Poetry

Walker Art Center
Minneapolis
Alexander Calder Exhibit

Just people, you know -
Their shapes and sizes
And the things they do
With their hands;
How they move their feet and fingers,
All crossed and stretched and moving together;
The movement of faces,
Lifting lips and eyebrows.
Nodding and turning.
The free-form people, you know.
They were all there

.

Barbara Stoner
Poems from the Heartland Read more about At the Gallery

Longfellow month has come round again.

You see, every (or nearly every) morning, I do a few yoga poses. I can't say they have made me any more limber, but at this stage of the game, I'm afraid to stop. I'm afraid I'll just rust up. So I don't fool myself that I'm doing my body that much good. These days I do it for the poetry. Read more about How To Build a Canoe

Yes, back to the trees. Because where else do you go for shelter in high summer? And what better vision can there be for the last third of life than drilling for sweet honey in the rock?

Green Figs

By Edward Hirsch

I want to live like that little fig tree

that sprouted up at the beach last spring

and spread its leaves over the sandy rock.

All summer its stubborn green fruit

(tiny flowers covered with a soft skin)

ripened and grew in the bright salt spray.

Door County is a friend of mine. On Facebook. So a couple of days ago, when they posted a picture of Cave Point, I remembered a poem I wrote years ago. My then husband was doing a documentary of some sort about Door County, and we went to Cave Point to get some audio of waves crashing on rocks. Read more about Door County

Caught up with Bill Moyers last night and caught this segment with Philip Appleman. Read more about The Power of Love

U.S. Blues
Words by Robert Hunter; music by Jerry Garcia
Copyright Ice Nine Publishing

Red and white/blue suede shoes
I'm Uncle Sam /how do you do?
Gimme five/I'm still alive
Ain't no luck/I learned to duck

Check my pulse/it don't change
Stay seventy two/come shine or rain

Still June, I'm still on a tree kick. And I've got another old chestnut for you. I wish I had more, but the fact is, there aren't many old chestnuts around these days. Haven't been for quite some time. As a matter of fact, I was thrilled to discover, researching for today, that there are, in fact, American Chestnuts still standing somewhere in Wisconsin. Read more about Another Old Chestnut

I claimed before that as a child, I lived in the trees. At least, I tried. In Decatur, Illinois, where I did most of my growing up, there was a mulberry tree in our backyard where I spent many a summer day. Both me and the books I smuggled out of the house and up the tree with me came down at the end of the day, in season of course, stained from head to toe, frontispiece to end papers, with mulberry juice. Read more about Sitting In Trees

That's what I thought when I first read Robert Frost's poem, Birches. I spent my childhood in the trees. Usually I'd find a cozy corner on a juncture of limb and trunk where I could read and dream the day away. But sometimes I would climb on up and up and up to the tallest, most spindly branches I could reach, where I could see out over the canopy and let the wind rock me back and forth.

I don't think I ever climbed a birch. I don't know why. Read more about Wish I'd Thought of That

It's probably the most reviled poem in the English language, and for good reason. It's bad science, bad theology, and bad poetry. It probably gives trees a bad name, too. But it is, for all that, the one poem about trees that people remember. And the first two lines aren't too bad. Alfred Joyce Kilmer was killed at the Second Battle of the Marne in 1918. For which sacrifice we should be grateful. In oh so many ways. Read more about Speaking of Trees