Poets Under Glass, Inc.

I know, I have been busy and not posting on this page. Busy getting Covid shots (2) and quarantines afterward. Here's a poem for you for National Poetry Month. It's got a Scandinavian theme, meaning: watch what you say, as they can never be taken back. Look up the history of Rune stones.
The Gift

Tender moments,
gather into a stone
cast out
on a slip of the tongue,
precipitating
rings in a pool
from memory
to infinity.

First published in "Nightingale Day Songs", second in a series of vintage poets presented by the NYC Dept. of Parks & Recreation, Henry Stern, Commissioner, Julius Spiegel, Borough Commissioner, with a special introduction by Brooklyn's FIRST POET LAUREATE (caps mine), Norman Rosten.

On Being Fully Vaccinated

I am a campfire,
The solid wood of my body
Rests on logs raised
Within a circle of large rocks.

Tuck kindling under my logs,
And for a while, I am quiet
But suddenly I flare up,
Providing needed light and heat.

A switch is needed,
But, there is none
For the forest of my imagination
Is endless in size and shape.

At midlife, I no longer
Need permission from my parents
To reduce my liberty or ability
To produce expected tolerance temperature.

My thirst for air and more logs
Is insatiable, even when my environment
Needs heat and warmth, I burn,
At some point, my energy needs water thrown on it.

The still small voice, within me,
Is as that of a wren. The useful rise in temperature
Begins to eat up all the oxygen, and then:
Every day life, as we once knew it opens and expands.

This fuzzy view was taken last year, with spring on its way, through the screen on my window, where I lived in quarantine in Virginia for three months. Back then, 2021, was not clear, had no light at the end of the tunnel. During this time, I wrote poems about the birds I saw and about hope. This weekend, March 21, we welcome the Vernal Equinox. Try to write a poem about it, if you can and think spring.

Our Co-op Membership is now 100 years old. Here's how I celebrate it:

Valentines Day is coming up soon as is the "Year of the Ox" for our Chinese friends. Here's a poem I wrote back when it was the year of the Dog, which is still relevant. I read it recently for my feature with the Phoenix Readings on Zoom. Enjoy!

A Valentine For Everyone

Love’s a funny thing.
It commands mothers
To love each child equally,
Although — the one with colic
Who kept you up all night —
Makes no time to visit
In your old age.

It asks you to forgive
The frailties and faults
Of a companion
Who once loved you,
Bur no longer remembers
What drew you together
In the first place.

Love is that look
Of admiration you get
From your cat
Before — not just after
You’ve filled his dish.
It’s the sunrise in the morning,
And the sunset in the evening.
It’s the empty seat on the bus,
The umbrella you find
When caught in the rain.

Love is whatever it takes
To learn skills of forgiveness:
The treat in the bottom of the box
That you give to the naughtiest child
In your class before dismissal,
The curse you don’t say under your breath
When a full basket beats you to the register
At the “under 10 items” line at the super market.

It’s the glass of water
For the face at the door
Who rang your bell
To find out why
You were not answering your phone
When you got caught up in a book
And that look that didn’t seem bothered
By finding you reading in the dark.

Love can be the memory
Of a parent patting your head
When you didn’t do anything special
To deserve it,
A twenty dollar bill
You find in an old wallet,
The photo of a grandchild on a Christmas card
That drops out of an envelope
While packing up tree trimmings.

Love is everywhere
You want it to be,
It’s always with you
Free to give free to receive
And so I give you
This poem for “Chinese New Year”,
An auspicious enough occasion
In the “Year of the Dog” -
Faithful, easy to please,
Here to greet you
Whenever you come home —
A Valentine that says I love you
Unconditionally,
Even though you didn’t brush your teeth yet
And haven’t tucked in that shirt you know I hate.

Keep it with your all day, smile
And remember I love you always,
Even when this simple Valentine
Has faded away.

Here's part III of "The First Sunday" for the last week of January:
Now I will just have to find something special to eat:
Black-eyed peas, or apples dipped in honey or blueberries
smothered in whipped cream, or maybe
it should be -- rose-hip tea, with something stronger
to distract me from sitting in the dark, with a shadow
of myself displayed on this page
created by the artificial light of my bedside lamp.😘

Here's the second part of the three-part poem I wrote earlier:

My copy of the Farmer

Here's the second part of the three part poem started below:
II My copy of the Farmers Almanac
says that an hour of daylight has been saved,
and yet I can't find it.

So where did this waste of daylight go?
I hope this event will not be a bad omen.
Whatever the reason it can't outweigh the fact that
Come February 2, is the midp;oint
between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.

So happy the poetry reading with Michael Graves went so well. And what wonderful 2 other features to read with. And aren't you amazed at the new national poet laureate of the United States elevating poetry as an art form once again?

Received a postcard from the Poetry Society of America. (I remember when my old workshop the Poetry Launderette used to send out post cards. I still contribute to getting the PSA magazine). Apparently, the PSA has a relationship with Citymeals on Wheels. Here is a poem by Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004), poet, novelist, memoirist, and essayist who won the Pulitzer Prize in Literature in 1980. Here's the poem:

Gift
A day so happy.
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.

Have a safe and healthy, Martin Luther King week-end and day on Monday.

The Heat Is On

Outside, the wind blows
Through the trees and leaves
Falling onto the street.

The sun comes up now from a different
Space in the sky —
A place far from where I saw
The sunrise only a month ago.

They say there will be two moons
This month — one to announce fall,
And one to make the need to plan ahead
Before frost comes to claim the harvest.

The noise that pops into my room
As I work at my desk,
Announces what I have to look
Forward to,

The heat is on. It fills the ribs
Of the radiators and pipes installed
Within these freshly painted walls.

There’s no fireplace here to augment
The heat, with another log — only hope
That the heat stays on inside
And not outside my apartment.

A

Press release from Poets Under Glass Inc. for Mike Graves zoom reading, scheduled on 1-17-21 at 6:00 PM.

Marion Palm, a bi-lingual Swedish-speaking poet and frequent featured reader on the NYC poetry readings scene, is internationally published. Marion attended the University of Minnesota for her undergraduate work and Bank Street College of Education for her graduate degree. She is the founding director of Poets Under Glass, Inc. — winner of numerous grants and awards, the most prestigious being a proclamation for “contributing to the cultural vitality of our city”, from a borough president of Brooklyn. She has edited numerous industrial magazines, been included in anthologies, and has her work archived in the Sutter Memorial Archive at Wagner College, at the National Museum of Immigration and Naturalization, and the Library of Congress as author of six chapbooks and five non-fiction books. In 2018, the University of Minnesota inducted her into the ANA (Alumni of Notable Achievement) in Minneapolis as a “gifted poet, educator and community advocate.” Her most recent distinction is being included in a resource book featuring 360 of the “world’s best contemporary poets”, out of India. Once an office administrator and educator, she now writes full-time — where she lives in Brooklyn — as a member of one of the original Finnish co-ops built over a hundred years ago in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

“Don’t be pushed by your problems, be led by your dreams” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am pleased to announce that I will be the feature for Michael Graves in Greenwich Village Zoom Meeting on January 17, 2021 at 7:00 PM. I am planning to read 16 poems spanning 50 years of writing poetry while residing in: New York, Minnesota, Virginia, New Jersey and Sweden. The theme is "Survival", and I have 20 minutes to read. I will add to the post, as I get more information.