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Girl Filling the Sky – Melissa McEver Huckabay

Posted in family, Imagery, tagged Cider Press Review, family, Girl Filling the Sky, Melissa McEver Huckabay, nature photography, poetry on September 11, 2026| Leave a Comment »

[ 2 poems from the winner of the

2024 Cider Press Review Book Award ]

Partial Eclipse

Hear me out: that which you call death

I remember. – Louise Gluck

The morning light is dew:

soon the sun will crescent away.

The windows of our house let

pieces of light in. Pines and oaks

undulate in the wind. Our ground

turns yellow green in shadow.

I remember my passage here:

from one house to another, neighbors

who speak and those who are silent.

Black-eyed Susans fading away,

fields turning brown in summer.

Highways leading us toward home.

My mother is here, her suffering

a slow movement across the sun.

I want to make a well of myself.

Find the water, cup my hands,

ask her to drink. Turn the soil

into something soft. tell her:

Mama, you are so clear to me—

let’s push away this swollen moon.

Melissa McEver Huckabay

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Summer

For Lynn

Wasn’t our skin sticky

in the air conditioning,

wasn’t your dark hair

smooth, your lipstick

leaving a red ring

on your wine glass? Weren’t we

all laughing while I chopped

serrano peppers into tiny

green slits, while we poured

more merlot? Didn’t we drink

so much that we started singing,

and didn’t you cover your mouth

while you giggled, like you always

do? Wasn’t this just the other day,

just the other August, before the sunset

turned bronze on South Padre,

before we all moved away,

before you walked down the aisle

in your beaded dress, your face

gleaming and pink—

before the hospital,

before the cancer,

before the call?

Melissa McEver Huckabay

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What good is anything? No, this one right here. She stops beside the nature trail and points, the juicy stem tinged pink, the flowers as little like flowers as can be. What good? Will it taste like ripe berries? Cure cancer? Stop my heart beating before I finish chewing? Who knows?

And why even care enough to answer? Although I will try. Maybe sidestep, throw in some muse about plant communities, or defer to Cherokee ethnobotany, or mumble a longish word like pollinators. What good is any of that?

All I know is that on this morning a brief breeze rises and a dozen fairies fly. They pirouette and then they’re gone. I could tell you that just below the hill the burnweed has gone to seed. Nothing special, never any grand inflorescence, only stalky climb into light then bent brown by autumn. I could consider only that and let it go.

But for a few seconds against the backdrop of the maple’s first red-limned transfiguration, poised on the slow transit of noon to afternoon, those airy wisps, those ephemera, those dancers winglit by sunflash — my God.

❀

Girl Filling the Sky is the winner of the 21st annual Cider Press Review Book Award, 2024. Melissa McEver Huckabay teaches high school English in Cypress, Texas. Her poems weave through the generations: a grandmother widowed by war, a mother scarred by deceit, a little girl abandoned by her father and forever imagining his return. And yet the warp of loss is patched and filled by the weft of love, sometimes smoldering, sometimes radiant. In the title poem, the writer is four years old and imagines she can fly from her second story balcony. Isn’t our life meant to fill the sky?

https://ciderpressreview.com/product/girl-filling-the-sky/

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Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:

. . . . . every Friday I present one or more 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:

https://griffinpoetry.com/about/

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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Light Made Flesh and Blood – Wendell Berry

Posted in Ecopoetry, Imagery, poetry, tagged Ecopoetry, nature photography, nature poetry, poetry, Sabbaths, Wendell Berry on September 4, 2026| 2 Comments »

4 poems by Wendell Berry from Sabbaths,

1979 – I

I go among trees and sit still.

All my stirring becomes quiet

around me like circles on water.

My tasks lie in their places

where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes

and lives a while in my sight.

What it fears in me leaves me,

and the fear of me leaves it.

It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.

I live for a while in its sight.

What I fear in it leaves it,

and the fear of it leaves me.

It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor,

mute in my consternations,

I hear my song at last,

and I sing it. As we sing

the day turns, the trees move.

❀ ❀ ❀

1979 – VII

What if, in the high restful sanctuary

That keeps the memory of Paradise,

We’re followed by the drone of history

And greed’s poisonous fumes still burn our eyes?

Disharmony recalls us to our work.

From Heavenly work of light and wind and leaf

We must turn back into the peopled dark

Of our unraveling century, the grief

Of waste, the agony of haste and noise.

It is a hard return from Sabbath rest

To lifework of the fields, yet we rejoice,

Returning, less condemned in being blessed

By vision of what human work can make:

A harmony between wood-land and field,

The world as it was given for love’s sake,

The world by love and loving work revealed

As given to our children and our Maker.

In that healed harmony the world is used

But not destroyed, the Giver and the taker

Joined, the taker blessed, in the unabused

Gift that nurtures and protects. Then workday

and Sabbath live together in one place.

Though mortal, incomplete, that harmony

is our one possibility of peace.

When field and woods agree, they make a rhyme

That stirs in distant memory the whole

First Sabbath’s song that no largess of time

Or hope or sorrow wholly can recall.

But harmony of earth is Heaven-made,

Heaven-making, is promise and is prayer,

A little song to keep us unafraid,

An earthly music magnified in air.

❀ ❀ ❀

1981

Here where the world is being made,

No human hand required,

A man may come, somewhat afraid

Always, and somewhat tired,

For he comes ignorant and alone

From work and worry of

A human place, in soul and bone

The ache of human love;

He may come and be still, not go

Toward any chosen aim

Or stay for what he thinks is so.

Setting aside his claim

On all things fallen in his plight,

His mind may move with leaves,

Wind-shaken, in and out of light,

And live as the light lives,

And live as the Creation sings

In covert, two clear notes,

And waits; then two clear answerings

Come from more distant throats—

May live a while with light, shaking

In high leaves, or delayed

In halts of song, submit to making,

The shape of what is made.

❀ ❀ ❀

1980 – IV

The frog with lichened back and golden thigh

Sits still, almost invisible

On leafed and lichened stem,

Invisibility

Its sign of being at home

There in its given place, and well.

The warbler with its quivering striped throat

Would live almost beyond my sight,

Almost beyond belief,

But for its double note—

Among high leaves a leaf,

At ease, at home in air and light.

And I, through woods and fields, through fallen days

Am passing to where I belong:

At home, at ease, and well,

In Sabbaths of this place

Almost invisible,

Toward which I go from song to song.

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When field and woods agree, they make a rhyme . . .

Wendell Berry, (August 5, 1934 – August 31, 2026) was a Kentucky farmer on land his great-great-grandfather bought after the war of 1812. And he was a poet, novelist, essayist, advocate, activist, and environmentalist, whose many award include the 2010 National Humanities Medal awarded by President Barak Obama. Place is a character in all that Wendell Berry has written. The land is his anchor. The contrast of field and woods, man-tilled earth versus wild spaces, is a constant theme, and not in the sense of conflict or incompatibility but with the admonition that field and wood must converge in our reverence and in our stewardship. We must care for our planet or perish. He listened and heard the song of Creation. He opens our ears, our eyes, our souls to know that song as well.

❀

Wendell Erdman Berry obituary at the Kentucky Lantern:

Wendell Berry biography and letters at The Poetry Foundation:

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Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:

. . . . . every Friday I present one or more 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:

https://griffinpoetry.com/about/

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

Mountains-to-Sea Trail, Surry County NC

MST, Doughton Park, Blue Ridge Parkway

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In a Public Place – J.R.Solonche

Posted in Imagery, tagged Dos Madres Press, In a Public Place, J. R. Solonche, nature photography, poetry, Zhao Li on August 28, 2026| 2 Comments »

[ 3, no, 4 poems by J. R. Solonche ]

At the Reflecting Pool

one (there are many

gathered now in the closing minutes

before the play’s beginning) pretends

to jump in, mugging for his companions,

as so many have done,

as so many will do.

“It lacks an emotional center,

a focus, a heart.” (But this will be later,

on the steps inside, coming down,

the hand brushing the brass banister.)

None mistake it for the sky,

as none mistake the secret pool of their desire

for a loop in time, as none

mistake themselves for others,

as none mistake more of the same for more room,

as none mistake life’s rules

for the lures of explanation or life’s raw deals

for the leadenware on the tables of their hearts.

J. R. Solonche

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Saturday

On the street in town,

everyone is carrying something,

everyone’s arms are full.

This old man is carrying

fifty years of newspapers.

Each year is a bundle tied in string.

His back is bent from the weight.

This wife is carrying her past.

It is made of glass. It is extremely fragile.

She carries it in a velvet pouch

inside a wooden box inside a metal case

inside a leather satchel with two straps.

The husband is carrying Monday.

He holds it like a dozen roses.

He holds it like the wheel of a fast car.

This teenaged boy is carrying three futures.

They are light as feathers, as bubbles.

He tosses them up before him as he walks.

This old woman is carrying death.

She holds it in her arms like a newborn.

She is singing it a lullaby under her breath.

I am carrying myself on a tray.

I am a waiter delivering the meal.

Arrogant and aloof, I balance myself

on my right hand, over the heads

of the others. My left arm swings freely.

It clears my way to your table.

J. R. Solonche

❀ ❀ ❀

America

I am sitting on a bench in front of the Department of Justice,

thinking, under the massive magnolia tree,

of the meaning of justice, when the sharp,

metallic smell of the homeless man

across the avenue mingles with the aroma of the blossoms.

Such a strange perfume.

Let us call it America.

J. R. Solonche

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Zhao Li realizes that he has been writing poems for so long a flower is not a flower anymore, a bird is not a bird anymore, a cloud is not a cloud anymore. A flower has become a poem, a bird has become a poem, a cloud has become a poem. He is very sad about this. He also realizes that Zhao Li is not Zhao Li anymore, for Zhao Li has become a poem, so he sheds a tear for the flower, he sheds a tear for the bird, he sheds a tear for the cloud, but he does not shed a tear for himself, for he has always wanted to be a poem, even if it is one written by himself.

J. R. Solonche

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Carnegie Hall. Poe Cottage. A parking lot. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. West 64th Street. Washington Square. A mall. Some hotel lobby. Planetarium. Botanical Garden. Shoprite. The Brooklyn Bridge. Panera. Starbucks. The Department of Justice. The Vietnam War Memorial. Public places all. As perfect a place for writing a poem as the garret overlooking Montmartre, the round tower of the medieval castle on the Irish Coast, any prison cell anywhere. The poems are not about the place but are in the place. The places are in the poems. The moments in the places are in the poems, those moments spent walking, reading, observing, thinking, all while in a public place. And then each poem brings the poet’s mind into a public place where we readers can be in the moment with him.

When I sit on my porch and read poems by J. R. Solonche, do I really begin to notice bug song in greater clarity, a brighter spectrum of sun dapple on the leaves? Or do I only imagine that I do? Wait, are you going to try to tell me that imagining something doesn’t make it so?

❀

Both In a Public Place and The Lost Notebook of Zhao Li, as well as six other books by J. R. Solonche, are published by Dos Madres Press in Ohio, which notes that the small press is essential to the vitality of contemporary literature, and which is dedicated to the creation of fine books pleasing to the eye and hand.

You might consider spending a moment with Dos Madres at

https://www.dosmadres.com/shop/in-a-public-place-by-j-r-solonche/

You are also welcome to consider these other poems by J. R. Solonche at Verse and Image:

https://griffinpoetry.com/2026/08/07/alone-j-r-solonche/

https://griffinpoetry.com/2026/04/29/poetry-and-earth-spring/

https://griffinpoetry.com/2026/07/31/like-grass-j-r-solonche/

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Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:

. . . . . every Friday I present one or more 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:

https://griffinpoetry.com/about/

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