Hi,

First of all, please check out Meetings and Events for more information about the upcoming NSPF meetings. We actually came up with a program for the new year. First of all, on Oct. 24, join us at the Beverly Public Library, 11 a.m., Sohier Room, for a celebration of Halloween. Bring a copy of an original poem about that ever-popular date, so that we can have a little  contest among those who show up. The copy should be unsigned. Each of us will give points to the poems. The one with the most points will win a little prize. It should be fun. And, please, don’t get in a dither!

Also, I thought I had posted three poems by Amy Dengler, and it seems I haven’t. Of course, I really should post every single one, because she is so good. But, still, this additional one might inspire you to come here Amy at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival in Salem on Oct. 15, which is National Poetry Day. She and other poets will be reading at the Salem Atheneum on Essex Street. See the link on this site for more information.

Again, this is taken from her collection, Between Leap and Landing.

Driving To Rochester

by Amy Dengler

There are no eagles along the Thruway

so I measure miles in red-tailed hawks:

four hundred miles, eleven hawks.

White-bibbed, they perch in dead trees

scanning for slow mice and sleek rabbits.

They see everything. …

The sun is low when I arrive.

My mother’s apartment is half the size

of the house where I grew us. She is smaller, too.

The able hands that bathed those slippery babies

shake, skin thinned to brown spots and blue veins. …

From the flowered sofa I watch her

shuffle grocery slips, clipped together

like something worth saving. The oak table

where we ate oatmeal and talked and read

is steady as ever under stacks of last week’s news

and notebooks stuffed with receipts and cipherings. …

She suffers from doing and redoing

counting and recounting

checking and rechecking.

She is the slow mouse.