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Communion – Grey Brown

Posted in family, Imagery, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 19, 2026| 2 Comments »

insect
 . 
[ 3 poems by Grey Brown ]
 . 
Costume
 . 
I am five, maybe six,
and my mother
is taking pictures of me
in my costume.
I stand statue still
before the hearth,
sneakers on,
plastic pumpkin in hand,
ready.
 . 
I have chosen a princess dress
and a witch hat.
I like the way I look in purple
and pink, but I need the hat.
 . 
My teenage brother walks by
and announces that
I cannot be both
a princess and a witch.
Because of the hat
I am bold and remind him
that he is too old for Halloween
and that no matter what I am,
witch, princess or sister,
he will not be getting candy.
 . 
My mother does not say a word
but cocks an eyebrow
the way she does
when she is reading a good book.
Then, as a princess,
I bow.
 . 
Grey Brown
from Communion, Redhawk Publications, The Catawba Valley Community College Press. Hickory, NC; © 2026
 . 
❀    ❀    ❀
 . 
On Belief
 . 
My daughter learns of constellations,
the unfinished dot-to-dot
of Andromeda and Cassiopeia,
 . 
the poor mother and baby bears
headless, missing paws.
She dreams of planets
 . 
and their rings,
adoring moons
that spin and sing.
 . 
Stargazing, we find our way
to a dark, empty field
to view the comet.
 . 
My daughter imagines
bold strokes, a ball of light
with a vivid, streaming tail,
 . 
cartoon crisp and lively colored.
But she finds only
a blurred hairball of dust and ice.
 . 
more chaos than divine creation,
at best, the whorled thumbprint
of some god, preoccupied.
 . 
Grey Brown
from Communion, Redhawk Publications, The Catawba Valley Community College Press. Hickory, NC; © 2026
 . 
❀    ❀    ❀
 . 
I Hate October
 . 
I just seem to lose family and friends
as the light angles down—
my grandmother to colon cancer,
the neighbor’s daughter
who just overdosed,
my dearest friend tucked in a shawl,
the book falling from his hand.
They all seem to let go,
as daylight wanes
and a cool hand disturbs the earth.
 . 
I talk more to my mother
at this time of year,
but she is of little help,
so bad at living herself,
her drinking and smoking.
 . 
She passed in the fall
of her fifty-ninth year.
She was an ardent fan
of witches and ghosts,
pumpkins and gourds.
I still decorate for her
trying to do my best
with the darkness.
 . 
Grey Brown
from Communion, Redhawk Publications, The Catawba Valley Community College Press. Hickory, NC; © 2026
 . 
 . 
❀    ❀    ❀
 . 
Last week I caught a portion of an interview with an avant garde artist describing his latest installation. The interviewer asked what message the artist intended his art to convey. The artist replied, “A bad poem descends into meaning.” Well, that is certainly one statement that has opted not to descend into meaning. What is a good poem, then? Incomprehensible?
 . 
Maybe a good poem does hold meaning, but close, cupped in its hands. The reader, craning for a glimpse, is encouraged to open his or her own hands and discover what meaning may be found within. The good poem is not a meal cut into bits for a toothless child; it is an enticement for the complex palate. And reading a poem is no dry exercise in wheedling out the poet’s intent; it is savoring, experiencing. The poem doesn’t descend into meaning. The reader does.
 . 
Grey Brown’s poems in Communion, taken one by one, do not descend – they hover. Each one flashes into existence, the sudden arrival of a hummingbird. It pauses in flight and for a moment we can count every exquisite feather of its crimson gorget, but its wings are still whirring too fast to see. And then the next poem arrives. Line by line, page by page, the reader begins to perceive what is cupped in the poet’s hands. A sacrament that promises grace and life? A keen blade to mingle the blood of both reader and writer alike?
 . 
The book’s introduction defines communion as the sharing or exchange of intimate thoughts and feelings, especially when the exchange is on a mental or spiritual level. These poems are precisely such a serial exchange, linked in sequence of unfolding awareness, joined together not only by the progression of years and generations but also by the uncertainty, disappointment, and revelation that are inherent in one’s personal search for meaning. With the turn of each page, I find myself reflecting on my own fears and failures. Is there any hope for salvation? The poet grants a glimpse: none of us ever really survive, / but we get by.
 . 
❀
 . 
Grey Brown (Chapel Hill, NC) is the founder of the Literary Arts Program of the Health Arts Network at Duke and served as director for 25 years. Communion is her second full length poetry collection and is available from Redhawk Publications.
 . 
Additional poetry by Grey Brown at Verse and Image:
 . 
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❀    ❀    ❀    ❀    ❀
 . 
Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:
. . . . . every Friday I present one or two poems I’ve read this week that particularly speak to me;
. . . . . some Saturdays I present one or two poems submitted by YOU, my readers.
 . 
If you would like to offer a poem for consideration, either by a favorite author or your own work, please view these GUIDELINES for Saturday Readers Share:
 . 
 . 
If you would like to receive an email each time a post appears, please SUBSCRIBE to Verse and Image using the button on the Home Page.
 . 
If you have a hard time finding the SUBSCRIBE button on this WordPress site, you can send me your email address and I will add you to the subscriber list. Send your request to
 . 
COMMENTS@GRIFFINPOETRY.COM
 . 
Thanks again for joining the conversation.
 . 
– Bill
 . 
Doughton Park Tree, 2022-05-17B
 . 
 . 

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Spirit and Element — Joseph Bathanti

Posted in family, Imagery, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 12, 2026| 2 Comments »

 . 
[ two poems by Joseph Bathanti ]
 . 
The Cellar
 . 
When my sister talked to boys on the phone,
she stretched the cord down the cellar stairs
into the dark and whispered.
 . 
My parents didn’t like her down there, barefoot
on cold concrete, without a light,
talking to a boy. We had to pretend
 . 
nothing at all odd about it –
supper on the table, sacramental
supper, the sacred daily rite
 . 
of our commingled lives interrupted.
We couldn’t even mention Marie
in the cellar, exchanging on the phone
 . 
whatever it might have been, at that moment,
with a nameless boy.
Everything had to be as if it weren’t happening;
 . 
that was how one got through things.
My parents would have punished me
had they known what I was thinking.
 . 
I was not at all curious about them.
But I often wondered about Marie,
sixteen, 1966: Johnson’s first term
 . 
after the assassination,
the year I started remembering
with dreadful precision.
 . 
My father taught her to drive
our blue Belair. Riding shotgun,
I adored that Chevy, my sister behind the wheel,
 . 
windows down, her long hair blowing.
I punched radio buttons, station to station,
lashing music over us, like I was typing her story,
 . 
as she sang from memory, and I mumbled.
Without even realizing, she shaved the hairpin
on Mellon Terrace while I held my breath
 . 
and tried to get it all down with speed
and truth before 1967 showed up
and she left for college at Slippery Rock.
 . 
I loved her secret life,
living all the yearned for alone,
in the cellar: with the coal furnace,
 . 
copper pipes weaving in and out
of the ancient rafters that held up the house,
my father’s tools, our sleds,
 . 
shelves of empty jars, canned hams,
fruit cocktail—statues and crucifixes
my mother thought a little much for upstairs.
 . 
In her nightgown, Mother washed clothes
down there, where my father shaved,
our retreat when we craved solitude,
 . 
in it very center a drain
that flowed to the city sewer,
then the Allegheny, west on the Ohio,
 . 
all the way to California.
Marie ascended to us, from the cellar,
changed, all of us changed.
 . 
What had she and that boy talked of?
We made the Sign of the Cross,
said Grace, and ate supper.
 . 
Joseph Bathanti
from Steady Daylight, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, LA; © 2026 by Joseph Bathanti
 . 
❀    ❀    ❀
 . 
Right Guard
 . 
As he aged, my father dwindled,
not in stature—though he grew smaller
as elders must—but rather in estate.
He never required much,
 . 
insisted on giving things away.
What am I going to do with all this?
Suddenly I had his shirt,
wristwatch, hammer and plane—
 . 
his car keys and driver’s license
when the time came. I arrived,
the night of his death, and stole a moment alone in his room
 . 
at The Pines, a name too green
and pulsing, filled with trees—
near infuriating—for a tomb.
My mother had died a year earlier.
 . 
To save money to pass along to me
and my sister, my father requested
a move to an efficiency—a monk’s cell.
At heart, he was an ascetic.
 . 
I sat on the edge of his small bed,
where he’d perched that morning—
September 3,
his 59th wedding anniversary,
 . 
my mother gone a year—to quell his vertigo,
hands folded, his dawn office,
before launching his day.
He witnessed the first rind
 . 
of sabbath sun cross the sash.
Song sparrows chanted Asperges me.
Then, prepared, he rose.
I stood and paced behind his shade,
 . 
gauging where, in the modest span
between his bedclothes and coffeepot,
he decided to join my mother—
privately, no announcement, illness,
 . 
deathwatch. No priest.
The attention would have embarrassed him.
His only flourish was the white pressed
handkerchief on him at all times.
 . 
Perhaps he glimpsed his fetch
or, responsive to my mother’s whims,
her beckoning;
or his own mother, whom, at five,
 . 
he’d lost to childbirth.
Given neither to signs nor bodement,
never mysterious, but like us all
who parse life step by step,
 . 
my father kept a secret life
he alone entered—nothing terrible,
or even curious—a silent chamber
he had the wisdom, the courage,
 . 
to leave locked, the key hidden—
though he had little use for metaphor.
A millwright, a steelman,
he discovered the ladled heat,
 . 
and molten pour, the union shop,
a practice he abided and died for.
What was there left of his to take?
He’d already given me everything.
 . 
I wandered into the tiny bathroom.
Stationed on the shelf above the sink
stood a can of Right Guard,
the only deodorant my dad used—
 . 
Original, of course, Sport:
the logo stick figure, in full throttle,
bolting from the blocks.
I grabbed it and pressed the actuator.
 . 
The valve hissed and hung a familiar
incensed mist. Out of it,
like a genie summoned from its lamp,
appeared my father.
 . 
Joseph Bathanti
from Steady Daylight, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, LA; © 2026 by Joseph Bathanti
 . 

salamander eggs

 . 
❀    ❀    ❀
 . 
spirit and element, inseparably connected, receiveth a fullness of joy;
Doctrine and Covenants 90:5e (1833)
 . 
What was there left of his to take?
He’d already given me everything.
 . 
Elemental – reduced to its essential form, pure, vital, a foundation upon which everything else can be built. Joseph Bathanti’s poems in Steady Daylight. Here in a few words and lines is a life; here are many lives, family, community. Here is a life’s span, from unremembered ancestors through all the days on earth to gathering in the celestial. Here is school and church and baseball, steel mill and pearl-handled basting knife, scungilli and sfogliatelle, the lingering perfume of de Nobili cigars and incense of Right Guard. Every image is pure. Every moment is alive. Read these lines and live.
 . 
When Joseph Bathanti sits down with pen and paper the universe stretches, edges itself up around him, and words become its center. Some poetry is music but these poems are whispered secrets, thwacks on the back of the head, huge smothering hugs from floral aunts, hundred pound hods of mortar. Steady Daylight is a world that has completely drawn me into itself. As I read I become the boy, the man, the child of mother and father. The simplest daily routine and the most mundane object reveal their essence. They are good. The drain in the cellar connects the house to the entire world. Sitting down to supper changes everything. Each of us must eat. Each of us must face the last day of someone we love, and our own last day. Take a moment for Grace, for a few words that want to connect it all. Spirit and element, the days of our lives woven into a pattern so frustratingly complicated that we can’t tell its beginning from its end, but so simple that we discover it in one word – joy.
 . 
❀    ❀    ❀
 . 
Joseph Bathanti has written more than twenty books: poetry, novels, short stories. He served as North Carolina Poet Laureate from 2012-2014, has been inducted into the NC Literary Hall of Fame, and received the state’s highest civilian honor, the North Carolina Award in Literature. Every time he as arrived in Elkin to read at our public library, he begins his remarks, “It’s good to be back in the center of the universe.” I believe he carries that center with him everywhere he goes.
 . 
Steady Daylight is available from LSU Press HERE
Other poems by Joseph Bathanti at Verse and Image:
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❀    ❀    ❀    ❀    ❀
 . 
Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:
. . . . . every Friday I present one or two poems I’ve read this week that particularly speak to me;
. . . . . some Saturdays I present one or two poems submitted by YOU, my readers.
 . 
If you would like to offer a poem for consideration, either by a favorite author or your own work, please view these GUIDELINES for Saturday Readers Share:
 . 
 . 
If you would like to receive an email each time a post appears, please SUBSCRIBE to Verse and Image using the button on the Home Page.
 . 
If you have a hard time finding the SUBSCRIBE button on this WordPress site, you can send me your email address and I will add you to the subscriber list. Send your request to
 . 
COMMENTS@GRIFFINPOETRY.COM
 . 
Thanks again for joining the conversation.
 . 
– Bill
 . 
 . 

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Saturday Share – Bradley Strahan

Posted in family, tagged , , , , , , on May 23, 2026| 4 Comments »

The journey is . . .

 . 
Saturday morning readers share:
Bradley Strahan
 . 
To My Father, as He Should Be in Paradise
 . 
Surely there’s a baseball diamond there
where you could be the pitcher you were meant to be.
 . 
And Marilyn, not Mom, must be on your arm,
sexy as the picture you kept on your shop wall.
 . 
There would be beaches with ice cream stands
and real hot dogs with gobs of mustard leaking out.
 . 
No bills you can’t pay, no demands you can’t meet . . . .
You’d have your ’55 two-tone Chevy back, bright as new.
 . 
Oh, and that odd sense of humor would have those angels
rolling in heavenly aisles at your mangled puns.
 . 
There’d be tons of swinging there, and not just chariots:
Benny’s boys and Glen and Tommy too, all playing just for you.
 . 
Funny, I never saw you dance but I know you could.
Cut a rug Dad! And those pennies from heaven are all yours too.
 . 
B.R. Strahan
 . 
 . 
Bradley R. Strahan is best known to North Carolina writers and readers as the long time editor and publisher of the poetry journal Visions International. His creative influence, however, spans continents, with a worldwide following for his work since 1976. His publications include several books of poetry and over 500 poems in journals in North America, the UK, Ireland, Belgium, and Korea. He has been anthologized in numerous collections and translated into French, Spanish, Dutch, Serbian, Macedonian, Korean, etc.. He has lectured and read his work in America, Europe and Asia; is a former Fulbright Professor of Poetry & American Culture; taught poetry at Georgetown University; for over 20 years sponsored a series of international poetry readings at Rock Creek Gallery in DC and other venues; and in 2001 replaced John Ashbery as the American poet at the “Literaire Podia Amsterdam” in Holland.
NOTE: Brad has a few copies left of his book “A Parting Glass.” See the link below from 2022 for sample poems. If you would like a copy contact him at brs.poetry@gmail.com; $5 to cover postage and a bit of the printing.
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❀    ❀    ❀
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Additional poetry by Brad Strahan at Verse and Image:
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VISIONS INTERNATIONAL featured at Verse and Image:
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Cookie & Wilson

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❀    ❀    ❀    ❀    ❀
 . 
Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:
. . . . . every Friday I present one or two poems I’ve read this week that particularly speak to me;
. . . . . Saturdays I present one or two poems submitted by YOU, my readers.
 . 
If you would like to offer a poem for consideration, either by a favorite author or your own work, please view these GUIDELINES for Saturday Readers Share:
 . 
 . 
If you would like to receive an email each time a post appears, please SUBSCRIBE to Verse and Image using the button on the Home Page.
 . 
If you have a hard time finding the SUBSCRIBE button on this WordPress site, you can send me your email address and I will add you to the subscriber list. Send your request to
 . 
COMMENTS@GRIFFINPOETRY.COM
 . 
Thanks again for joining the conversation.
 . 
– Bill
 . 
Doughton Park Tree -- 5/1/2021
 . 

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