Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘poetry’ Category

Maura High – Field as Auditorium

Posted in ecology, Ecopoetry, Imagery, poetry, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 30, 2026| 2 Comments »

 . 
[ 2 poems by Maura High ]
 . 
Excursions in Moss
+++++ — for Barbara
 . 
They were here, all this time,
in this same world,
here for the seeing:
 . 
green shag and starfield, clumps, pinheads,
frilled with lichen,
 . 
and poking up through them the green
first leaves of violet, wood sorrel,
for example, among the ephemera —
 . 
here, in the piedmont of North Carolina,
all the greens in creation:
a landscape within landscapes,
slow as,
quiet as,
 . 
as back along
the rims of lakes and drainages in the early Cambrian.
In this same old world:
the same creep and cling
and drill into the surface
 . 
with their fragile rhizoids, into rock fissures,
now bark, now exposed root,
 . 
into the Anthropocene and still
green between paving stone,
on verges, stuck fast
 . 
to rocks along the banks of Bolin Creek,
down a grit-and-gravel driveway.
 . 
A green gift
my friend gave me:
moss scrapings, from her yard
 . 
over in the next county;
in late summer
 . 
the waggly spore capsules
pop open, and a million spores float
off and up into whatever wind.
 . 
❀    ❀    ❀
 . 
Reprise
+++++ — for Frances
 . 
One leaf falls from the hickory
+++++ outside my window—
 . 
+++++ a slow loop right,
an about turn, and squiggle—
 . 
so cursory a gesture, it looks
+++++ like something written
 . 
+++++ in an alphabet of leaves:
a charm against insects
 . 
and woodpecker; a plea
+++++ for all the leaves that fall,
 . 
+++++ blacken, and rot, and leach
into the earth, and rise again
 . 
to new petiole, new leaf,
+++++ singing the green song of desire
 . 
+++++ and the brown of thrift;
the whispery, creaky name
 . 
the tree gives itself;
+++++ or the name we have given it,
 . 
+++++ full of ourselves and our own
histories, as a child
 . 
writes her given name and sees
+++++ herself there, her first self-portrait.
 . 
Maura High
from Field as Auditorium, Redhawk Publications, The Catawba Community College Press; Hickory NC; © 2025.
 . 
 . 
❀    ❀    ❀    ❀    ❀
 . 
Maura High speaks the language of wild. She writes in an alphabet of leaves. Her poems sometimes withdraw entirely from the touch or consideration of human presence and become encompassed entirely by field, by forest – crownbeard setting seed in the wilding meadow, Bolin Creek about its business of undercutting a bank of clay, moss creating soil from stone. Maura translates for us the deep language of life and of time. Where did this come from? Where are we going?
 . 
As I read Maura High’s poetry, I consider the many lives I have overlooked, forgotten, ignored. I am reminded to listen for the soft peeps of sparrows and finches settling into the shrubbery at sunset. Listen closer – the seep of water in the dirt beneath my feet and the striving of rootlets and mycelia. Closer yet – the movement of seasons, long connections across time, encircling connections gathering life and nudging forward. From careful observation and contemplation of the unremarkable features of a creek, a tree, a flower, Maura creates an opportunity for us, her readers, to participate in the most remarkable story of all.
 . 
❀
 . 
Maura High was born in Wales but grew up on Planet Earth. She has established tender rhizoids in piedmont North Carolina but the wind is apt to blow her to distant climes at any moment. These two poems are from her newest book, Field as Auditorium, from Redhawk. She has also published The Garden of Persuasions, winner of the Jacar Press chapbook contest (2013), and Stone, Water, Time in collaboration with artist Lyric Kinard, Lyric Art Publishing (2019). Sample more of her poetry at MauraHigh.com.
 . 
 . 
❀    ❀    ❀    ❀    ❀
 . 
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;
. . . . . every Saturday 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 2021-10-23
 . 

Read Full Post »

Saturday Share – Barnett

Posted in family, poetry, tagged , , , , on December 20, 2025| 2 Comments »

 . 
Saturday morning readers share:
Nancy Barnett
 . 
Death Tree
 . 
The aging oak tree on our block, which we had watched together,
Noting the frailty of its branches even in Spring,
Now, stripped and gaunt after an autumnal hurricane
Stands in death tall, powerful, alone.
 . 
I walk beneath, longing to tell you,
“Our tree is gone” – but you are not here.
You went out in another tempest, bruised and broken
Before one leaf had turned to gold.
 . 
Like the tree you stand before me,
Shattered of branches, defaced of bole and leaf,
Torn away without gentleness,
Naked, wrapped in the invisible sheet of pain,
Noble in the completeness of death.
 . 
I walk in sharp winds that cut life between us;
In clearness of winter light,
Along icy edges of despair,
I keep watch by your dark death tree;
Knowing in storms that will come
No lightning bold, in terror or anguish,
Can shatter the roots that bind me to you,
Plunged deep in primal earth clay,
In the passion and endurance of love.
 . 
Katherine Garrison Chapin (1890-1977)
 . 
 . 
This poem by Katherine Garrison Chapin is one I’ve had for 40  or 50  years.  I believe I cut it out from the New Yorker. It’s a little on the somber side; not for the holidays!
 . 
It caught my eye because of my memory of the elm tree we had in our back yard in our home in Springfield, Missouri. I lost one of my brothers when I was 11 in 1962 to a car accident. When I was 15 years old I came home from school one day and the tree was gone! It was during the elm tree  blight and the city was removing the elm trees. This was about 1966.
 . 
The tree was special because we had bought an old house and my mother, noticing my reaction  at 7 years old, told me we’d put up a tree swing. (It hadn’t been lived in for awhile and looked haunted…. We’d owned a nice brick home in Independence.)  My brothers put up the swing and I had much enjoyment swinging in the tree for a few years. When we came home from my brother’s funeral I headed straight for the tree swing.
 . 
The last two lines I find especially poignant. There was no bereavement counseling in those days and over the years and to this day I’ve found comfort in poetry.
 . 
– Nancy 
 . 
Additional poetry shared by Nancy Barnett at Verse and Image:
 . 
 . 
❀    ❀    ❀    ❀    ❀
 . 
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;
. . . . . every Saturday 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:
 . 
 . 
Also note: after January 1, 2026 I will no longer be sending separate weekly email reminders.
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
 . 
 . 

Read Full Post »

Who?

Posted in family, poetry, tagged , , , , , , , , , on October 31, 2025| 5 Comments »

 .
 . 
[with 3 poems by Robin Greene]
 . 
Everyone is Someone Else
 . 
Everyone is someone else tonight.
Sitting on hallway stairs, bowl of packaged candies
on my lap, I rise to greet four princesses – facemasks
hard and identical, two Energizer bunnies,
an army soldier in fatigues, and three wise men –
brothers they tell me. Later, as my son peels off
his Ninja costume to sleep in the chaos of his take,
two new moons, discovered around Uranus,
appear on CNN. And strangely, Uranus
is one of his spelling words this week.
The world seems driven by repetitions:
the ant’s legs scrambling across the kitchen tile,
sheet rain blowing against window glass,
the perennial grass relentless beneath
our feet. Robert Creeley once removed
his glass eye in a poetry workshop and described life
as a dress rehearsal, but never said for what . . . .
And once there was a man I loved and married.
We made three babies, but one died inside me,
and I bled for a month. Sometimes I pretend
that shit like this just happens, and whatever
meaning I search for is like searching for the faces
of strangers on this Halloween: behind masks
are masks, behind motion is motion.
 . 
Robin Greene
from Lateral Drift, Windows on History Press, Durham NC; © 2002
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but (even) then face to face.
I Corinthians 13:12 (KJV – adapted)
 . 
Is everyone someone else, or just me? Am I who I seem to be, and would I let you know if I weren’t? I was that kid in English class who read every story in the book even though only four were assigned. I was the guy mixing and measuring in the back of the lab while the chemistry teacher was up front confounding the class. In college they had to drag me out of the science building every night when it closed. I chose medicine as my profession from some hazy expectation that it would let me keep learning new stuff all my life.
 . 
Now in my closing decades I want to say, “Stop! I’ve learned enough!” I don’t need to know any more than I do right now about all the hard stuff. Parent, caregiver, worrier, fuckup – enough! There is only one way, however, that life will finally drag you out of the classroom. To paraphrase a caution about Nature: Life gives you the test first, then teaches you the lesson.
 . 
A mirror, like a person, ages. Over a century shiny metal applied to glass tarnishes and darkens. It reveals its pits and blemishes. Attrition, wearing down, is not far from contrition, wearing ashes. Paul writing his first letter to the Corinthians expects us to outgrow our foolishness and confusion, set aside childish ways and think like grownups. He dangles the promise that we may experience eternity with God face to face. I hope that’s true, that my self is more durable than my molecules, but I wonder about all this learning and knowing in the meantime. Life – has it been worth it? Even the person who passes with an “A” still answered 5% wrong. That adds up to a lot of foolishness and confusion I am carrying.
 . 
Even gazing into a dark mirror, I still see myself face to face. Who is that looking back? All the knowing I’ve tried so hard to accumulate and hold onto, all the elements I’ve combined into myself, in that mirror they become shadows fading away at the periphery. The person in that mirror – who is he really? Perhaps on my final day, when the blazing light of the universe is revealed and ultimate mysteries are mysterious no longer, I will also see, clear and defined, face to face, me.
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
The Necklace
 . 
Under cool running water, my mother clutches
a knife, debones chicken breasts the color
 . 
of a winter moon; I’ll never be a woman,
I think and rise from my half-lotus
 . 
on the countertop – eight years-old –
my flat, tight body still an ally.
 . 
My mother and I never speak of this
apprenticeship, field archeologist
 . 
I’ve become, unearthing the glyphs
and ruins of my gender
 . 
until my father and brother arrive,
noisy as blind men,
 . 
bumping their way across the linoleum tiles –
breaking our silence
 . 
as though it were neither real
nor holy.
 . 
Later, the smells of cologne, hairspray
filter through the house.
 . 
Steam from the iron sizzles
on its aluminum pad
 . 
as mother presses
my father’s slacks and shirt,
 . 
and sets up snacks for the babysitter –
fashioning each small part of our lives
 . 
as though they were hand-made beads
for a necklace some Inca woman
 . 
might make and pass down
to her only daughter.
 . 
Robin Greene
from Lateral Drift, Windows on History Press, Durham NC; © 2002
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Just as an earthquake or long drought may expose new strata to the paleontologist’s questing eye, so a pile of books tumbling off a desk. Robin Greene wrote these poems in Lateral Drift twenty-five years ago. When I open the book today for the first time, how powerfully the lines still reach out to me and into me. How truthfully they speak; how in the present they are; how they open themselves, and me. Who is the voice in these unsheathed knives of stories? Who was she then, and is she still? But why even ask such a thing? The poems are who they are made to be; they carry the light and the darkness they were created for.
 . 
Better to ask instead, Who am I as I read these poems? I am a man opening myself to receive the truth of a woman’s struggles and the marrow of her knowing. I am a person old enough to have grandchildren yet I become a child and a young parent and Lord knows what in the tangle and turbulence of these stories. I am someone who knows little, perhaps nothing at all, until I am willing to sit down for a moment in this silence filled with words.
 . 
After I’ve read the book, read it through a second time, spoken some poems, typed out a few favorites in order to learn them through my fingers as well as through my eyes and breath, then I turn back to the title page and test memory and find this: 11/17/01 To Bill, Best wishes, Robin Greene. Time is not metallic, unspooling keen enough to slice you if you try to hold it still or alter its shape; time is froth and broth and no telling what may next boil to the surface. There you discover the one advantage of having lived seventy years  – you have plenty to add to the stew.
 . 
❦
 . 
Robin Greene has bubbled and boiled plenty since she signed my copy of Lateral Drift. She is cofounder of Longleaf Press and also cofounder of Sandhills Dharma Group. She retired as Professor of English and Writing, and Director of the Writing Center at Methodist University in Fayetteville, NC. She continues to write and publish poetry, fiction, and non-fiction from her home in Hendersonville, NC.
 . 
Robin Greene – Artist’s Statement
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
What the Leaves Said
 . 
As I walked in the woods today,
early October, the leaves fell –
 . 
individually – through stark, shining air,
until one of them unfolded its
 . 
blood-red palm in my outstretched
hand and whispered a word
 . 
before joining its kin on the forest floor.
I had stopped for a moment, noticing
 . 
sunlight opening up shadows,
shifting its radiance in light wind
 . 
across the new landscape as leaves
shook from beech and oak,
 . 
and I listened: one word becoming
many, becoming one.
 . 
Robin Greene
from Lateral Drift, Windows on History Press, Durham NC; © 2002
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
 . 
IMG_1783
 . 

Read Full Post »

Older Posts »