On Veteran's Day in the US, here is a wonderful poem by a veteran of World War I

Everyone Sang

BY SIEGFRIED SASSOON

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;

And I was filled with such delight

As prisoned birds must find in freedom,

Winging wildly across the white

Orchards and dark-green fields; on - on - and out of sight.

Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;

And beauty came like the setting sun:

My heart was shaken with tears; and horror

Drifted away ... O, but Everyone

Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

and this more famous poem:

Tidings

 I have lots to say, but my thoughts are jumbled and distracted this morning.

One of our sisters fell in the kitchen and hit the side of her head.  No telling yet of any head injury,

but that certainly distracts me.   

In our local community of eight, we are four in our seventies and four in our eighties. This is one of the eighty-five year olds, so the danger of falling is very real.

We 'll see what happens.

In the meantime, 

image by Lars Van der moor

"My tidings for you: the stag bells,

Winter snows, Summer is gone.

 

Wind high and cold, low the sun,

Short his course, sea running high.

 

Deep-red the bracken, its shape all gone,

The wild goose has raised his wonted cry.

 

Cold has caught the wings of birds.

Season of ice – these are my tidings."

-  Irish Poem, Translated by Caitlin Matthews 

Merlin      photo by Bob Reiter

Anne Sexton's birthday today

 I didn't realize it was her birthday until this afternoon.

I heard her read at Goucher College in October of 1974.  She committed suicide the next morning.

This is my favorite poem of hers:

Riding the Elevator Into the Sky by Anne Sexton (1975)

As the fireman said:
Don't book a room over the fifth floor
in any hotel in New York.
They have ladders that will reach further
but no one will climb them.
As the New York Times said:
The elevator always seeks out
the floor of the fire
and automatically opens
and won't shut.
These are the warnings
that you must forget
if you're climbing out of yourself.
If you're going to smash into the sky.


Many times I've gone past
the fifth floor,
cranking upward,
but only once
have I gone all the way up.
Sixtieth floor:
small plants and swans bending
into their grave.
Floor two hundred:
mountains with the patience of a cat,
silence wearing its sneakers.
Floor five hundred:
messages and letters centuries old,
birds to drink,
a kitchen of clouds.
Floor six thousand:
the stars,
skeletons on fire,
their arms singing.
And a key,
a very large key,
that opens something —
some useful door —
somewhere —
up there.

Sunlight has taken over the room

 More November poems.

photo from Mount Saint Mary's University

In November

BY LISEL MUELLER

Outside the house the wind is howling

and the trees are creaking horribly.

This is an old story

with its old beginning,

as I lay me down to sleep.

But when I wake up, sunlight

has taken over the room.

You have already made the coffee

and the radio brings us music

from a confident age. In the paper

bad news is set in distant places.

Whatever was bound to happen

in my story did not happen.

But I know there are rules that cannot be broken.

Perhaps a name was changed.

A small mistake. Perhaps

a woman I do not know

is facing the day with the heavy heart

that, by all rights, should have been mine.

 

Reprinted from Alive Together: New and Selected Poems, Louisiana State University Press, 1996, by permission of the author. Poem copyright © 1996 by Lisel Mueller.

 

photo on the campus at Mount Saint Mary's University

 

"Yet one smile more, departing, distant sun!

One mellow smile through the soft vapory air,

Ere, o'er the frozen earth, the loud winds run,

Or snows are sifted o'er the meadows bare.

One smile on the brown hills and naked trees,

And the dark rocks whose summer wreaths are cast,

And the blue gentian-flower, that, in the breeze,

Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last.

Yet a few sunny days, in which the bee

Shall murmur by the hedge that skirts the way,

The cricket chirp upon the russet lea,

And man delight to linger in thy ray.

Yet one rich smile, and we will try to bear

The piercing winter frost, and winds, and darkened air."

-   William Cullen Bryant, Autumn  

November sunset    photo by Madeleine Proof

Sonnet 73 (‘That time of year thou mayst in me behold’)

William Shakespeare 

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum’d by that which it was nourished by.
   This thou perceiv’st which makes thy love more strong,
   To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

_{From The Picador Book of Love Poems}

November on the mountain.. by Mount Saint Mary's University

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: