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Posts Tagged ‘poetry’

A Sharper Silence – Michael Hettich

Posted in Imagery, tagged , , , , , , , on December 26, 2025| 3 Comments »

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[ 2 poems from A Sharper Silence ]
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The Angels
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As day turned to dusk, we sensed we could feel
the people we’d loved and lost calling
like a breeze that suggests itself but never
actually awakens the trees. She told me
again about the moment she decided to let
our first child go so she could go on
living herself, and I remembered
how once, as a young man, I’d walked by myself
for a day, until I was lost and came
to a boulder and a creek. She remembered yearning
to comfort our baby after we’d scattered
her ashes, and I remembered that the sun
had been warm; the sound of the creek had filled me
with something as different from thought or song
as a dream. She said she still dreamed of Audrey,
our lost child. And then I told her again
that when dusk fell, a clutch of black birds landed.
Even when I stood up and gestured, there
in that unfamiliar landscape, they refused to fly away.
I think they were hungry. But I had nowhere else to go,
so I lay down under stars so sharp
in that darkness they hurt my eyes, even
when my eyes were closed. All night those black birds
stood watching, waiting for something. Like angels,
she said and then laughed, though I don’t think she was joking.
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Michael Hettich
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❀    ❀    ❀
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Gratitude
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Night emerges from the morning woods
+++++ to move across the tall grass toward us, sighing
+++++ +++++ faintly in the fresh light, as though it were confused.
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+++++ We call to it gently, like we might call a stray dog,
+++++ +++++ or someone’s lost pet, holding ourselves
+++++ ready to pull back if it threatens to hurt us.
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But this darkness is neither starving nor dangerous,
+++++ so we let it come close enough to pet, until
somehow it enters our bodies, like language
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+++++ enters a child, to make that child real
+++++ +++++ to itself. It’s a language we’ve spent most of our lives
+++++ learning to speak, though we’re still not able
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to say what we mean exactly: I love you
+++++ in words that capture the rivers and streams,
+++++ +++++ the huge flocks of birds, the silences,
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+++++ +++++ +++++ +++++ and the stunning losses that resonate still
+++++ at the core of our deepest contentment, all
+++++ +++++ the nights we’ve hugged in sleep, dreaming
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+++++ worlds we’ll forget as we wake, again
into a blessedly ordinary day,
+++++ one of many hundreds, hardly noticed as it passes.
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Michael Hettich
from A Sharper Silence, Terrapin Books, West Caldwell NJ; © 2025
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Michael Hettich does not shrink from allowing darkness to enter his body as freely as breath, or as dreams. Within the silence there is music, singing. The smell of sweat is perfume. We have no words yet somehow we share language. Fall we all must, through and into nothing, only to discover that the darkness is filled with light. That is what I discover here, alone yet not alone with the exquisite sorrow – the most ordinary day, hardly noticed as it passes, is blessed.
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Michael Hettich’s The Halo of Bees: New and Selected Poems 1990-2022 won the 2024 Brockman-Campbell Award from the North Carolina Poetry Society. He has published more than a dozen books through the years and received many honors, including several Individual Artist Fellowships from the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs. Michael holds a Ph.D. in literature, taught for many years at Miami Dade College, and now lives in Black Mountain, NC.
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More about A Sharper Silence and Terrapin Books HERE; more about Michael HERE.
Additional poetry by Michael Hettich 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.
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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
 . 
2017-03-06a Doughton Park Tree

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Saturday Share – Barnett

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

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Saturday morning readers share:
Nancy Barnett
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Death Tree
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Katherine Garrison Chapin (1890-1977)
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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– Nancy 
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Additional poetry shared by Nancy Barnett 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
 . 
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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
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Since the night his father
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died alone in a spacious
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room, the hours
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have left his bedside clock.
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Psalms, too, every night
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fly from the page, letter
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by letter, each letter
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taking its place, a star
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in winter sky.
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All he can do
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for comfort now
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is to face what remains
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of his nights and days, empty
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pages of prayer, and praise
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receding galaxies.
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Honeysuckle
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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?
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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?
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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.
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Richard Chess
these poems first appeared online at Judith Magazine, A Journal Of Jewish Letters, Arts & Empowerment, on November 27, 2025
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Moon
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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.
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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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