Encore! I will be giving a poetry reading on the DC streetcar for Art All Night H Street, September 28 at 8:00 pm. Hop on! Be transported, literally and figuratively. A surprise guest is joining me for sound healing on our ride. This will be sublime, with occasional rhyme.
Vacation! After a year and a half without (knowing that I'm one of the privileged who can have one), we vacationed for eight days on Prince Edward Island, Canada. If you read my previous post "meteor shower," you know that this was happening while "pasty ghosts of lives past vacation the premises" at our house. Sometimes you have to move out (temporarily) for a reprieve.
PEI is enchanting. A couple of photos here might speak to this. And, my muse found me there for a new poem (shhh, yet to be revealed). It is an undisputed fact that your muse will find you wherever you are.
Rather than sending this poem around to journals, it's a gift directly from me on the occasion of August Perseids and my August birthday. It started as something personal and grew expansive. May you enjoy...
meteor shower
calamity’s dust mostly settled
our youth off its pedestal
pasty ghosts of lives past
vacation the premises
by now they’re a bore
rustling up days precarious
with the winds dying down
those days sail precious
we’re neither better nor worse
between blue moon phase
some shadowy turns
the light we paraphrase
aiming to be dazzling
our dread like Perseids
~LCMH
I straddle two communities: one is the Washington, DC area and the other is the Lost River, West Virginia area. That may sound like quite a straddle, but I'm not alone in dividing time between the two. You can find one (or more) of my books for sale at People's Book in Takoma Park, Maryland and at WordPlay in Wardensville, West Virginia. How does a local author get support from a local bookstore? By asking to consign at their store. If you have suggestions of other places, let me know. There's nothing quite like browsing books, picking one up and getting the feel of it. Enjoy your summer reading!
The community poem at Art on Cullers Run is a tradition. This is our fifth year, a milestone.
I am the weaver, not the author, threading individual bits of writing into a whole. What one person writes offers a different meaning when it's joined to someone else's phrase. And seemingly random thoughts/images end up perfectly suited to the final piece.
Here's our 2024 arts festival community poem:
Coming Home to the Valley
Nomads wandering country roads.
Floating seeds ride summer breezes.
Buzz of insects… lilt of laughter. The art
of connections. The “hi” way up gravel
roads to poets and porches, panting pups
lapping water, shadows on sweltering grass.
Warm air lazily lazing. I’m a poet but
have control issues, moving incrementally
as the sun moves across the sky. Bee
breath in heavy air. Dancing with creativity…
getting lost in shadows of moon, fireflies
glowing the quietness. Their silent song.
Blood-red barns born from slices of sunrise,
band sanders and belt saws, sweat.
Holes in the sky between clouds steal
some art. And the woodpecker came home
with us. I refresh with the balm of beauty,
admiring art in the shade. Reminding
me how I love boxes… filling the void.
Say what you will, I did my best.
Burgeoning clouds take me home.
Lightness of a breeze, a kind soul, relief.
Time exiled to savor the moment. Art brings
the world together. Again and again.
~voices of visitors to the poetry tent, Art on Cullers Run 2024
(assembled by poet-in-residence Charise M. Hoge)
Thank you to all the contributors!
Thanks to Beyond Words Literary Magazine for publishing my poem “Full Stop” on the first page of their summer print issue. Here’s a look, complete with artwork:
Outsider
The fly at dinner has one wing––
it cannot leave or lift.
Instinct for flight ingrained
––in fits and starts––hops and stumbles.
Privy to the chokehold of life, the zing,
these hands––prone to swat or shoo––
chauffeur the fly out––whence it came.
Instinct to care for a hapless thing.
~LCMH
