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Posts Tagged ‘imagery’

Galaxies and Honeysuckle – Richard Chess

Posted in Imagery, tagged , , , , , , , on December 19, 2025| 4 Comments »

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[two poems by Richard Chess from JUDITH MAGAZINE 11/27/2025]
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Galaxies
 . 
 . 
Since the night his father
 . 
died alone in a spacious
 . 
room, the hours
 . 
 . 
have left his bedside clock.
 . 
Psalms, too, every night
 . 
fly from the page, letter
 . 
 . 
by letter, each letter
 . 
taking its place, a star
 . 
in winter sky.
 . 
 . 
All he can do
 . 
for comfort now
 . 
is to face what remains
 . 
 . 
of his nights and days, empty
 . 
pages of prayer, and praise
 . 
receding galaxies.
 . 
❀    ❀    ❀
 . 
Honeysuckle
 . 
Today, he gives his right hand to the living will.
He gives his pronoun to the census bureau.
He gives his birthday to the family Bible.
He gives his face to the mirror.
What would you find if you looked for him there?
 . 
Tomorrow, he’ll take god back
from the names in which god’s held captive.
But who can say if he’ll survive until tomorrow?
 . 
For now, he gives his charm to one of you,
his disdain to another. And he won’t stop giving,
not when there’s an eye to give to beauty,
a short sentence to give to the book of oblivion,
not when inside him there’s still honeysuckle,
the fragrance of his loneliness, to breathe
into the air where it might make you swoon,
that scent of nectar tinged with vanilla.
 . 
Richard Chess
these poems first appeared online at Judith Magazine, A Journal Of Jewish Letters, Arts & Empowerment, on November 27, 2025
 . 
Moon
 . 
❀    ❀    ❀    ❀    ❀
 . 
I was introduced to Richard Chess and his poetry by my friend and medical mentor, Jessica Schorr Saxe, MD. I read these poems and others by Richard featured at Judith Magazine on the morning after a night of questioning and despair. Their lines take my frayed and tangled life and allow it to remain frayed and tangled, but now with a few bright threads revealed. Humility, seeking, and shared humanity – these are what Richard Chess brings forth to me through his writing.
 . 
Additional poems by Richard Chess 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;
. . . . . 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
 . 
2020-03-07 Doughton Park Tree
 . 

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Saturday Share – Ropp and Tedder

Posted in ecology, Ecopoetry, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 13, 2025| 2 Comments »

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Saturday morning readers share:
Tabitha Ropp and Felicity Tedder
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In the Field
 . 
The soccer field sits wide and open
light brown grass stretching over like it has all
the time in the world
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A class of students drop onto the grass
clipboard down
eyes peeled ready for anything we find
 . 
Butterflies drift through the cool comforting air
never in a hurry
never needing a reason
 . 
Birds are above us
calling out to the sky
as if the sky actually listens
 . 
The breeze slips through the pine trees,
soft as a whisper, cool enough to make us forget
how heavy the day will feel
 . 
For now the field is ours
still, quiet
breathing with us
 . 
And we sit there,
letting the world be simple
for just a little while
 . 
Tabitha Ropp
West Carteret High School
 . 

West Carteret High School Soccer Field – photo by Jessi Waugh

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This is the assignment:
 . 
To cap off a unit on the biosphere, students sit quietly in the back soccer field for an hour and document the biotic and abiotic limiting factors they observe. At the end of the lab, students are asked to construct a poem featuring their observations – any form is acceptable.
 . 
These two poems I’ve chosen have compelling language and structure, and these students were happy to have their poems selected for publication. 
 . 
Thank you for giving these students a platform to share their poetry. We as educators look to give students the chance to shine –  thank you for helping us with that goal and for sharing the voices of many North Carolina poets.
 . 
– Jessi Waugh
 . 
❀    ❀    ❀    ❀    ❀
 . 
Always Active Biosphere
 . 
A metal obstruction digs into resilient blades of grass.
Joyful adolescents race by.
My pine needles quiver as a black and white ball
strikes me straight on.
 . 
Industrious squirrels race up my bark, in hopes
winter will arrive with fully acorned nests in which
to rest.
Whisps of colored leaves pirouette in the autumn air.
 . 
Soft clouds meander by, masking the cheery rays
with their dreary faces..
A gust tumbles a soaring hawk. Diving sharply in an
elegant feathered display, its eyes fixed on its prize.
 . 
No voices are near. A silence befalls in the sleepy hollow.
Nature, however, speaks loudest when left alone.
The chaos of existence echoes in every direction as the
wind slows to a deadly whisper.
 . 
Felicity Tedder
West Carteret High School
I’m 14 years old, enrolled in Earth and Environmental Science, and on the day I wrote this poem, our class took a trip outside to observe the nature of our habitat, including biotic and abiotic diversity. The factors I noticed are what inspired my writing. I find nature compelling. Once all the noise pollution subsided, I noticed tranquil sounds produced by Mother Nature herself. This simply might just be an absurd thought, but hearing and witnessing the environment do the thing it does best, simply thriving, I knew I had to encapsulate it somehow. Through this freestyle poem from the perspective of my local habitat’s primary tree, a long-needled pine, I personified factors I noticed around me: things that a tree must feel, hear, and see as if it had a heart and legs. I imagine the vile intensity that the tree must feel, being besieged by the leftover impacts of man-made destruction. Disregarding these unrelenting pollutants, I hope this tree’s inner soliloquy brings others solace the next time they take a moment to analyze nature’s unabated, profound motives.
— Felicity
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Dusky Salamander in Carteret County – photo by Jessi Waugh

 . 
West Carteret High School is in Carteret County, North Carolina, USA. We are a public 9-12th grade high school, with about 1100 students, in Morehead City (on Bogue Sound). Approximately 40% of students are economically disadvantaged. I teach Earth and Environmental Science, a required course for graduation since 2000. My students are all 9th & 10th grade, ages 14-16. I’ve been teaching this course for 12 years, off and on. I have a Master’s in Teaching Secondary Science, a Biology degree, and I held National Boards Certification until it expired. I like teaching this course and this age group; it’s my niche. I also teach Biology and Marine Science when needed.
 . 
– Jessi Waugh
 . 
Additional poetry by West Carteret students 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
 . 
 . 
Doughton Park Tree 2020-11-22
 . 

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Release the Distances – Betty Adcock

Posted in family, tagged , , , , , , , , , on December 5, 2025| 6 Comments »

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[two poems from Intervale]
 . 
Poem from November
 . 
The leaves have fallen, releasing the distances.
This year of my turning moves
in an arc like a preying bird’s,
purposeful.
 . 
My loves have dried. I find
I can remember only the least things:
mouse-gray of my grandmother’s hair
dead in the silverbacked brush,
the smell of hardpacked dirt
under black grease in the smokehouse.
 . 
Here is the old sky, the one we always had.
Everything in it is small,
punctuation for a vanished story.
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I have forgotten the trick
an old man taught me: how the voice
can be made to nest in the cupped hands,
calling. Was it the dove
or the owl I brought close then?
There was a calling.
Something came.
 . 
❀    ❀    ❀
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Penumbra
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The child in the cracked photograph sits still
in the rope swing hung from a live oak.
Her velvet dress brims with a lace frill.
 . 
Her pet Bantam is quiet in her lap.
It is the autumn day of a funeral
and someone has thought to take a snap-
 . 
shot of the child who won’t be allowed
to go to the burying – the coffin in the house
for days, strange people going in and out.
 . 
She’s dressed as if she’d go, in the blue church-
dress from last Christmas, almost too short.
The rooster loves her, she guards his perch
 . 
on her lap, his colors feathering the mild air.
She concentrates on this, now that her father
is unknowable, crying in his rocking chair.
 . 
Her mouth knife-thin, her small hands knotted hard
on the ropes she grips as if to be rescued.
She’s growing a will that won’t be shed
 . 
and something as cold as winter’s breath
tightens in her, as later the asthma’s vise
will tighten – hands on the throat, the truth.
 . 
Black and white, she is hiding
in every one of my bright beginnings.
Gold and deep blue and dark-shining
 . 
red the cockerel’s feathers, gold the sun
in the skyblue southern fall, blue
over the four o’clocks and the drone
 . 
of weeping that drains like a shadow from the house
where someone is gone, is gone, is gone –
where the child will stay to darken like a bruise.
 . 
I am six years old, buried
in the colorless album.
My mother is dead.
I forgive no one.
 . 
Betty Adcock
from Intervale: New and Selected Poems, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge LA; © 2001
 . 
 . 
❀    ❀    ❀    ❀    ❀
 . 
This is the season of perfect-family photos arriving by text after reunions for feasting or bursting from the envelopes of early Christmas cards. These cousins with their complimentary sweaters on the front steps, their lovely smiling children and companions. I spent the first day with my father after our dual week-long Covid quarantine helping him watch a home movie from 1936, his little sister on a tricycle, he barefoot astride his cousin’s pony. His aunts and grandmother crossed in the greytone background like hovering angels or benevolent wardens. And then the next reel, in color, my father in white t-shirt is twenty-six and I am a flame-haired infant in my grandfather’s arms.
 . 
These two poems and others in this collection by Betty Adcock take me deeper than I’ve ever labored into my own past. She sees everything. What no one but she had yet noticed, the voices, the smells, all are now alive in her sharp, unsentimental, raven-eyed truth telling. What memories are waiting half-asleep for each of us? What memories call us to create them fresh from fragments and tales and slowly disintegrating histories? A few words from Betty Adcock and forgotten ghosts materialize. There was a calling. Something came.
 . 
❀
 . 
Betty Adcock (b. 1938) was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in 2014. She has taught and served as writer-in-residence in the state for many decades. Among her numerous awards and publications, this comment by Mary Oliver stands out: Adcock “writes poems that are as upright as houses, and as flighty as clouds. She never postures. The poems … are beautiful, meaningful, and very real.” (for The Difficult Wheel, 1995)
 . 
Intervale and Betty Adcock’s other books are available from LSU PRESS.
 . 
Another poem by Betty Adcock 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;
. . . . . 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:
 . 
                            https://griffinpoetry.com/about/
 . 
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
 . 
2020-09-08b Doughton Park Tree

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