I haven’t posted anything in a long while. I should really change the name of this blog, since it no lonter represents the Forum, which hasn’t met in some time and from which I resigned as president. But, I thought the following poem was beautiful. You can find it in Rattle magazine. I get daily poems from that source, which you might want to check out.

ONE FOR SORROW

by Carmel Buckingham

A crow once gifted me

pine needles tucked into a paperclip.

She left it on my windowsill, right beside

the birdfeeder. I think about love languages,

about how long it’s been since I’ve felt

the smooth warmth of another’s skin,

firm muscle wrapped around me,

heavy and solid and safe.

Did you know crows can recognize faces?

She definitely knows me, she lets me get close,

she’s brought me more gifts—a Stella Artois

bottle cap, a glittering earring, a screw head,

and a few shiny pebbles.

I stack them inside, right by the window,

so she can see that I’ve kept every one.

I wonder if she’d recognize me with a smile,

she’s never seen me like that.

Crows stay faithful to their partners

until one of them dies. I only ever see her

on her own. I wonder if she hasn’t found

her partner yet, or if she is mourning

after a lover now lost.

Crows recognize voices too, so I sing to her

when she visits. Sometimes I crack open

a pomegranate and she pecks at the arils

right in front of me. I wonder if she sees

the stones behind my window; I wonder if

she knows she’s the reason I’m still here.

She always flies away, wings black as midnight,

sails into the sky. I wonder what it is about

people like me, who love spiders and crows,

who let dandelions conquer the garden, who

keep the one-eyed teddy bear, and sand the

shattered glass.

I am a defender of all the other broken things,

unwanted things, forgotten things,

things the world finds monstrous, worthless,

things that I find kindred. She deserves

her hazelnuts, to hop from foot to foot, she

deserves to exist.

And when she brings me another stone,

gray with shimmering specs of silver,

and sets it outside of my window,

I think, maybe I deserve that too.

—from Ekphrastic Challenge

Winter is in its throes, and I for one am waiting impatiently for Spring. I also have to beg forgiveness for not updating this page in such a long time. I think someone may have expected a February meeting, but the members decided the weather was too iffy to have meetings in the winter. I believe they will meet March 16, 11 a.m. in the Sohier Room of the Beverly Public Library.

I am no longer able to make most of the meetings because of other obligations. Therefore, don’t count on me for up-to-date information.  I may try to post now and then, just for the heck of it.

So, as usual, I leave you with a poem that seems fitting. This one is a lovely example of Mary Oliver’s great legacy. She died in January and will no longer weave a new tapestry of words.

(***Thanks to a comment from Mickey Coburn, I checked on where we will meet on the 21st since the book sale is held that day. We are to meet in the Fogg Room (spelling?). We can’t have any food or beverages, so please come well fed and hydrated!)

The Poets’ Forum starts its new year in September, like school children. Actually, I read somewhere recently that many of us, because of our formative years centered on the school calendar, also seem to begin anew in September. So, we had our first meeting of the new poetical year on September 16.  Jeannette Maes gave an excellent presentation on the new Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, and read all of her four books of poetry as research. There were various opinions about Smith’s style and meaning. Some of us really liked her (me!), others not so much.

Some of us brought poems by other poets we had recently discovered or re-discovered or just simply wanted to share. And, we also had gentle critiquing of member poems.

The food was great, the company superb, and the poetry lovely, mostly! See you all in October when Maggie Harney and Joan George will present a program with a spooky (maybe) theme.

Before I leave, here’s a poem that I brought to the meeting by poet Mary Karr that I saw in Poetry.

I read somewhere

that if pedestrians didn’t break traffic laws to cross

Times Square whenever and by whatever means possible,

      the whole city

would stop, it would stop.

Cars would back up to Rhode Island,

an epic gridlock not even a cat

could thread through. It’s not law but the sprawl

of our separate wills that keeps us all flowing. Today I loved

the unprecedented gall

of the piano movers, shoving a roped-up baby grand

up Ninth Avenue before a thunderstorm.

They were a grim and hefty pair, cynical

as any day laborers. They knew what was coming,

the instrument white lacquered, the sky bulging black

as a bad water balloon and in one pinprick instant

it burst. A downpour like a fire hose.

For a few heartbeats, the whole city stalled,

paused, a heart thump, then it all went staccato.

And it was my pleasure to witness a not

insignificant miracle: in one instant every black

umbrella in Hell’s Kitchen opened on cue, everyone

still moving. It was a scene from an unwritten opera,

the sails of some vast armada.

And four old ladies interrupted their own slow progress

to accompany the piano movers.

each holding what might have once been

lace parasols over the grunting men. I passed next

the crowd of pastel ballerinas huddled

under the corner awning,

in line for an open call — stork-limbed, ankles

zigzagged with ribbon, a few passing a lit cigarette

around. The city feeds on beauty, starves

for it, breeds it. Coming home after midnight,

to my deserted block with its famously high

subway-rat count, I heard a tenor exhale pure

longing down the brick canyons, the steaming moon

opened its mouth to drink from on high ...