

of contamination & fever & suffocation & death.

 

We must not forget the Before Times, when we could touch

doorknobs, doorbells, the mail, U.P.S. packages, restaurant tabletops,

colleagues’ keyboards, other people’s hands, our own faces.

We must not forget dinner parties, book groups, political rallies,

concerts, movies, worship services, protests, weddings, funerals.

In the Before Times we shared our joys & sorrows together.

 

Will we ever live together again?

BONNIE SHAW

Salt Lake City

 

Sad to say, I have only written one poem since March of 2020,. What has happened to me?

The way up is the way down

 yellow tree, Longwood Gardens

First frost this morning - 31 degrees, and promising more through the week.  The plants in my courtyard garden have not yet succumbed.

Here's a good November poem from Wallace Stevens:

 

"It is hard to hear the north wind again,

And to watch the treetops, as they sway.

 

They sway, deeply and loudly, in an effort,

So much less than feeling, so much less than speech,

 

Saying and saying, the way things say

On the level of that which is not yet knowledge:

 

A revelation not yet intended.

It is like a critic of God, the world

 

And human nature, pensively seated

On the waste throne of his own wilderness.

 

Deeplier, deeplier, loudlier, loudlier,

The trees are swaying, swaying, swaying."

-   Wallace Stevens, The Region November

 

 

art by Maya Lyndberg

and these lines, from Eliot's Four Quartets:

"I sometimes wonder if that is what Krishna meant -
Among other things - or one way of putting the same
    thing:
That the future is a faded song, a Royal rose or a lavender
    spray
Of wistful regret for those who are not yet here to regret,
Pressed between yellow leaves of a book that has never been
    opened.
And the way up is the way down, the way forward is the
    way back."

-   T. S. Eliot, The Dry Salvages, III

 

We are all in line without knowing it

 

Mount St. Mary's Cemetery  on the mountain

This day, I remember so many friends and family who have gone before me.  This poem, by an unknown poet,  hits me hard today:

We are all in line.

Every minute someone leaves this world behind.

We are all in the line without knowing it.

We never know how many people are before us.

We can not move to the back of the line.

We can not step out of the line.

We can not avoid the line.

So while we wait in line -Make moments count.

Make priorities.

Make the time.

Make your gifts known.

Make a nobody feel like a somebody.

Make your voice heard.

Make the small things big.

Make someone smile.

Make the change.

Make love.

Make up.

Make peace.

Make sure to tell your people they are loved.

Make sure to have no regrets.

Make sure you are ready."

Author Unknown

Susan Abbott

Patrick Finnegan

Josephine Jacobsen

 Ralph Harper

 

Frank Quinn

Maureen Beitman

Margaret Dougherty

John Whelley

Not to mention my family - the generation of Kauffmans and Higgins's  ---all members of that generation have died,

My mother and her brothers:

My father and his three brothers and three sisters, and my cousin Barbie and her son Tommy Guss:

O Blest Communion, fellowship divine

 

Some poems for All Saints' Day

 

They are all Gone into the World of Light

BY HENRY VAUGHAN

They are all gone into the world of light!

And I alone sit ling’ring here;

Their very memory is fair and bright,

And my sad thoughts doth clear.

 

It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast,

Like stars upon some gloomy grove,

Or those faint beams in which this hill is drest,

After the sun’s remove.

 

I see them walking in an air of glory,

Whose light doth trample on my days:

My days, which are at best but dull and hoary,

Mere glimmering and decays.

 

O holy Hope! and high Humility,

High as the heavens above!

These are your walks, and you have show’d them me

To kindle my cold love.

 

Dear, beauteous Death! the jewel of the just,

Shining nowhere, but in the dark;

What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust

Could man outlook that mark!

 

He that hath found some fledg’d bird’s nest, may know

At first sight, if the bird be flown;

But what fair well or grove he sings in now,

That is to him unknown.

 

And yet as angels in some brighter dreams

Call to the soul, when man doth sleep:

So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes

And into glory peep.

 

If a star were confin’d into a tomb,

Her captive flames must needs burn there;

But when the hand that lock’d her up, gives room,

She’ll shine through all the sphere.

 

O Father of eternal life, and all

Created glories under thee!

Resume thy spirit from this world of thrall

Into true liberty.

 

Either disperse these mists, which blot and fill

My perspective still as they pass,

Or else remove me hence unto that hill,

Where I shall need no glass.

 

 

 

All Saints’ Day: Curtain Call

Allow me at my end to be like these
Descending leaves that elegantly dance
Their final scene, expressing festive peace
As they take leave of life. Still colorful,
They ornament the sky as Fall’s sun slants
To warm their gold, release their sweet fragrance.
They’ve felt their feebling stems, and known the call
Of gravity’s exuberant release,
Accepting the approach of their decease
With bliss. They leave their limbs and calmly fall
In pirouettes; slow-dancing with the breeze,
They fill the air below their trees’ expanse,
Content with or without an audience
To witness this performance – this, their last –
By spring’s or summer’s beauty unsurpassed.
Allow me, at my end, to be like these.

Cindy Erlandson 

and my own, irreverent one:

Named after Saints

 

Holographic Holistic Hagiography

Sounds like Hag Geography.

The mapping of Hags around the world.

Hags I have known,

Hags I’ve only read about,

But this is Hagiography, photography that makes you say Gee!

Not hags, but saints, and those

Named after saints.

Monica, model of worrying mother,

Martin , patron of the torn cloak,

Rose, rubbing pimento into her perfect skin,

Anne- in Leonardo’s sketch, huge earth mother with legs like tree trunks,

Like the bed made out of the tree, the castle built around the bed in the Odyssey,

Saint Hopkins, reporting every sunset,

Saint Merton, still falling in love ,

Lucy, with her eyes on a platter,

Lucy with her eyes on the assembly line chocolates,

John the Baptist and Frank the Methodist

and Marlon the Method.

Who can tell the population of heaven?