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Last night was a sad night. Last night was a joyous night. WILD APPLES, a journal of nature, art, and inquiry launched its eighth issue at the Harvard Massachusetts Public Library.  It was a celebration of four years of collaborative work and achievement. The meeting room overflowed with poets and writers and friends who wished the Wild Apples’ Group the best for the future. A feeling of friendship and hope filled the room. It was quite evident to me that this group worked well with each and would miss producing the magazine but also… there was a feeling of possibility for the future.

Poets from the Louise Bogan Chapter of MSPS joined the festive atmosphere and were inspired to continue their bond with each other. Next month the LB Chapter will celebrate their one year anniversary. They will discuss poetry and poems as they always do but it will be with a new commitment to themselves and to the value of poetry. The Louise Bogan Chapter of MSPS thanks Linda Hoffman, Kathryn Lebowitz, and Susan Edwards Richmond for their fine workmanship.

Soon we’ll be spending more time indoors. Today with the chilly rain  is a good day to begin or resume our daily journaling.  With more time to tap on our computers or scribble on our pads or tablets we can develop a habit that comforts us in wind or rain.

Put a bright color notebook by the refrigerator or at your breakfast table and jot down thoughts to be coalesced into poems. Daily writing is essential for writers’ well being even if it’s only a scribble or a short poem.

Write as if you don’t know what you are going to write and discover. You’ll be surprised. Okay, let’s just write to see what happens.

Don’t forget to stand up and stretch every hour so that you wont get stuck in one position luck a gumby doll. Headaches, backaches and all kinds of aches appear after too much time in front of the computer. When you get to the period when  you are in flow time will no longer be an issue. Here’s a short poem for the moment: Monoosnock Brook/ dawdles between banks some days/others it storms in a rush/ winding through reeds and brush/it doesn’t care what season/splutters with force after rain/eddies down steep embankments/leaves gashes that fill with remains/the rubbish from streamside visitors/unaware of the brook’s good name.

Writing in the rain.

I’ve just returned from a USS Mauna Kea reunion and I’m remembering those challenging years when the Navy ship my husband was on carried ammunition to the Tonkin Bay. The ship’s reunions mean more and more as the wives connect with each other and their husbands, the old salts, turn stories into  epics.

In those years our home base was in Port Chicago, California — my husband always says, ” I lived in California for two weeks, my wife lived there for two years.”

I would have stayed in the golden state for I had a job I liked, but good jobs were hard to find if you were young and getting out of the military. So, we moved east and have been on the east coast most of the time since.

Here’s a poem I wrote while thinking of those old times:

To My Daughter, Living in Asia

In 1968 I found a place in California to build a home,

prepared for you, dear child of mine.

The backyard was an Eden without an Adam,

snakes lurked among the jade trees and birds-of-paradise.

That glamour of being married to a Naval officer

shipped out with the Mauna Kea. The USS Forever-Sail,

as it was known by the wives, steamed to the Tonkin Bay

to supply the Eastern Fleet with ammunition and boys.

You burst into life too soon—or was the ship just too late?

Your Dad sent tapes, “ Welcome to the world, Marie,”

I’ll be home soon”.

When he stepped on shore, you knew that voice.

Now you are drawn to the East to see those places your father knew.

It’s something you want to do.

I linger at the airport-security-gate. You fly away—

to create a world that’s your own.

Please write me about the orchids that bloom at your door.

I see oak leaves, brown and rust in my yard—

dream the jade and bird-of-paradise.

Last week I heard Gabriel Okara, the acclaimed Nigerian poet, read his poetry at the Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg, MA. His poetry was moving and poignant. His son, Dr. Ebi Okara introduced me to his father, Gabriel, and now Gabriel has agreed to read for the Massachusetts State Poetry Society—North Shore Forum Chapter. I’m thrilled and know that you will want to help us celebrate Gabriel’s poetry.

Come and hear him read at the Beverly, MA Public Library Saturday, September 17 at 11:am. We’ll socialize and share refreshments after the reading.

Gabriel Okara is considered one of the founders of modern African literature and he is one of the most famous West African writers working in the English language today. He’s won a number of awards including the Commonwealth Poetry Award.

A poem from Gabriel’s work:

Piano and Drums

When at break of day at a riverside
I hear the jungle drums telegraphing
the mystic rhythm, urgent, raw
like bleeding flesh, speaking of
primal youth and the beginning
I see the panther ready to pounce
the leopard snarling about to leap
and the hunters crouch with spears poised;

And my blood ripples, turns torrent,
topples the years and at once I’m
in my mother’s laps a suckling;
at once I’m walking simple
paths with no innovations,
rugged, fashioned with the naked
warmth of hurrying feet and groping hearts
in green leaves and wild flowers pulsing.

Then I hear a wailing piano
solo speaking of complex ways in
tear-furrowed concerto;
of far away lands
and new horizons with
coaxing diminuendo, counterpoint,
crescendo. But lost in the labyrinth
of its complexities, it ends in the middle
of a phrase at a daggerpoint.

And I lost in the morning mist
of an age at a riverside keep
wandering in the mystic rhythm
of jungle drums and the concerto.

Gabriel Okara

Provincetown, an art community with a past and a future, is a great place to concentrate on your chosen art. I’ve just returned home after a week of  poetry writing, reading, and appreciation. Gail Mazur,  workshop leader, gave her all to insure that the participants in our class would leave the Fine Arts Work Center with a better understanding of what makes a good manuscript. We discovered that even a very well written poem with universal appeal may be unsuited for a particular book.

My poems were revised or put aside with a core of poems remaining.  I’m thrilled to finally have a collection that hopefully will became a published chapbook called PLENTY.

Plan to participate in a FAWC  workshop next summer and you will be very satisfied at the results.

Stanley would have been 106 today. If he could have, he would have stayed longer on this earth. He had infectious energy that inspired and awed.  I remember at his 100th Birthday Party he read a number of his poems at the Fine Arts Work Center and the organizers had to gently usher him off the stage to be able to keep to the scheduled events. Stanley could have read his poems all night.

Tonight, to honor Stanley Kunitz and his poems, we celebrated in his boyhood home, his only house still standing in Worcester. Now privately owned, it was open for a tour and schmoozing. Dozens of visitors walked through the Stockmal House and enjoyed a progressive docent tour.  There was a docent (me included) in each room sharing stories and poems about and by the award-winning Stanley Kunitz and his artist/poet wife Elise Asher.

The tour was followed by a poetry reading and refreshments. It was delightfully successful. If you missed the tour do give us a try this coming October.

The heat lately has seared the grass and troubled the atmosphere. Some people are grumpy too. I like warm but very hot changes my electricity. So I’m thankful for the blessed rain, however little, these past two days.

A poem about the rain would be a good thing to write especially if you’re over fifty. That’s when weather becomes more important. Your bones know it, your skin knows it and so does your disposition.

Here’s a poem to cool the air.

Winter With You

(after Masefield)

We’ll go out to laugh in the blued edged snow,

see iced-white birch trees bent down low.

See fluffed up wings of flitting birds,

cardinals and chickadees perched on firs.

We’ll hear jays, squirrels, and juncos too,

hike in the shadows deep and dark

and recite short poems learned by heart

while our long-haired dogs romp and bark.

When the cold clings to our fragile bones,

we’ll step inside to the warmth of our home,

sit in our chairs and drink cider and beer

then celebrate winter with a tip and a cheer.

When I lived on the South Shore of Massachusetts as a child, July 4th was fireworks, hotdogs, all the ice cream we could eat and long days in the sun. We stayed home, didn’t leave town. It was glorious with fireworks, friends, swimming on Peggoty Beach, and delayed bedtime. As a teen it was the beginning of freedom – boyfriends, long walks on the rocks and waitressing. Today summer is comfort – no heavy clothes, no heating bills, the sun, and long walks. It’s always fun like this light poem…

Talking to Summer

Flooded with poppies a field—blossoms too red, too lush

I reach for a wrinkled bandanna to catch the erupting gush.

Like a rabbit chased by a fox I blink with a summer sneeze,

see in my teary blues the green of a thousand trees.

I run on the outdoor path squish go my new white Ked—too late—I’ve stepped on a poop

my neighbor forgot to scoop.

The gnats and giant mosquitoes bleed me with every bite.

Will dragonflies come to my rescue their transparent wings in flight?

Poppies, cowpats, and bug bites kick up a loud disturbance

but never as bad as the sleet or the roar of a plow on the street.

The thunder and lightning last night brought in the negative ions but didn’t clear the air – the meteorologists tell us this central Massachusetts area is due for triple digit weather – mm we’ll see.

This is an opportunity to stay quiet and contemplate this world that we live in. Prepare yourself to write or sit down right now and let your pen flow with all the weather thoughts that you can conjure up. Set it aside then use what you’ve written as a basis for a poem.

As I move throw the years weather becomes more and more important to me – I can feel the barometric changes in my head – dreadful really. Here’s the beginning of a poem initiated after barometric pressure sparked migraine pain.

Request to Masseuse or Lover

How can I live with this

pounding at my face?

A thousand nails surround my eyes,

beat to the tune of my heart.

My neck taut as the hunters bow

muscles tighter than the stag’s in the scope

All the torment one body can bear

Erase the pain with your touch.

May is closing! I’ve not had time to revel in the warm air and shake out winter. But I cheer the colors of rhododendron and azaleas; Spring is my favorite time of the year. I’m lifted out of myself and given energy to move forward.

A message for today is to look at all the poetry that you have created: single lines, jumbled stanzas, nearly revised masterpieces and other odds and ends and put together a collection of a dozen good poems – print them and collected them and set them aside. You’ll have the beginning of your book of poems.