Deborah Doolittle | V E R S E and I M A G E

Posts Tagged ‘Deborah Doolittle’

Kakalak – Gilchrist, Doolittle

Posted in Imagery, tagged Deborah Doolittle, Kakalak, nature photography, NC Poets, Paige Gilchrist, poetry, Southern writing on January 2, 2026| 4 Comments »

[2 poems from Kakalak 2025]

My 78-Year-Old Father Learns to Play Old Maid

Everything in the photograph is Christmas red. My father’s

flannel shirt. The rims of the cordial glasses, unpacked

once a year. My four-year-old’s fingernails. The light

from the last of the tapers, reflected on their skin. She’s leaning in,

hand forming a small swan’s beak – reaching to pick from the wide fan

of cards in his hand. Once, fathers like mine left early for tall buildings.

Home late. Whiskey and water and a few minutes to encircle us – clean

pajamas, wet hair – in cigarette smoke on their laps. So little time,

those fathers, even the good ones like mine. The bicycle-lesson fathers.

The Field Day fathers. Little time for tiny games of patience. For slowly

matching silly pictures into pairs, heads close. Is that what it is

about my father’s black glasses that catches me here?

Their stern perch halfway down his nose, as if reading stock report

after news article, year after year. But this night, narrowed to a child’s

game. As if nothing else matters. As if the whole world hinges

on which card this little girl will choose.

Paige Gilchrist

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Sleeping with the Window Open in an Old House

Funny how the screen keeps the dark

back along with the mosquitos.

The curtain sheers resemble ghosts

trying to climb out of their night

gowns. It helps that no one died in

this room. Because of all those stairs

it took to get up here. They slept

below, where my great aunt sleeps now,

climbing into her nineties. Sounds

slip through the mesh like gasps for breath.

The clock ticking on the bedside

table. Who could sleep in this heat?

Apparently, I do. Morning

slashes through the cool pools of air

puddled around my feet. My dreams

interrupted by one hundred

songs from one hundred song birds. Songs

of oranges and lemons. Songs

of coffee in the kitchen. Songs

from the garden in the yard. Songs

from my childhood, only deeper,

more tender. Blossoming together.

Deborah Doolittle

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Each of these poems captures a moment and holds it up to savor, lyrical, soft and clear as candlelight or morning sun. Each tells an expansive story as well, stretching across generations to bring the years and the people close, to cherish, to illuminate. I discover myself playing Fruits with my granddaughter. I feel this morning’s hubbub of family visitors giving way to a quiet second with Linda beside me.

From the swirl of confusion that threatens chaos – becoming father to my own father, father again to my grown son moved back home, grandfather to three approaching thresholds of uncertainty – from all that movement and clamor these two poems bring me to a center of stillness. They invite contemplation. They are songs sung in the clearest tenor, and in their melodies I can pause and begin to hear my own song, and hope to understand.

❀

Paige Gilchrist (Asheville, NC) writes poetry, teaches yoga, and has been published widely, including Amethyst Review, ONE ART, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Heimat Review, Rattle, and Juniper.

Deborah Doolittle (Jacksonville, NC) has lived in many old houses. She is author of Floribunda, No Crazy Notions, That Echo, and Bogbound, and edits BRILLIG: a micro lit mag.

Additional poems by Deborah Doolittle at Verse and Image:

2020-03.

Sample BRILLIG at Verse and Image:

.2025-07

These poems (and author bios) are from the newest Kakalak anthology of poetry and art, published annually. Voices new and established. Songs of longing, songs of celebration. Purchase Kakalak HERE and consider submitting your own work in 2026.

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– Bill

. .

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Enter the Circle

Posted in Imagery, tagged Bill Griffin, Brillig, Deborah Doolittle, imagery, nature photography, NC Poets, poetry, Southern writing on July 4, 2025| 4 Comments »

[poems from BRILLIG: a micro lit mag]

Ghazal for sunrise

Wrens are first out of bed at sunrise. Their sharp warbled song suits the sky’s deep red at sunrise.

Down the hill a deer slips out of mist. Then her fawn, ready to be fed, at sunrise.

Then a fieldmouse, light as a wisp, climbs a spent coneflower with most careful tread – at sunrise

The night’s winds are done. Above, only a last fading star, and a few clouds sill ragged at sunrise . . .

I join this pause to which all things have led (at sunrise), I close my eyes on what he last said, at sunrise.

Matt Snyder

from BRILLIG: a micro lit mag, Winter/Spring 2025

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Gravity is an illusion, a charade played out behind the scenes by matter as it warps spacetime. The illusion is complete within my deep never-spoken sense that somehow the universe ponderously orbits me. Where is my wider view? Long lens and tight focus blur everything except the center where for one moment light falls.

Thoreau sits beside the pond for hours so long and so still that the otters have come to consider him simply a natural element within the universe they inhabit. They pursue their plashy play all about him unperturbed. When the otters finally leave for elsewhere, Thoreau walks to town to buy a pair of socks.

Oh Mr. Lennon, my beloved, my idol, is life really what happens while you’re making other plans? Or is life the plans the universe has made for you whether you subscribed to them or not? Evidently the universe is not a bus you can hop off at the penultimate stop before you reach the bad side of town.

I’m trying to figure this out. The mockingbird doesn’t shut up when my neighbor fires up his Terrafirminator and attacks the clover. Just sings louder, it seems. And me? An hour walking in the woods, sweat and deep cleansing breaths, but driving home I hear again that last snarling conversation and begin another rehearsal of its next installment in my head. I thought I might have hopped off that bus, but no.

The titmouse perches above the peanuts I’ve laid out and squeaks and scolds with his head thrown back, ten iterations. Then he swoops down and pecks the hell out of them. What was he saying up there? “These are mine, bug off!” – or – “Hey world, good eats here!” What am I saying to the universe? Scratch that – what am I saying to myself?

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Vim

Your clay pots are stacked into towers.

Stakes propped in the garden shed corner.

Out-of-use stuff claims off-season place:

a montage of tools ready to oblige.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Regret

drops by every day, helps leisure select midwinter

pastimes. Our most-recent waltz only a twitch

in the calf on gray afternoons. So much

overlooked when we busy ourselves.

I rake leaves wedged into fences. Sharpen tools

in case we plant again. Zest fallen out of favor,

the Almanac forecasts weather cycles, but desire

for a new garden is shelved.

++++++++++++++++++++++++ Verve fastened

behind the shed door, our pursuits dwindle.

Intuition must carry us through seasonal tedium,

and each loss it festers. You stare at me and ask,

+++++++ Tell me again where do seasons go?

Sam Barbee

from BRILLIG: a micro lit mag, Winter/Spring 2025

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When Deborah Doolittle first placed in my hands a copy of her hand-made lit mag BRILLIG, all I could say was, “O Frabjous Day!” The slim booklet is delicate yet solid with surprising heft; it is simple in its turning pages yet subtle and complex with its interlockings and interweavings, concealing treasures, revealing them. But glue and ink and color are not enough to create treasure. The words, the lines, the flow, the side-steps and juxtapositions – these poems by ten authors link arms and pull me into their circle.

If you were to step into my office and attempt to calculate the mass of processed printed-upon cellulose that surrounds you, you would intuit that I have a thing for words on paper. Oh yes, most every day I read from my bright paper-white monitor the poems the internet offers up to me, but if you were to step onto my back porch today when it’s 85 degrees and 85 percent humidity and discover me there with a book nonetheless, you would intuit that real creative thought requires an adequate escape velocity from computer gravity. And if a print journal’s appeal is an order of magnitude greater than poems online, then art and quirky originality, BRILLIG, is an order greater yet.

I unfold the pages, read backwards and forwards, turn and return. These poems surround me as if I am an element of the universe they inhabit. While they pursue their plashy play, I will abide in their circle. I have all the socks I need.

❦

Deborah Doolittle contrives and creates BRILLIG: a micro lit mag with the help of artist friends and submissions of poetry. Each issue is published in a limited edition, but she no doubt has one she would like to send you and will make an extra copy if you subscribe.

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Onions

I think of you prepping risotto,

stirring the pan while you add

onions, red wine and broth.

you wore a red-striped apron.

I have it still. Should have worn it.

My shirt is dotted with oil.

Oversized sweet onions

roast in the oven, ready

to add life to a sandwich.

My eyes leak. Nose drips.

I yank a paper towel off

the rack and remember.

Patricia Joslin

from BRILLIG: a micro lit mag, Winter/Spring 2025

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Floribunda – Deborah Doolittle

Posted in Imagery, tagged Bill Griffin, bloodroot, Deborah Doolittle, main street rag, National Parks, nature, nature poetry, NC Poets, New River Gorge, poetry, spring, wild flowers on March 19, 2020| 7 Comments »

Let’s meet at Grandview above the New River Gorge while the sun is still working its way through the pine and bare hickory. The hardcore birders left from Shelter #4 hours ago but we will follow the same course down the abandoned mining road to the River. We will follow the wild flowers. We will walk into Spring.

We don’t see a lot blooming up here at the end of April, elevation 2,500 feet in the West Virginia Appalachians. Beneath the trees and in the sunny patches the landscape is still mostly brown, but that doesn’t hold for long. Trailing arbutus and trout lily greet us in the first quarter mile, wake robin and four more species of trillium pop up along the course of the trail, wild iris and asters appear by the time we’ve descended 1,000 feet to river’s edge – all of Spring blooming in one morning.

And just in case we miss something we have a guide: my wife’s sister Jodi French-Burr, National Park Service ranger, naturalist, and interpreter. She’ll be kneeling in the duff gently parting the leaves so we can see the wild ginger blossoms. She’ll have at the tip of her tongue the name of every growing thing we discover. She’ll tell us the history of this winding trail and point out relics and landmarks along the way. And she will usually laugh at my jokes.

Come and convince yourself that the earth is filled with beauty.

Bring water and a snack. RESERVATIONS requested by April 21, 2020: 304-465-2632 or jodi_french-burr@nps.gov.

[UPDATE 3/23/2020 — due to the COVID-19 Pandemic many NPS and New River Gorge activities may have to be canceled or rescheduled. Be sure the check this site for the latest info:

https://www.nps.gov/neri/planyourvisit/wildflower-weekend.htm

BUT . . . outdoor activities with family and small groups (maintaining your social distancing) are just what THIS doctor orders! Get out into nature! Viruses hate sunlight! . . . . . . . . Bill G ]

Erythronium americana — Trout Lily (Dog-tooth Violet, yellow adder’s tongue, fawn lily)

. . . . . . .

Deborah H. Doolittle has created a unique botanical and poetic experience with her collection Floribunda, a true garden of verse. The focal point of each poem is a particular flower, from Cowslip to Gardenia, but the speaker or the style of each poem is a giant of literature, from William Blake and Lewis Carroll to Sylvia Plath and Wallace Stevens. To wander the garden path of Deborah’s poetry is to smell the fragrance and delight in the colors but also to abide in the company of great writers, Deborah H. Doolittle not the least of them. Open to any page and converse.

Hepatica americana — Round-lobed Hepatica

. . . . . . .

Emily Dickinson’s Wild Flowers

The way she dressed a flower was
just that extravagant.
The haute couture of wild flowers!
wild flowers! her element.

To that pale cheek she called petal,
she pressed both stem and leaf –
the lupine, like crinoline; sweet
clover, tight Damascus weave.

She had played the part of Botanist,
a child’s specialty.
Swamp candles shed no brighter light
in Latin for the bee.

Grasses of Parnassus, skullcap
of the tiny laces,
she pressed herself soft as a moth
treading through her pages.

Antennaria solitaria — Solitary Pussytoes

. . . . . . .

Henry David Thoreau and the Sunflower

Who among us has not followed the sun
and hated the clouds that hid its shining face?
Who else but us can claim that we have traced
across the sky the very path it runs?

We’ve traveled much through Concord, you and I.
The widest fields are fenced and most contain
cattle or corn or the stock of kitchen
gardens. The farmers never wonder why

your seeds proliferate upon their grounds.
I know how the wind blows the smallest crumb
and how the bees and birds know where to come.
The two of us, like them, know no such bounds.

The hedgerows and stonewalls can’t grow taller.
The sun is but a star and you’re its flower.

Sanguinaria canadensis — Bloodroot

. . . . . . .

Sylvia Plath and the Impatiens

Unlike my empty hands,
it does not just lie there
with its flowers opening

upon white bed linen.
All its seeds jettisoned,
its future guaranteed

for at least another
season, this jewel-weed,
asks for nothing that I

cannot give it. It basks
in my sunlight, breathes in
my exhalations as fast

as I can breathe them out,
again. Still, we are both
waiting for the nurses

to make their rounds, the sun
to rise up, then subside,
for the moon and the stars

to appear and disappear,
for winter’s frost to turn
us into limp black rags.

Asarum virginicum – Heart-leaf Ginger (Little Brown Jugs)

. . . . . . .

The other way to walk into Spring, although it takes a month or two, is to stroll along the same trail every day. Linda and I walk the Elkin Valley Trail Association Nature Trail along Big Elkin Creek at least three days a week. First appears trout lily, hepatica close behind, then every day or two there’s a new species in sequence: pussy-toes, wild ginger, bloodroot, rue anemone, star chickweed. In a month there will be foamflower, bellwort, jewel-weed, jack-in-the-pulpit. The photos in this post were all blooming on the same day, March 16, 2020.

Anemonella thalictroides — Rue Anemone

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Deborah H. Doolittle moved from her birthplace in Hartford, Connecticutt through many different landscapes and gardens before settling in Jacksonville, North Carolina. She has an MA in Women’s Studies and and MFA in Creative Writing and teaches at Coastal Carolina Community College. She serves on the Board of the North Carolina Poetry Society and she loves flowers.