August 2019 Voicing Art Poetry Reading + Poems

all across our country
there are great gaping holes
made deep by drilling
     blasting
     cutting
     grinding
then stones
only semi-precious
are brought to town
     shaped
     stacked
     then
rise toward heaven
higher than the holes
     they left are deep
      and often
just as empty

8/18/2019

ABOUT MCCLAIN JEFFREY MOREDOCK

In 80 years I have worked as a farmhand, lifeguard, folk-singer, surveyor, minister, chaplain, a teacher, coach, head of school, and chief operating officer.

Over a span 50 plus years, I’ve written numerous articles, many sermons, a collection of short stories, a novella, many songs, and over 100 poems.

As a cancer survivor, I treat each new day as a gift, and welcome the offering of what William Saroyan called “the human comedy.”  My family and my faith are inseparable, and like Miguel de Unamuno, I believe in God as I believe in my friends.               

PUBLICATIONS

Poems From Essex & Elsewhere

Nine Holes, Nine Lives-The Front Nine (e-book) Zebras in the Lake (self-published)

Real fake News (available on request)

www.mjmoredock.com
mcmoredock@gmail.com

blackthorn they say is best
others lean toward yew
hornbeam has a pimpled grain
red oak is plumb and true 

you’ll search long for thonged willow
vine wood is a weighted screw
all must have a rooted knob
of warty burl sinew 

eye the wood to hear the call
of the dryads passing through
from offshoot to walking stick
a certain magic takes its cue 

you do not choose the shillelagh
the shillelagh chooses you 

with bow saw in hand somehow
shimmy up a limb or two
cut, carve, shave to measure
balanced from curl to shoe 

hung and cured in a smoke stream
shellacked to a shimmering hue
carried along in life’s plan
of which I have little clue 

my reach now extended
the added strength to pursue
in this epidemic world
any ally will do 

you do not choose the shillelagh
the shillelagh chooses you

ABOUT JIMMY TEE

Jimmy Tee is a poet from Milton, Vermont
jmmytee300@yahoo.com
jimmyteeblog.wordpress.com

young sparrows
vie for seed
they know nothing
but summer days 

one by one
poppy flakes
fall to the breeze
’til the morn’s end 

a tall stand
of hostas
tips and bends low
as bees crawl in  

how explain
the buzzsaw
cicada song
it must be joy 

sturgeon moon
rises bright
tracing a line
I cannot see

a problem
in August
sweet corn kernels
between the teeth

fat peppers
on the vine
please hold my beer
I’m going in

summer skies
white with heat
charcoal briquets
sun tea brewing  

up early
and out late
sleep can be had
in November 

the clouds fly
over the
dragonflies leap
verse is easy  

tee to green
I’m OK
but two putting
is an art form 

the dog days
of August
will continue
long after mine

the sweet air
travels far
I hope its not
a dryer sheet 

dot matrix
before me
twenty thousand
morning glories

ABOUT JIMMY TEE

Jimmy Tee is a poet from Milton, Vermont
jmmytee300@yahoo.com
jimmyteeblog.wordpress.com

[inspired by a poetry of nature walk at Bookworm Gardens in Sheboygan, Wisconsin]

Wet stone, dry stone
Single shiny scarlet stone
Garden of stone sparks,
Of imagination,
A monster, but lovable,
A library inside,
Golden memories,
Metallic cutouts,
Materialized into form.
I wonder who the caretaker be?
A quiet being? A winged creature?
Sexless or sexmore?
All + alpha, beta, dachshund.
Ticklish notes, goosebumps.
Winnie the Friend.
Alice in Buddhaland.
A young life experiencing
The whole of Japan
In a forest.
Lives young for the first time,
Lives aged for the first time,
In a multidimensional experience of East,
Sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, know
Clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, claircognizance
Can you be through these words? Through this place?

Will you?

At the magic treehouse?
Past the gong and through the gate.
Bring all the bits of you.
Chapters, syllabi, parts tall like redwoods,
And tiny grains of sand,
All the paths you never knew you were,
And those precious times you did. 

We’ll stack them up like books in a field.
We’ll leaf through them and eat the words that jump off the page. We’ll hear what sweet smelling sounds are thread-bound in the folds. We’ll listen for the new knowing.
New World, a bit brighter,
Delighted, lighted for your growing story.
Celebration.

We’ll want to keep a corner.
A dog-eared page or two.
Beauties.
But, with a growing sense of more,
Into the bonfire they go.

And dawn again.

Stones.
Alpha.
Buddha. 

ABOUT LAINE

Laine is a designer and friend of the world often located in New Haven, Connecticut.  

Along the amber waves of grainy sand,
two languages hang in the stifling heat.
One has no music,
the other is loose and floating in the salty sea.
There, a mother wades, fully clothed, and unselfconscious.
Waist deep, she scoops her dark-haired daughter into ample arms.
The girl is all sand and seashells, legs akimbo.
In her hands, a plastic cup spills water
and perfectly tumbled stones. She laughs
and nuzzles into the safe and sturdy arms of her mother,
who dips and skims the girl’s lithe body across the ocean’s surface.
Behind the two, three women watch,
gulping cigarette smoke and cans of Dr. Pepper,
their white as white skin, guarded under beach umbrellas.
A radio splinters out commercials for new cars,
nightclubs, and too much Billy Joel.
Six little girls clamber around the beached women,
up and down the rocky outcrop they climb,
back and forth for towels, more quarters for ice cream,
sun screen across shoulder blades and cheeks,
their conversation, a complaint.
None venture to the water’s edge
Where the woman in the water, sings
her words like a lullaby, her voice, a chorus;

“Es usted rebalozo como un pez!”

She rocks and sways with the deepening tide,
all the while, her eyes are fixed on her blissful daughter, 

“Cuidado, las olos son fuertes!”

The girl slips from her mother’s arms, laughing.
She looks to the shore, eyeing the six little girls on rocks,
fruit pops in hand, colorful beach towels of favorite Disney characters
spread out like badges of honor around them.
The dark haired girl shrugs ever so slightly for what she does not have,
leaps from her mother’s arms, and dives headlong into the waves.
She reaches deep, comes up, slick seaweed in her hair,
in her palm, one perfectly oval stone.
It had waited millennia for her arrival,
sitting sentinel on the bleached out ocean floor,
rocking in its own mother’s arms,
the color of crows.

ABOUT MARY L. COLLINS

Mary L. Collins is a writer/activist.  A Burlington native, Mary lives in Elmore, VT and works for the State of Vermont where she manages communications for Vermont’s Foster Care Services. Prior to that, Mary worked in marketing and communications for various non profit organizations, owned a production company, and spent many years in broadcasting. She is the founder of Lakota Tiny House Nation, a building project on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in SD where she has been involved for over 15 years as an advocate for indigenous rights and cultural understanding. She is a recipient of recognition from the national organization, “Giving Tuesday” as a “Woman Who Cares”, and a published poet. She has one son, Will.

His name was todd and he was tall,
or did I just think so because he was the only boy
in tap-dancing class?
All the girls hung real close
and shuffle-hop-stepped by him every chance they got
Some carried on a little too much
doing the “cat’s-eye” pose with their fingers,
gracefully arcing their thumb and pointer,
like a geisha’s fan,right up in his face.

todd didn’t seem to notice, or maybe he was shy.
I never got close enough to figure him out.
And when his mother’s car broke down and my mother
offered them a ride in our turquoise Pontiac station wagon,
I didn’t know what to do.

So I crawled over the blue vinyl seat
to sit in the way-back facing the road, and getting dizzy
from how everything spun back
and got smaller, the further away we traveled.

Or was it todd who made me dizzy?

Because when he flipped over the backseat to join me
I got nervous and fish-flopped back
to the empty second seat kicking him in the jaw
with my patent leather tap shoes.

He let out a yelp, then bawled like the girls who weren’t picked to
be his Yellow Rose of Texas, or his Bonny Lying Over the Ocean.

And when his mother screamed, “Can’t you be more careful!”
And my mother barked, “What’s going on back there?”

I started crying, saying something about a sore lip,
how I hated tap-dancing class, and how stupid boys were anyway,
hugging the door, willing it to open and spill me out
into the street to be crushed by our big blue Pontiac,
and wouldn’t they all be sorry then,

my feet shuffle-hop-stepping
on the back of my tap-dancing shoe case
the one that said, “Capezio Taps…The Choice of Stars!”

ABOUT MARY L. COLLINS

Mary L. Collins is a writer/activist.  A Burlington native, Mary lives in Elmore, VT and works for the State of Vermont where she manages communications for Vermont’s Foster Care Services. Prior to that, Mary worked in marketing and communications for various non profit organizations, owned a production company, and spent many years in broadcasting. She is the founder of Lakota Tiny House Nation, a building project on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in SD where she has been involved for over 15 years as an advocate for indigenous rights and cultural understanding. She is a recipient of recognition from the national organization, “Giving Tuesday” as a “Woman Who Cares”, and a published poet. She has one son, Will.

When my brothers built their first tree house
they didn’t have a plan, they didn’t have single boards that would reach far enough across the two best trees in our yard So they stole what they could from dad’s scrap pile
and cobbled together a ladder, frame, and platform,
before the bees were disturbed,
and each were stung on elbows and necks
and on the backs of their fast moving legs
and when they came back to it,
they worked feverishly, picturing the architecture with imaginations spanning beyond ability and too small hands

What looked like scrap wood tacked to trees became a parapet,
a lookout tower, second story escarpments, and platforms
hung precariously from not so sturdy tree limbs,
but what did that matter? 

All kinds of modifications were built, torn down and
rebuilt, each to serve them in the four seasons,
cubbies for fallen chestnuts or snowballs,
comic books and candy bars, just enough length
to roll out a sleeping bag, arms crossed back underneath their necks to cradle heads as they looked at the stars
bleeding through the roughed-out roof with gaps as big as the sky itself

In that tree house, my brothers would hide
from neighborhood bullies and girls they thought silly,
from me, their younger sister, most of all

ABOUT MARY L. COLLINS

Mary L. Collins is a writer/activist.  A Burlington native, Mary lives in Elmore, VT and works for the State of Vermont where she manages communications for Vermont’s Foster Care Services. Prior to that, Mary worked in marketing and communications for various non profit organizations, owned a production company, and spent many years in broadcasting. She is the founder of Lakota Tiny House Nation, a building project on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in SD where she has been involved for over 15 years as an advocate for indigenous rights and cultural understanding. She is a recipient of recognition from the national organization, “Giving Tuesday” as a “Woman Who Cares”, and a published poet. She has one son, Will.

[inspired by ‘Decembre’ from Eugene Grassier’s Belle Jarndiniere Calendar. 1896] 

Among reptilian pink-bloomed lilies,
Her cloak blowing in the wind,
Her apron filled with snowberries.
Leafless branches caked with snow
In the dim gray woods of the park
Beyond the stone urns and fretted
Balustrade are empty as the garden,
Her cold hands beneath her apron.

In the stone twilight she moves slowly,
Radiant as the flowers, ephemeral as their gree
Drooping leaves, tenuous and beautiful
As a flower in the snow.

©Ron Lay-Sleeper

[inspired by ‘Haystack, Near Arles’ by Paul Gaugin, 1888] 

Like a bare Tahitian breast or a budding Popocatepetl

The haystack crisps and thatches in the hot noon sun.

Drying beside it in the freshmown field

Lie silking waves to be piled and woven

By the forks of the men at their midday meal

In the white-washed building with the green window

Who will soon hurry out

         —See the rainclouds gathering in the East—

Their shirts

                     clammy

                                     on their backs,

Pitch up the last rows, drink a cool green bottle

Of good red wine.

Gauguin worked many a day

         Painted a canvas full of farm

Sliced out this section, carried it away—

An Arles afternoon

For rainy days

                     In Polynesia.

©Ron Lay-Sleeper

[inspired by Anna Travers’ painting]

I dipped fingers into the landscape
The way of finger painting
And pressed them into memory
Unreliable; might be lost or remembered
Forever  

I dipped a toe into the lake
Although they have warned time
And time again of contamination 

I spread fingertip
Then whole palm to your body
Painting a landscape on existing earth
Trying to change what should not be erased

And spread wide strok
Onto your structure
It’s been ages
But Earth wasn’t created in a day 

When finger run red with exhaustion
I rub them against paper,
Spit like a camel,
And in similar emotion, retreat 

My mind wearies
Thinking about where you are now
Same dead end job?
Same disdain for life?  

I see my face in store windows
Somehow it always looks better
In foreign places 

Sometimes I travel to see
If I look different there 

When I come home,
I am still the same,
Same girl with her fingers in
The sand
And painted expression in the window

ABOUT JENN TRAVERS

Jenn Travers is currently a senior at the University of Vermont, where she studies English and theatre. She started writing poetry last spring. Her work has been exhibited in UVM’s Ekphrastic Poetry Reading at the Fleming Museum in April 2018, Wild Burlington for Art Hop at Artsriot in September 2018, and will be featured in Laurel Moon’s upcoming publication. She has recently returned from studying abroad at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England.  

[inspired by untitled works of Anna Travers, ‘Double Doors’ by John Clark, ‘Moon Rising’, ‘Blood Moon’ and untitled ‘wire paintings’ by Thomas Norberto]

You will not be possessed
Though the valley of your clavicle
Beckons to be known
It is veiled by a shape that
   is somehow wrong
A broken wing bent in
   on itself
Under a watchful eye
   from across the room
whose face melts
What shadows does it hide
What scars does it obscure
under the blue moon
the black sky
It seeks light from somewhere
but gets caught in electric wires
fences of frost
that make the skin
brittle and burn
sere under the gaze that
   does not blink
   does not move
frozen in time
where the clock
of the heart I cannot find
has wound down
I feel sad for this
   broken bird
she stirs the abundant heart
   I have
wishing to give
some of it away
to wrap her in
wings unbroken
that have flown
for aeons looking for
the right heart to heal

ABOUT JC

Founder of The Poartry Project, poet, visual artist, cartographer of the unseen, builder of loving worlds through loving words
poartry.org

[written during the break + inspired by the very short timing of the break]

When the clock strikes start,
5 minutes seems like it would be quicker than a blink, barely enough to begin.
In the 1st minute I tend to draw in Muse, thread of thought someway to its destination, and activity.
In the 2nd minute I have a moment of pause and reflection;
Is this going to work out? is it?
Ok it probably will, just continue, go go go.
What happens in the middle, that 3rd minute of activity? a mystery.
I know it exists and yet I’ve rarely seen it on a clock.
Does Time pluck itself away?
As if to say, “there is more to my life than meets the eye.”
And by the final breath of the 4th minute, in a momentary ponder…
Somehow at that time it seems so far away where I began.
The 5th minute, drop drop drop, everything down, for now at least.
Sometimes there happens to be a 6th minute, a grace,
And sometimes that’s all there is.
Either way, living those 5 minutes I am glad for the beginning.

ABOUT ANI

Ani loves poetry, being in nature, meditation and working with young lives in creative ways. He was born in the south of India and moved to Australia at the age of five. He is in currently in Brisbane, Australia after having recently travelled for 20 months through parts of the United States of America, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. He is currently working on consulting- and education-related projects. He has also co-stewarded a business and a philanthropic endeavor, as well as working as a high school teacher.

            Self-love
            my mirror
            suggests
            i could do
            much better 

        Self-loathing
            i am
            better off
             without
            neighbors        

        Self-congratulations
            a pat
            on the back
            is best left
            to others 

            Self-awareness
            a stubbed toe
            a paper cut
            a sneeze
            still
            so much to learn 

            Selfless
            the scale does not lie
            I am
            just
            too much 

            Selfie
           …ergo sum

ABOUT MCCLAIN JEFFREY MOREDOCK

In 80 years I have worked as a farmhand, lifeguard, folk-singer, surveyor, minister, chaplain, a teacher, coach, head of school, and chief operating officer.

Over a span 50 plus years, I’ve written numerous articles, many sermons, a collection of short stories, a novella, many songs, and over 100 poems.

As a cancer survivor, I treat each new day as a gift, and welcome the offering of what William Saroyan called “the human comedy.”  My family and my faith are inseparable, and like Miguel de Unamuno, I believe in God as I believe in my friends. 

PUBLICATIONS

Poems From Essex & Elsewhere
Nine Holes, Nine Lives-The Front Nine (e-book)
Zebras in the Lake (self-published)
Real fake News (available on request)
mcmoredock@gmail.com www.mjmoredock.com

            No, not tonight, I have my .
It’s all gone, my dog – ate it
If you ____  you lose
Excuse my lisp, but look at the solar …
I just had my first : oscopy
My sigmoidoscopy was a ; oscopy
I won the 100 meter  –
I believe Matthew Luke and John but I  ?

                                                   © VISVERS Ltd.

ABOUT MCCLAIN JEFFREY MOREDOCK

In 80 years I have worked as a farmhand, lifeguard, folk-singer, surveyor, minister, chaplain, a teacher, coach, head of school, and chief operating officer.

Over a span 50 plus years, I’ve written numerous articles, many sermons, a collection of short stories, a novella, many songs, and over 100 poems.

As a cancer survivor, I treat each new day as a gift, and welcome the offering of what William Saroyan called “the human comedy.”  My family and my faith are inseparable, and like Miguel de Unamuno, I believe in God as I believe in my friends. 

PUBLICATIONS

Poems From Essex & Elsewhere
Nine Holes, Nine Lives-The Front Nine (e-book)
Zebras in the Lake (self-published)
Real fake News (available on request)
mcmoredock@gmail.com www.mjmoredock.com

 taptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptap
                       ring
                       ring
                       ring

   we are unable to complete your call as dialed
                       sigh
   taptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptap
                ring
                       ring
                       ring
   you have reached a number that is no longer working
sigh
   taptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptap
                       ring
                       ring
                       ring
          apriete uno para español
         press two for English
                       please hold
     your call is important to us
     someone will be with you shortly
                       music
                       music
                       music
           yes how may I help you
                       HELP!
   one moment please while I connect you
                       music
                       music
                       music
               thank you for holding
          please state your full name
          the last four digits of your social security
number
          the name of your first grade teacher
          your mother’s maiden name
          your favorite lunch meat
          the square root of pi
                       silence
                       silence
                       silence
   the time for your call is about to expire
                       click
                       dial tone
 

                       F*CK!

                                                            1/19/2019

ABOUT MCCLAIN JEFFREY MOREDOCK

In 80 years I have worked as a farmhand, lifeguard, folk-singer, surveyor, minister, chaplain, a teacher, coach, head of school, and chief operating officer.

Over a span 50 plus years, I’ve written numerous articles, many sermons, a collection of short stories, a novella, many songs, and over 100 poems.

As a cancer survivor, I treat each new day as a gift, and welcome the offering of what William Saroyan called “the human comedy.”  My family and my faith are inseparable, and like Miguel de Unamuno, I believe in God as I believe in my friends. 

PUBLICATIONS

Poems From Essex & Elsewhere
Nine Holes, Nine Lives-The Front Nine (e-book)
Zebras in the Lake (self-published)
Real fake News (available on request)
mcmoredock@gmail.com www.mjmoredock.com

Hey, it’s getting hot around here
I mean, a nice hot day is a treat
But every day?
I can’t keep ice in my drink
The squirrels are sweating
Birds pant but don’t sing
Hey, it’s getting hot around here
Do the politicians care?
Congress makes no progress
The White House residential
Could be presidential
And say, for instance
My fellow Americans
It’s getting hot around here
Nooooooo…what we get
Are climate clowns who claim
It’s just a phase a blip
They know because they’ve been
Here for hundreds of years
Chopping off the head
Of every little chicken
Who looks up and says
Hey, things don’t look good
I am not a nasty person
But I imagine them drowning
In a great swirl of
Seawater and sweat
So I sit and watch as
The mercury rises
My spirits fall, and at last,
I Google: Ark Building for Idiots

9/20/2012

ABOUT MCCLAIN JEFFREY MOREDOCK

In 80 years I have worked as a farmhand, lifeguard, folk-singer, surveyor, minister, chaplain, a teacher, coach, head of school, and chief operating officer.

Over a span 50 plus years, I’ve written numerous articles, many sermons, a collection of short stories, a novella, many songs, and over 100 poems.

As a cancer survivor, I treat each new day as a gift, and welcome the offering of what William Saroyan called “the human comedy.”  My family and my faith are inseparable, and like Miguel de Unamuno, I believe in God as I believe in my friends. 

PUBLICATIONS

Poems From Essex & Elsewhere
Nine Holes, Nine Lives-The Front Nine (e-book)
Zebras in the Lake (self-published)
Real fake News (available on request)
mcmoredock@gmail.com www.mjmoredock.com

Every town has a dump
Some have credentials
Many rooted in old habits
All piled high with the
Detritus of destiny
The old making way for the new 

But here in Our Town
We have a Transfer Station
A place where
Pass the trash and
In for a buck is not a game 

Just a dollar a pound
Unload the unneeded
The unnecessary, the
Bad and the ugly
Only the good live again
Recycled, reborn, reused 

The large scale weighs the
Refuse of our lives and we
Wait while our ticket is punched
Always with the Big Question
Really the only question
Will my end be like this 

When I am no longer needed
No longer necessary
Will I be rubbish or renewal
Rejected or recycled 

For…no matter how

We lead our lives
We all end up at
The Transfer Station

ABOUT MCCLAIN JEFFREY MOREDOCK

In 80 years I have worked as a farmhand, lifeguard, folk-singer, surveyor, minister, chaplain, a teacher, coach, head of school, and chief operating officer.

Over a span 50 plus years, I’ve written numerous articles, many sermons, a collection of short stories, a novella, many songs, and over 100 poems.

As a cancer survivor, I treat each new day as a gift, and welcome the offering of what William Saroyan called “the human comedy.”  My family and my faith are inseparable, and like Miguel de Unamuno, I believe in God as I believe in my friends. 

PUBLICATIONS

Poems From Essex & Elsewhere
Nine Holes, Nine Lives-The Front Nine (e-book)
Zebras in the Lake (self-published)
Real fake News (available on request)
mcmoredock@gmail.com www.mjmoredock.com

hideous veins
and mysterious pains
no nail exactly the same
the feet that made my living
have become less than forgiving
I’ll never make that mistake again 

arches have fallen
arthritis keeps calling
an ankle that pops on command
I walk on lost padding
while birthdays keep adding
to Doctor Scholl’s retirement plan 

with toes out of reach
a plantar facia breech
hurts more than anything can
my heels are compressing
under skin that is stretching
in colors that match a Cezanne 

my days, away they flew
now waiting in heavens queue
the miles these soles have spanned
all the aches and half the fun
lay on my couch, call it a run
old age asks much to understand

ABOUT JIMMY TEE

Jimmy Tee is a poet from Milton, Vermont
jmmytee300@yahoo.com
jimmyteeblog.wordpress.com

In the dream,
she wraps her legs around his body
like roots, supple and strong,
she anchors him there.

He is old now,
with temples lined in crow’s feet,
deep lines, like plowed fields, yet
his smile remains the same.
It is boyish, full of mischief,
and she is glad to see
he has not yet let go of who he once was. 

She scans the length of his body
curled into the mountain where he rests,
His fingers, now covered in deep green moss,
pliant no more, but alive, still,
moist and verdant, and where
she touches her cheek to his hand
breathing in the earthy scent of him,
she thinks she feels a pulse. 

There will be no awakening.
Gone now forty years,
he is the humus of her life. 

She has grown, a full woman, fertile, too bold,
perhaps, from the girl he remembered.
She had to learn to walk alone,
And that made her strong.  

She curves her shoulders and arms into his broad back,
her breasts touch his skin, her face rests
in the hollow of his neck, holding him there.
She does not let loose her embrace. 

Tenderness seeps out like rain,
the mountain shrugs of letting go.
She follows, falling into memory,
and still, he sleeps.

ABOUT MARY L. COLLINS

Mary L. Collins is a writer/activist.  A Burlington native, Mary lives in Elmore, VT and works for the State of Vermont where she manages communications for Vermont’s Foster Care Services. Prior to that, Mary worked in marketing and communications for various non profit organizations, owned a production company, and spent many years in broadcasting. She is the founder of Lakota Tiny House Nation, a building project on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in SD where she has been involved for over 15 years as an advocate for indigenous rights and cultural understanding. She is a recipient of recognition from the national organization, “Giving Tuesday” as a “Woman Who Cares”, and a published poet. She has one son, Will.

by Mary L. Collins
[for Pete Catches]

how did I know his medicine ways?
a broken old man, head low to his chest,
hands on his knees. He seemed lost.
The television was on. Loud.
His recliner pulled up real close, so he could hear it.
He was watching rodeo on a western channel.
I remember sitting at his feet and saying “thank you”.
As a guest in his home, I was mindful of the intrusion.
For someone like him, to have someone like me
inside his home, well, that was a big deal.
It was a generosity I am just now understanding.
He held nothing back. Not his drunkenness
Not his frailty. Not his medicine ways.
But I could not read through the spectacle of the man
who had just danced four days straight,
at his advanced age, who had healed the sick,
and taken the poison out of their lives.
I could not reconcile the needs
of the many who came to be doctored
taking it all in, purging the hurts and injury
heaped upon his loved ones, generations
upon generations, himself alone, carrying the burden of it.
Drinking helped him forget. He was, after all, an ordinary, humble man.
It’s hard to carry so much for so long
without collapsing under the weight of it all.
So when I went to say my goodbyes,
I sat quietly at his feet, and said,“Thank you for letting me come here.”
He raised his head slightly, and said, “I love you.”
I said, “I love you too.” I touched his hand.
He let me hold it for a minute, and then he slipped back into his weariness.
Or was it somewhere else he escaped to? 

Black Elk said this was not the real world. I remember.  

There was nothing more to say. I let go the old man’s hand, stood, and left.
Medicine ways are more mysterious than I can ever describe or understand.
The rodeo played on the TV set. The old man asleep there in his recliner,
tipped back, feet up, eyes closed.  

Here was a holy man. And I was healed.

ABOUT MARY L. COLLINS

Mary L. Collins is a writer/activist.  A Burlington native, Mary lives in Elmore, VT and works for the State of Vermont where she manages communications for Vermont’s Foster Care Services. Prior to that, Mary worked in marketing and communications for various non profit organizations, owned a production company, and spent many years in broadcasting. She is the founder of Lakota Tiny House Nation, a building project on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in SD where she has been involved for over 15 years as an advocate for indigenous rights and cultural understanding. She is a recipient of recognition from the national organization, “Giving Tuesday” as a “Woman Who Cares”, and a published poet. She has one son, Will.

This morning,
Walking,
Gathering leaves
For the memory
Before snow,
Wind and cold
Take their harvest.
Gathering leaves
More splendid in the present
Falling
Than in the springing.
The gathering of leaves
In the wind
And under foot
At our seasonal
Rituals
Leaves the children tired
After work and play and talk,
The meal done
And the dishes washed,
Leaves are gathered in benediction
For night falling, distance traveled,
The long snowy roads of winter
Down the hall.
Gathering leaves–death of the body
Of those we have loved
Who nourished us
In our sapling days–
The dwindling of our kindling.
Gathering Leaves
From those we loved, with whom we shared
Bed, bread, children;
Taking leave out of season,
The Orchard overgrown,
Untended,
The garden of delight
Springing back to brush,
Another forest
Growing in,
Gathering leaves.

©Ron Lay-Sleeper

[inspired by ‘Lady of the Lake’ (1936) by Horace Pippin (from MET 2017)]

Freedom only comes from the warm approval of the summer sun
As I rush out into the wilderness from the caves of captivity that
Define my log cabin and throw down that woven blanket
That has been a part of this Earth longer than I have been here.
Freedom only comes from releasing my body from the confines
Of modern clothing with its hose that treats my legs as if they were
Sausages on display in the deli and pearls that belong to the clams.
Freedom comes from my unaltered form fixating on the unchanged
Mountains and lake that surround me.
They were too daunting to the men
That threaten to destroy them but they invite me to sit with them.

Freedom comes from the Sun’s favorable gaze on me;
His smile illuminates my eggshell skin and
Makes me emulate his mistress, the moon, as if I could
Embody all her glory and beauty. The water from the lake
Begs for my attention with each tap of its tongue
Against the Earth. Together, the lake and I glisten in harmony.
I show the Earth the body that she has graced upon me
And nothing is more freeing

ABOUT JENN TRAVERS

Jenn Travers is currently a senior at the University of Vermont, where she studies English and theatre. She started writing poetry last spring. Her work has been exhibited in UVM’s Ekphrastic Poetry Reading at the Fleming Museum in April 2018, Wild Burlington for Art Hop at Artsriot in September 2018, and will be featured in Laurel Moon’s upcoming publication. She has recently returned from studying abroad at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England.  

[inspired by ‘If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution!’ by Steven Evans at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston] 

I saw ‘Starboy’,
and I thought it was you 

But, no,
you were Starman,
and it wasn’t what I thought

A bright boy
tries to fill the gap
you left in the world,
and line it with purple feathers left when
the Violet-crowned Woodnymph
flew the nest
David, where you are,
are you still
a one-being revolution,
genteelly shaking up the stars on the axis of your
impeccable garb and form
while the earthboy
whimpers in the dark night
of this world’s soul
spinning poetry that hurts
in its ugliness and pain
as millions probably sing along,
thinking it’s literal,
oblivious parrots
of scathing observation
and
stealthy satire-if-I-cat-ion
hidden in the code
of plain sight 

David, where you are,
are you a peacock
among blackbirds,

or are you
a blackbird among
greater peacocks, 

or have you finally
found your flock, 

realizing that your
androgyny is simply
the nature and being
of the spirit

and that what others
yearn for,
you knew at the
core of your being 

We are in an ugly moment
down here, 

and we need the souls
who fell to Earth
to wake up
to their rain/reign of
glitter and white feathers within 

and for every Major Tom
to realize they are
not adrift alone -in space 

David, where you are,
please smile on every being –
each and all a Ziggy in blackbird drag,
just bursting to blaze forth
in the glitter and white feathers
of our peacock selves

ABOUT JC

Founder of The Poartry Project, poet, visual artist, cartographer of the unseen, builder of loving worlds through loving words
poartry.org