Eric Levi Jacobson

The Penal Colony
             

                
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Orah Moore

              End of the world
       If the trees all disappear 
          By the hand of man

Orah Moore

                Brilliant golden orb
      Full moon over distant sea
              Witnessed by a few

Susan Bull Riley

Painting Milkweed
             

                
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Susan Bull Riley

Mt. Mansfield
            

                
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Susan Bull Riley

Singing to Vermont
             

                
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Sarah E Franklin

"Day 15, Two Moon Poems"
             

                
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Angela V Grace

"There was a song there…"

The point of my creativity is to form community by asking my sponsors, friends and family to give me an opening and/or closing sentence and the muse and I will do the rest.

March 18th
Thank you, Janet, my longtime friend resurfaced, for the opening line,
“There was a song there…”
     
"There was a song there" that fulfilled my heart's desire that I didn't even know I had, to sing a solo on stage, just me, the music and the lights. Well, a huge opera house filled with thousands of adoring people applauding for me wouldn't hurt. Not really, as this song was between me and my inner self.

     It all started when the Barre Opera House had just reopened after being dormant for many years. A huge old place with nothing but mouse do-do and metal folding chairs for seats. I read in the paper that try outs for “Hello Dolly” were being held there. It never occurred to me to try out, but it was a perfect chance for me to see the inside of this magnificent building. I sat way up in the back in the dark and marveled at the mystery of all that was going on. The next thing I knew I was singing some song in the middle of the huge stage with a grand piano backing me up. That is a tribute to the Barre Players, sadly now no more, who encouraged everyone to do every aspect of theater, from lights, to directing, to costuming, to props and to performing with or without talent.
   
I was selected to be in the chorus, which I didn't know at the time was the most fun part, because you can fool around on stage, not know all the words and be part of, as it turns out, a community spiritual experience. Just look happy and mostly know where you are supposed to go. No pressure. My partner was Bob Nelson who thought he'd been stuck with an “old lady” but we became fast friends and had a blast. By the way, Dolly was our very own Axie Noyes who played a marvelous part.

Many, many shows later, mostly with the Barre Players and mostly musicals, it became time for “Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.” I wanted the part of Dotsie Mae, a downtrodden "respectable" waitress who had dreams. Well, so did I, but… I didn't get the part. I took on the job of producer, but I knew that part and that solo were meant for me. As it turns out, the actress decided not to do the show, and the part fell to me. Yikes! Now I'm terrified. Be careful what you ask for, you might get it.
   
By this time, I had found my voice and knew I could act. But, center stage, all alone, spotlight, oh, my. My song started with a lonely violin played beautifully by Diana Stone and then me. I planted my feet, took a deep breath and It was everything I wanted it to be. Just me and my inner self and Dotsie Mae.
     
I continued singing, acting and doing whatever was needed until I couldn't remember lines anymore. Sad but true. Thank you, Universe, for the privilege.

Love, keep 'em coming Angie. 

Angela V Grace

"What if…"

March 16
Thanks Ann W. for the opening sentence and Susan M. for the closing sentence.
" What if…"
What if…
the muse doesn't appear?
my moon falls into the ocean?
no one really likes me?
one of my cats dies?
I'm ugly?
the world blows up?
all the suffering continues?
I won't be loved?
I won't love?
my children don't love or respect me?
black Jelly beans become extinct?
my fears are too shallow?
my body will fail me?
my computer will win?
my home will burn down?
I'll forget how to swim?
no one will care?
there will be no more nice people on earth?
I'll forget you?
I turn left instead of right?
I am unkind?
I'll fall?
I'll fail?
She seems sweet and sincere, but what she was saying was utter bull shit!

Love, keep 'em coming Angie. 

Angela V Grace

"On one hand…and on the other hand."

March 22nd
Thanks to an anonymous person for the opening line.
“On One Hand…and on the other hand.”

     "On one hand" my Aunt Ginger was a very controlling, opinionated and hard to get along with woman. So was her sister, my mother, who was the same for me. They fought often and, in the end, weren't speaking to each other. Too sad. They had a rough upbringing, orphaned early in life and taken in by dysfunctional family members. Despite this, they made something of their lives. My Aunt was a singer and traveled with Danny Kaye (some still remember Danny.) She was later a businesswoman in the forties and fifties, when many women didn't work, and also raised a family. Her daughter, Ginger, my cousin, and I were fast friends and I miss her.
   
"On the other hand," Aunt Ginger became my mother figure late in her life and she suggested I call her Auntie Mom. She believed in me. She showed me she trusted, supported and loved me. When I was a kid, my brother and I spent summers with her and my Uncle Sam, my cousins Ginger and Sam (yes, they named them after themselves) on Peconic Bay at the end of Long Island. I was 9 and my brother, Guy, was 15 when our dad was killed in an auto accident. My Aunt and Uncle brought us to their summer home every summer until we went off to college. My mom visited when she wasn't working, and she and my Aunt Ginger spent their time arguing.
     
When my Auntie Mom got cancer, I would go once a month to Southold on Long Island to take care of her. Life had gone by, and I was now pushing 60. I would get on the train in the evening in Montpelier, try to sleep while traveling to New London, Connecticut and then walk to the New London Ferry about 3 in the morning. Crazy! I would doze until the first ferry left for Orient Point about 7 AM. After many journeys, the ferry boat ride became a spiritual respite, coming and going, for my time with my beloved Auntie Mom. I felt the time spent on the water was sanctifying my journey. My cousin would meet me and take me to her mom's. Auntie Mom and I developed the loving relationship I'd always wanted with a mom. She was mostly her old self, but we know she was fading. One night she thought that this was it, so I got into bed with her, and we held hands all night. Very lovely. The next morning dawned, and we looked at each other and laughed. Oh, well. We got up and had breakfast. That was us. After a few days, I'd reverse the trip and look forward to the next month. 
     
Of course, it had to come to an end. My cousin called me one night and said “our” (bless her) mother had passed. One last journey to the tip of Orient Point to spread her ashes. I miss her terribly but still feel her loving acceptance. I often wish I could board the ferry again and float in her love.

Love, keep 'em coming Angie.

Ginger became my mother figure late in her life and she suggested I call her Auntie Mom. She believed in me. She showed me rusted, supported and loved me. When I was a kid, my brother and I spent summers with her and my Uncle Sam, my cousins Ginger and Sam (yes, they named them after themselves) on Peconic Bay at the end of Long Island. I was 9 and my brother, Guy, was 15 when our dad was killed in an auto accident. My Aunt and Uncle brought us to their summer home every summer until we went off to college. My mom visited when she wasn't working, and she and my Aunt Ginger spent their time arguing.
     
When my Auntie Mom got cancer, I would go once a month to Southold on Long Island to take care of her. Life had gone by, and I was now pushing 60. I would get on the train in the evening in Montpelier, try to sleep while traveling to New London, Connecticut and then walk to the New London Ferry about 3 in the morning. Crazy! I would doze until the first ferry left for Orient Point about 7 AM. After many journeys, the ferry boat ride became a spiritual respite, coming and going, for my time with my beloved Auntie Mom. I felt the time spent on the water was sanctifying my journey. My cousin would meet me and take me to her mom's. Auntie Mom and I developed the loving relationship I'd always wanted with a mom. She was mostly her old self, but we know she was fading. One night she thought that this was it, so I got into bed with her, and we held hands all night. Very lovely. The next morning dawned, and we looked at each other and laughed. Oh, well. We got up and had breakfast. That was us. After a few days, I'd reverse the trip and look forward to the next month. 
   
Of course, it had to come to an end. My cousin called me one night and said “our” (bless her) mother had passed. One last journey to the tip of Orient Point to spread her ashes. I miss her terribly but still feel her loving acceptance. I often wish I could board the ferry again and float in her love.

Love, keep 'em coming Angie. 

Axie Noyes

Mixed Bag 6 - Lamentation
             

                
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Axie Noyes

Mixed Bag 3-20-24 story + illustration

             

                
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Axie Noyes

Mixed Bag 3-21-24 Hunkerin' Down
             

                
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Lynn Wild

Chasing Autumn – On the Way to Cortez
            

                
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Lynn Wild

Chasing Autumn – Mesa Verde
             

                
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Lynn Wild

Chasing Autumn – Ship Rock and Toadlena Trading Post
            

                
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Andy Robinson

Of Mud and Maple
             

                
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Jane Wohl

A Volcano erupted with little notice in Iceland
(New York Times, March 18)

Who doesn’t notice a volcano? Or are they so common in Iceland
that everyone is quite blasé? Ho hum, the bees are back, and the robins,
And by the way, there goes another volcano.

Does lava just look like more mud? Ash plumes like a cloudy day?
The daffodils are blooming and the purple crocuses, and
there’s too much rain forecast for tomorrow,
and by the way there goes another volcano.

or could it be that we have become numbed to disaster?
People are starving in Gaza, dying in the Sudan,
People sleep under bridges in New York,
The rats now outnumber people, and
by the way there goes another volcano.

March 20, 2024
Jane E Wohl 

Jane Wohl

Climate Change Partially Responsible for the Increasing Number of Recently Found Shipwrecks

The Endurance, Shakleton’s ship, found in the ice of Antarctica,
more than a century after it sank, stranding the explorers in that cold,
and inhospitable place. A coal barge in the Great Lakes,
and other ships, some centuries old, washed up on beaches
during some of our more violent storms.

And I wonder about the way the past resurfaces,
how what was once visible becomes visible again,
the way a smell brings something back,
Prout’s Madelines, of course, but colors, too,
that flash of yellow on a street corner,
resurrects that dress you wore
on your first day of kindergarten, that phrase
from Mozart’s third violin concerto
brings me, immediately, my mother standing
at the piano, playing that melody from memory.
and then the masts of a wrecked ship, the lines
of argument, the webs of rotting rope that
once held something together surface in spite
of how much we’d like to think they’d no longer return.

After the coal barge washed up in the shore, someone
must have said, “Oh, that was real, my great-grandfather
was on that ship.” Or when the Endurance emerged,
and the barrels and boxes, revealed themselves, did someone
remember that resurfacing reveals things we
did not know we knew?

March 25, 2024
Jane E Wohl 

Jane Wohl

What I Know: or Random Encounters at the Train Station

It’s late; we’ve all been informed by text message
that the train is late, but the information is inconsistent.
Some messages say an hour, some an hour and a half and
in the end, it was really two hours and the sun
has already dropped behind the building,

The shadows are lengthening out across the tracks,
but he and I, this young gymnast fresh from a festival
in Las Vegas, talked about travel, and winter camping
and how hard it is to be 13, and what it’s like
to do what you love day after day.
He told me how, as a performer on a cruise ship
he had seen the white marble buildings on Mykonos,
and the surreal dystopia that is Dubai.

He showed me that places on his wrists where the straps
he uses have worn grooves into the skin, and I told
him about driving across the country, the traffic
in South Dakota (none) and the traffic in Chicago,
and about how to write a sonnet.

We both know about how to start fires with bowdrills,
and understand the joys of following a trail along a ridge.
I told him how I had once taught a pudgy suburban kid
how to split birch logs and about touring Europe
with a group of Wyoming teenagers.

The whistle sounds, the train finally pulls in.
We do not get on at the same door.
It will be awkward if we see each other at the end of the line.

March 24, 2024
Jane E Wohl

Simone Arnold

Dragons

Dragons are commonplace today.
We watch them on TV,
Read about them in magazines,
Vote for them each year,
Allow them to control our finances and futures.

Dragons gather wealth with no intent to share.
Banks are their hoards
Along with second homes in the Alps,
Sprawling mansions in the country,
Fleets of yachts,
And Russian nesting dolls of businesses.

Dragons have always been smart.
Modern dragons are clever,
Craftier than the dragons of old
Manipulating systems and peasants alike.
Instead of fighting the knights in shining armor,
Dragons buy them off
Hire them to keep the peasants away from their wealth,
Rewarding them with pennies on the dollar,
Traitors to the very people they protect.

Dragons have become more efficient.
They no longer need travel door to door,
Village to village,
Country by country
Gathering their wealth
Laboring under its weight as they try to fly away.
The common peasant gives it away freely
In exchange for promises of protection,
And other necessities of life
Which the dragon also hoards.
One type of wealth is never enough.

Dragons no longer hide that they are dragons.
Their ways are celebrated,
Idolized,
Coveted by the peasants.
“You too can be a dragon,” they purr
Filling people's heads with sweet promises.
What they don’t tell you is the how,
The dark magic involved,
The deal for your heart in exchange for the power to take
How once your humanity is gone,
No one is safe. 

Simone Arnold

Teapot

Chaos swimming around
Spout squealing,
Heat rising,
Responsibilities piling.

An island in the storm,
A handhold while falling,
A tether from going overboard.

Notes of summertime mint,
Baked rice,
Fields of sunshine,
Earthy grounding smells.

Entering my body
Traveling down my gullet,
Silky warm and smooth,
Infusing with my very being:
We are one.

Radiating light from within
Beckoning forth pilgrims
Here for rest and knowledge:
Yes, I am here with you now,
Present and centered.
As the chaos descends
A sip from the cup in my hands
The world rights itself once again. 

Simone Arnold

Books

On a cold winter days
Filled with falling snow,
Twinkling lights,
And crackling logs
I hear the call,
Adventure awaits!

Fantastical lands filled with fae
Vibrant trees and magical plants.
Friendly fauna gliding on air
Sweet perfume of mystical foods
All while wrapped up
Safe from the consequences in lands unknown.

In these hours I am bold!
Careening through fancy parties,
Yelling down tyrants,
And risking it all for love.
Each ending finished off neatly,
If only life worked out this way.

Here I experience wonders beyond me
As I touch the stars
Ride off into the sunset
And clean myself in winter mountain hot springs,
I am alive!

The day ends
And the roaring fire turns to embers
The world is quiet and sleepy
One more rest
Another adventure on the horizon. 

Lucy Morris
            

                
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Lucy Morris
             

                
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Lucy Morris
             

                
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Ruth Witte
            

                
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Janet Van Fleet
            

                
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Janet Van Fleet
             

                
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Janet Van Fleet
            

                
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Sarah E Franklin

Peter Bingham

Waiting for Bees

Susan Reid

Robins in the Snow

Susan Reid

Charlie’s Influence

Susan Reid

March Forth

Loring Starr

Video of green bead mobile

Loring Starr

Mobile of stars