Fielder Farm in August by Tricia Knoll (ONE GOOD MEMORY Series)

Fielder Farm in August
Huntington, Vermont
by Tricia Knoll

As I drove there, the sun rose with clarity.
I ceded to it a new day’s optimism despite the radio’s
grim announcements of displacement, loss, and panic
in Afghanistan. I relish the Abenaki meaning of Dawnland
for this land of clean sky, green woods, goldenrod’s bloom,
and silage corn spurting up in rolled fields.

Here, six pregnant Jersey cows see me and trot
down the pastured hill to an electric fence. Number 1892
offers her head for a scratch then heads to the tub of waters.
Chickens cluck-stir out from the hen house
into shadow.

This place of blueberries, eggs and plums is a clearing
in a forest of pines, sugar maples and birch
rooted in ancient bedrock’s endurance.
Day lilies maintain blooms beside the pond,
a human touch. A path for power poles cuts through
brush. Solar panels lean on the lawn toward dawnland.

People come here to read of wrongs and justice
and write poetry in community. So much
of the world slides into dwindles. We hear crickets
sing and note when they stop. We watch dragonflies
sip. A moth hides in the wheel well of a pickup. Nothing ruffles
the pond. Still thoughts and peace are not aimless.

Refuge where we find it. The Tervuren crunches ice cubes.
For this lonely woman, a walk around the pond.
Vermont’s poet laureate reads Wordsworth’s
     “Independence and Resolution.”
If I cannot let go of the people in fear in the Kabul airport,
that too is not aimless. Wishes may not bring them relief.
Nor does poetry. Perhaps hope that every dawnland

consoles with a new sun, a new day.

PHOTO: View of Fielder Farm, Huntington, Vermont. Found at fielderfarmvermont.com.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I was one of the Vermont poets who drove out of the Huntington Valley and into the foothills on the western side of prominent Camel’s Hump to attend a day-long poetry retreat. We read poems to each other, listened to remarks from local poets and publishers, walked around the pond on the farm, petted the cows. The day started early – for me the sun was still coming up over cornfields as I found my way to the farm.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Tricia Knoll’s poetry appears widely in journals, anthologies, and five collections of poetry. How I Learned To Be White received the 2018 Human Relations Indie Book Award for Motivational Poetry. Checkered Mates came out from Kelsay Books (2021) exploring relationships that work and some that don’t. Let’s Hear It for the Horses (The Poetry Box, 2022) placed third in the press’s annual chapbook competition. Two more books – One Bent Twig (Future Cycle Press) and Wild Apples (Fernwood Press) are scheduled for publication in early 2023. Visit her at triciaknoll.com and on Twitter.

Circle Round, prose poem by Angela Cannon-Crothers (LOST AND FOUND Poetry and Prose Series)

Circle Round
by Angela Cannon-Crothers

The Appalachian Trail in Vermont. My first child was born in Vermont. I was married in Vermont, on a hill top. A simple ceremony: Justice of the Peace, a witness, two gold rings. Six years later I am the mother of two and freshly fleshed from divorce, trail guiding back in Vermont. Not much pay, but a much needed vacation. Days in, after huffing up mountains carrying group gear, extra gear for those unable, and brewing Earl Gray for our elder hiker each morning, I was gifted a late afternoon respite at Stratton Pond. I sat out on a log over the water, discovering half hidden newts with finny tails and red bellies, like gems, swimming below. Newts transform twice in their lifetimes, from water to land, and back again. Like me. Shimmer of sun. Cold skinny dip in clear water. After, I was rummaging deep within my backpack for a bandanna to dry off with, when I felt it. My wedding ring. Having thought it was lost and gone for good I nearly laughed out loud at the pure coincidence of finding it here, back in Vermont. I rolled the dull gold around my fingers, memories circling. Pulling my arm behind, with great force, I threw the ring out toward the center of Stratton Pond. Here it would settle to the weedy bottom, a play thing for bright bellied newts and sparkling water. There it would always be. This, at least, would never be lost again.

IMAGE: “The Charmer” by John William Waterhouse (1911).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This piece of prose for the “Lost and Found” Series came from a 4,000-word chapter in my unpublished memoir on the spirit of place. The ending is still, essentially, the same.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Angela Cannon-Crothers is a writer, naturalist, environmental educator, and college instructor in environmental science and writing. She was a finalist for the AROHO Orlando Prize for Nonfiction in 2011. Her work includes a book, Our Voices, Our Wisdom; An Herb Haven Year, a children’s book: Grape Pie Season, and a novel: The Wildcrafter. Her articles and essays have appeared in Orion, Northern Woodlands, Life in the Finger Lakes, BackHome, and the literary journal Stone Canoe. She lives on a small farm, in a bermed house, in the Finger Lakes of New York, while she finishes raising her youngest teenager daughter. She thinks that someday soon she may try a wilder, more wanderlust, life again.

Moonlight in Vermont, poem by Rose Mary Boehm (WHEN I HEAR THAT SONG Series)

Moonlight in Vermont
by Rose Mary Boehm

Vermont took on a special shine
on the small dance floor
just off the famous Boul’ Mich.
Your feet were as large
as your frame and your height,
and my face rested on your
starched shirt front. I was afraid
I’d smudge my foundation (tone Biscuit)
and you’d be appalled. But then
you’d just stolen two crystal droplets
from the hotel’s chandelier
and threaded those old wires
through the holes in my earlobes
with some pomp. I didn’t expect
a starched dress shirt from
someone called Bill.

AUTHOR’S PHOTO CAPTION: The time is 1959, the place is Paris, innocence is written with a capital “I.” Being “in love” is the best thing in the world, and Paris the only place where it can happen with the right amount of glamour and romance.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm, lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and a poetry collection (TANGENTS) published in 2011 in the in UK, well over 100 of her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in a good two dozen US poetry reviews as well as in some print anthologies and Diane Lockward’s The Crafty Poet. She won third place in the 2009 Margaret Reid Poetry Contest for Traditional Verse (US), was semi-finalist in the Naugatuck poetry contest 2012/13 and has been a finalist in several Goodreads contests, winning it in October 2014.

EDITOR’S NOTE: “Moonlight in Vermont” was written by John Blackburn and Karl Suessdorf in 1944. The lyrics are unusual in that they do not rhyme. The lyrics are also unconventional because each verse (not counting the bridge) is a haiku. Listen to the original recording by Margaret Whiting on youtube.

Eleven Below in Vermont by Cameron Miller (Where I Live Poetry & Photography Series)

Eleven Below in Vermont
by Cameron Miller

Onyx dome over pastures of snow
trees cast shadows by starlight.
Nothing moves.
No flashlight,
everything we need to see
seen.
We stop, dog and me,
mesmerized
by Milky Way
brushed thin on arch of pale glitter
from horizon to horizon.
Even dog stares into illuminated stillness.
Seven sisters over Jupiter
tip Littler Dipper upside down
spilling light into our darkness.
Then we hear it,
cold calling us from four corners.
Half creaks
muted pops
from inside trees.
Frozen moisture trapped inside wood
pushes outward
stretching rigid life
demanding it change, expand.

“Ert” “Crk”
     “Trtk.”
Dog’s ears perk
     head tilts
first left then right
then up then down.

Moments unroll
     sounds, dog, me,
     all one
with snow, dappled light,
piercing cold.
Stillness
the voice of winter’s night
lingers.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: The raw and desolate beauty of Vermont winter and stunning night sky, as with anything so exquisite, are beyond the grasp of words. Perhaps only in painting with words, such as poetry, can we even hope to evoke the experience.

IMAGE: “”Snowy Chapel at Night”(Little Stone Chapel built in 1950 by Werner von Trapp, Stowe, Vermont) by Edward Fielding. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Cameron Miller is a Hoosier by birth, a preacher by profession, and an author by vocation. He is the writer behind the curtain at www.subversivepreacher.org, and has also written professionally as a columnist and storyteller. Recently he traded fulltime parish ministry for writing fiction, poetry, and spiritual reflections while also relocating to the fabled Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. He has a poem included in the “I Am Waiting” Series on Silver Birch Press, with more poems appearing in upcoming anthologies by Eyewear Press and Inwood Indiana Press.

Joy, poem by Julie Cadwallader-Staub

JOY
by Julie Cadwallader-Staub

Who could need more proof than honey–
How the bees with such skill and purpose

enter flower after flower

sing their way home

to create and cap the new honey 

just to get through the flowerless winter.

And how the bear with intention and cunning

raids the hive

shovels pawful after pawful into his happy mouth

bats away indignant bees

stumbles off in a stupor of satiation and stickiness.

And how we humans can’t resist its viscosity

its taste of clover and wind

its metaphorical power:

don’t we yearn for a land of milk and honey?

don’t we call our loved ones “honey?”

all because bees just do, over and over again, what they were made to do.

Oh, who could need more proof than honey

to know that our world 

was meant to be

and

was meant to be 

sweet?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  Julie Cadawallader-Staub lives near Burlington, Vermont. Her poems have been published in numerous journals and featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac. Her first collection of poems, Face to Face, was published in 2010. “Joy” and” Guinea Pig,” which Garrison Keillor read on The Writer’s Almanac, are in this collection, in addition to sixty other poems. Julie’s poemReverence has been anthologized in Garrison Keillor’s book Good Poems: American Places. Her poetry also appears in the Silver Birch Press Summer Anthology. Visit her at juliecspoetry.com.

Joy, poem by Julie Cadwallader-Staub

JOY
by Julie Cadwallader-Staub

Who could need more proof than honey–
How the bees with such skill and purpose

enter flower after flower

sing their way home

to create and cap the new honey

just to get through the flowerless winter.

And how the bear with intention and cunning

raids the hive

shovels pawful after pawful into his happy mouth

bats away indignant bees

stumbles off in a stupor of satiation and stickiness.

And how we humans can’t resist its viscosity

its taste of clover and wind

its metaphorical power:

don’t we yearn for a land of milk and honey?

don’t we call our loved ones “honey?”

all because bees just do, over and over again, what they were made to do.

Oh, who could need more proof than honey

to know that our world

was meant to be

and

was meant to be

sweet?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  Julie Cadawallader-Staub lives near Burlington, Vermont. Her poems have been published in numerous journals and featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac. Her first collection of poems, Face to Face, was published in 2010. “Joy” and” Guinea Pig,” which Garrison Keillor read on The Writer’s Almanac, are in this collection, in addition to sixty other poems. Julie’s poem Reverence has been anthologized in Garrison Keillor’s book Good Poems: American Places. Her poetry also appears in the Silver Birch Press Summer Anthology. Visit her at juliecspoetry.com.