Angela Grace

Another tale about my dad and me but this one is entirely fictional. Enjoy.

March 30th

My Dad and I Go Swimming

     My dad and I stand at the edge of the ten story cliff staring down at the very distant water trying to  judge the quickly retreating ocean waves. We must time our dangerous leap so we will hit the waves just at their depth which means we have to leap when the waves have receded and there is nothing to see but sand. Too soon, too late, too bad. Of course it is not ten stories up but it sure looks like it. I am wearing my new pale blue two piece ruffled swim suit which barely hangs on my skinny body even though I am fifteen. The top has a strap from the middle, ties around my neck and the rest just hangs down not supported by any bosoms. The bottom has lace ruffles and they add some bulk to my nonexistent butt. My dad asks if I really want to do this? I don't answer. He takes my shaking hand, starts counting and we fly.

     Our toes have skidded off the sandy edge of the cliff as if to say “last chance to stop” but it's too late for a warning. The wind from our fast descent flutters the lace on my bathing suit and I feel the invisible strength of the air. My breath has traveled into my throat and it gets stuck there and I cannot even scream although I hear it in my ears.  I see my surroundings flashing by, and my life too. My dad is all smiles and shouts of glee. I think I am going to die.

     As we hit the icy, frothy water with toes first we find my dad has timed it perfectly. We have not broken our bodies on the concrete looking sand but have remarkably made it to our dubious goal, alive. Now it gets serious. I thought the air had power! Even though we pointed our toes so we could knife through the water as we touched down, it still came hard and fast. My dad and I managed to keep our hands held fast, but my free hand was flailing about and my dad's hand was placed over his crouch to protect himself. Up our legs the water went and forcefully pulled (pushed?) our suits into our butt cracks never to be removed. My frilly top, not held down by anything, began choking me. The salty water was chucked up my nose and mouth so far I could smell and taste it all at the same time. I think my brain is preserved in salt forever. It felt like my hair was being pulled out by the roots. My dad was having the same experience. The best part was yet to come, despite the sudden attack on our bodies.

     As we smashed into the liquid cement and became submerged, a whole hidden world engulfed my dad and me. The  turbulent water was just as violent as at the surface,  swishing and shaking us but our bodies adjusted to the movement and we felt back in the liquid we came from.  There is a different kind of quiet under the water. We could hear fish swimming, flora growing and sense large objects around us. But we did not hear it with our ears but knew it in our bones. We felt we could breathe if we needed to so there was no panicky, gasping effort to quell our automatic trigger to draw in air. The feeling was not so much physical but other worldly. We didn't struggle to surface but let ourselves drift down until the power of the jump ebbed and we stopped still. Before we began floating upward again, there was the point of solid quiet and stillness and at that moment we felt eternally close to one another, still holding hands. The moment lasted forever. 

     We surfaced, greeted by the brilliant sun, calm and present. The water had once again become a part of us to connect us forever. We swam lazily to the edge of the horizon and looked over at eternity.

My Dad

My buff brother, Guy, and me

Caroline Tavelli-Abar

March 20th. 
2021
Digital Drawing 

Red Horizon. See
the line between heavens? She
calls all sunsets home

Caroline Tavelli-Abar

March 10th. 2021

Crossroads

At the first ring I
Answered the old fashion phone
Now each night I sit

at this place between
yesterday and today, in
hand modern device

refreshing the page
at the crossroads of many
Imagination

Feverishly type
at the first sign of the prompt
tomorrow’s missives

It’s with sheer delight
this crossing comes to be my
most energized act

Caroline Tavelli-Abar

March 19th. 2021

Migration

Today I heard them
loud and clear across melting
Snow. Their echo long
In the distance calls:
We are back, we are back, spring
Is around the bend.

Their flight spans miles in
orderly formation they
travel, reminding
us of strength in team
work, and safety in numbers,
defiant and free
they find familiar
nesting ponds; hope carried on
fiercely open wings.

Axie Noyes

Nodal Points

The other night I lit a re out under the stars and watched the half moon sail across
the southern sky. It seems like I might have received a transmission of sorts. Been
pondering the meaning of time and function of memory and the work and lives of
ancestors and my own mission here this time around.

I wondered about distance, and how if everything was together at the start - the
bang - how is it that some parts are so far away now? Are we like sail boats in a
race where some catch a better wind? A land breeze along a shore? Does more
mass equate to greater speed once things get rolling? And then too, how do we
really know if the universe is expanding? Couldn’t we be shrinking, like Alice at
the bottom of the rabbit hole, nearly drowning in her own tears? I remember long
and intense hide-and-go-seek games, how when the one who was “it” would hide
their eyes, leaning into the old tree, and start counting. The rest of us would take
off at full speed in opposite directions, to nd good, and distant hiding places. I
wonder, is that something like what the universe is up to? If so, what happens when
it hears the call, “ally-ally-outs-in-free?"

I remember sitting in class at Potomac school, 4th grade I think, on a snowy
afternoon. Mrs. Ruprect was reading the opening chapter of Once and Future King.
Mrs. Ruprect was ancient. She had taught my father. I had my head on the desk by
the window overlooking a treed courtyard. But from the angle of my gaze, for that
moment there was no ground visible. There was no ground covered with glisten,
only the silent falling and the drone of her distant voice. I recall thinking it odd the
flakes distinct and close-by appeared darker then the further white hypnotic hum of
white.

There was a sense of a convergence, and then a shift in reality. Simply put, I was
no longer still, though I had not actually moved. I was no longer the observer of
movement, but the movement itself. Me, the room, with all of its’ previous weight.
We were now rising. I could feel it. The same subtle downward pressure on my
body as in an elevator, "going up!" All ascending: chalk boards, desks, classmates,
cinder block walls, black linoleum oors with their faint wisps of cloud patterns,
Mrs. Ruprect, T.H White's bones, and Arthur and Merlin as sh in the mote, all
rising into the pure haze of undifferentiated light.

We are like stars. They say we are star dust, and rarely what we appear to be. We
seem to be solid, but are told we are made up of tiny particles with worlds of space
between them - basically we’re clouds. Here on Earth things appear still with moon
and stars moving around us, when now we know we’re spinning and circling the
sun and the suns spinning and rocketing through space. it’s all moving - all
dancing. There is little true stillness to be found.

Like ballet dancers some learn to nd a focal point and as they spin they keep their
balance by turning our their eyes and heads again and again to that place of
apparent stillness. Or some, like twirling dervishes, simply spin and spin, and let
the blur of that movement become the constant point.

We can appear and glimmer and speak through space and time with our gadgets
after we’re long gone. We’ve been at it for centuries. In ocher and soot on cave
walls. Or like this, using little black marks on empty pages, that could well speak
to great great grandchildren and strangers alike in new worlds beyond.

There is, at this moment, primordial light whose source has long since gone dark,
entering my window. It’s traveled for eons, and its' wavy-gravy protons can still
charge the retinal nets in my eyes. And too, there’s light newborn and strong,
without a clue headed my way.

There’re nations of stars playing crack the whip out there. They appear in our
massive lenses and huge unblinking mirrors - smudged wisps. Then there are the
small, dark ones of stone and ice who wander like step children in the wide ranging
dim until they spark like a thrown match, struck against the inty air of Earth. Our
probing gadgets have even made it possible to peer into the dark shifting clouds of
the Celestial Mothers as they give birth to light itself! How is this possible? Surely
there is at least one sacred space that wants no intrusion.

We look to the stars and see rams, baskets, bears, chairs, chariots, serpents and
twins. There’re the seven sisters dimly huddled and whispering, and belted
warriors with undrawn swords. We see these things while making sense of light
and telling stories. It’s what minds do. It’s natural for us. But those who travel by
night and long for freedom and a dwelling place, where asylum can be found, we
search out the Dipper, the Bear or Plow. The same patterned cluster pictured
differently. They point out a place of apparent stillness, the unmoving center of
our local spin - for those, who without a compass, need to nd their way home.

Axie Noyes

The Robins Were Singing

The Robins were singing from their aerial stations in the grey and full dawn
Their songs reached like shadows from salty fringe
As watch-fires of old to ridge and ridge and rocky ledge
Round chilly peaks yet too cold, with snowy noses
To resting hills on their sides, dreaming green into life
A rising wave of piping came to move this world awake
And cracked the shell of winter’s ear and welcomed things brand new
And something long, long, so long
Passed by

Axie Noyes 3/28/21

R.D. Eno

PHOTO BOMB

In the photograph it is sunset in the late
autumn of ‘45, Berlin, on the edge
on what remains of Königsplatz. My father
stands in his army greatcoat and garrison cap
in the burnt-out wasteland of the Tiergarten,
a few scorched trees clawing at the air,
the carcass of the Reichstag getting scavanged.
The war has roared past; my father’s there
to help pick up the pieces of the Jews.
He squints into the camera as if trying
to glimpse me, not a year old, on the other side.
But also in the shot, behind a concrete
wall, I see a young girl crouching down,
her blonde hair spilling from a black beret,
who, at the moment of the shutter’s click, lifts
her head from hiding and smiles, as if the camera
and me beyond were looking just for her,
a secret that my father shouldn’t know.

R.D. Eno

IN MEMORY OF DAVID CARPENTER

Fiddlers, lay your bows aside;
David Carpenter has died.
let the music hold its breath
a moment to observe his death.

All the old northland tunes were there,
from Portsmouth to Trois Rivieres,
Champlain to Isle of Shoals,
in the archive of his soul.

All the dances ever called
in Grange, gymnasium or Town Hall,
kitchen junket, church or street
David knew by heart and feet.

“Old-fashioned” had no devotee
more staunch or exigent than he;
his style, transparent to the ear,
opened the door on yesteryear.

He dealt his music unadorned;
as he’d received, he passed it on.
And in the garden and the barn
as he fiddled, so he farmed.

Spurn the distractions of the new;
strip the synthetic from the true.
In the clear, authentic mind
catch the tune of humankind.

Who will keep faith with the past
now that David’s breathed his last?
Who will pay the honor due
to memories we never knew?

Who upbraid when we distress
simple beauty with excess?
Who enjoin us to embrace
time’s unmediated grace?

R.D. Eno

THE CHILDREN

In the evening dusk, the children emerge like ghosts
from shallow graves. They shiver as they set
foot to the water’s edge, brave and hopeless
as heroes in a battle already lost.
Continents behind them heave with the cannibal
frenzy of a shark’s womb; ahead loom
the gridded step-lands or the bloated piles
of homo humanitas in its latest swoon.
Alone, for love abandoned, they dare the rifts
in the world, having no choice but pluck,
no choice but to inhabit life, to step
out on the high-wire of untested luck.
Listen. You can hear the prayers they dare not utter.
It is evening, and the children are crossing the water.

Margaret Blanchard

Kelpie
First time we met, tiny you dashed away from your littermates 
to follow a scent beyond the fence you wiggled through.
“That’s the one for me,” I said with a smile I would learn 
to regret as I dashed behind     you escaping through every opening
to follow your remarkable nose through endless explorations.

If it hadn’t been for adopted Hotay who corralled your boundless energy
with playful nips and tumbles, I might have despaired.  Instead we three enjoyed so many hikes, our daily walks, explorations along streams,
up mountains, discovering trash and stench redolent of sources evident or 
illusory to my dense nostrils, only imagined by my scent-starved brain.


Fifteen years later, we still take our daily walks, both much slower now,
still pausing for mysterious odors, or thoughtfully following the seasons around our established trail, the leash a bond of love draped loosely between us.
Your valor touches me deeply, a zest for life as resolute as ever despite your
weakness, weariness, wobbliness: your loyalty, curiosity a map for my own aging.

Oh faithful friend and guide, companion in both fat and lean times,
show me the way to meaningful passage, 
one step at a time, savoring every sniff.

Margaret Blanchard




A Vermont Traveler Reflects on NYC   

Thesis: Difference Exposed

 At a busy edge of Central Park 
on a lovely summer day
picnickers abound:
a family circle on a blanket,
all of them, children and adults,
totally naked.

Crossing nearby on the sidewalk
a Muslim family modestly attired.
An earnest five year old 
covers her little sister’s eyes
with detached forbearance
as they pass the nudists.

Antithesis:  Poverty Articulated for Change

As we hike downtown, the chorus 
of appeals escalates:
an aging outstretched hand,
with sign lamenting her own poverty;
a young man’s plea: “Give me money 
so I don’t have to steal”; 
a chronically broken wheelchair
for the man with no feet;
and finally this scrawl from a young woman:
“Give me your f**king change!”*

I’m turned off by her rage;
my friend admires her spunk.
He gives her some change.


Synthesis: Around the Rounds 

In the center of the Park at the hub of the Village
children play in the round fountain 
surrounded by music from every angle,
klezmer to the right, hip-hop to the left,
opera to the north, jazz to the south, 
syncopated by voices speaking Greek,
French, Mandarin, Swahili, Spanish, Creole,
from people wearing cloaks, scarves, burkas, 
wellies, sneakers, and sandals,
with treats from burritos to biryani to bagels,
protesters with their conflicting signs 
mixing with U.N. reps, circus performers, protestors,
artists, beggars, and Wall Street execs.   

Margaret Blanchard


Horizons and Reflections

Farewell Song
The ship has sailed; now you are gone.
You travel alone this final time.

On this sad shore here we stand,
wondering, wondering where you’ve gone.

You never left us here before. 
We always followed, tagged along
across deep oceans tossing waves,
through the lands of many flags.

When we were small, we held your hand,
or skipped behind your steady gait.
For years you led through deserts and cities,
laughter and tears, again, again.

Now it is our time to wait
with our doubts, with our blindness,
mapping our own routes to faith,
trusting your legacy of kindness.

We knew you had to go before us.
We knew it took your deepest courage.
Yet still we long for one more glimpse
of your sweet face, your radiant grace.

At earth’s blue edge all ships vanish,
no journey’s span or outcome known.
We can only guess who’ll meet us,
can only hope for joyous greetings.

Blessed, blessed be your voyage
as we grieve your tender passage.
sorting through what gifts you’ve left us,
memories, mysteries, one life’s lessons.

The ship has sailed; now she is gone.
She travels alone this final time.

Annie Wattles

River of words

Almost all the day windows and doors were flown wide open
sun streaming in everywhere lifting the old and shining all
the rooms with light and warmth and air so we changed things
around took out all the blankets and pillows and a rug to the
porch hung things up out there over chairs and table to air
out from this time of isolation and quarantine with no others 
in the house us just us getting closer and closer knowing 
ourselves and each other in new ways that hadn’t seeped
thru even after 30 plus years when there were always things 
to do and distractions remembering when last summer started 
we were new to this now the knowing of this time will live in us 
forever informing these new selves the ones that have come forward 
knowing less and knowing more

Ruth Witte

Drops of watercolor and water



Above, I started with a yellow wash
and drops of color on the still-wet
paint in the middle of the page to
allow the colors to whoosh where
they would. Paint drops around the
page after it had dried were nudged
with the brush to create smaller
flowers. The tiny leaves? Brush pens!!

In the second painting, after painting
the background and a few starter
flowers I outlined the vase with water
and a face appeared in the swirls!
You can still see the remnants.

Ruth Witte

Day # 23 Mostly Monochromatic, part 2



Notes on my process:

I needed to test and experiment with acrylic markers.






I did not like where this was going and have been wanting to do a monochromatic piece.
I can use this, but I really like that one multi-colored shape and decided to leave it.
I’ve been feeling a bit scrambled these past few days and my intentions of doing more
with lines and mixing paint became entwined and confused with the desire to try these
markers.
I felt like I had a regression to my 10-year-old self, starting to overthink my work and
losing confidence (Day #22)
I took myself back to my 3 or 4-year-old self: Curiosity (what happens if I do this?) vs
Expectation (this is not what I am trying to do).

This is what happens when preschoolers start learning about how to mix color and when
to stop before all shading is lost.

Ruth Witte

Day # 29 Tissue paper gone awry



I've been wanting for weeks to try salt and water splatter on runny tissue paper to see if they
would respond as with watercolor. Sadly, I used too much water and not enough glue for the
tissue to adhere to the paper after it dried. I did try salt while it was still wet but the glue that was
mixed in seems to have repelled the salt. The blue and purple stain left by the tissue dye served
as the basis for more liquid watercolor and salt, highlighted by brush pens and finished with a
black acrylic marker.

Michiko Oishi

Haiku

春雨や木の芽草の芽喜ばせ
harusameya kinomekusanome yorokobase

spring rain
tree buds, grass sprouts
all rejoicing

Michiko Oishi

Tanka
人生の返し縫なり思い出を語り合いつつ語り継ぐ時
jinseino kaeshinuinari omoideo katariaitsutsu kataritsugutoki

reverse stitches
of one’s life
sharing memories
to pass down
life stories

Michiko Oishi

Haiku

鳥帰る一枝ごとに新たな巣
torikaeru hitoedagotoni aratanasu

birds return
twig by twig
new nests

Lynn A. Wild

Some of you have heard of the St Paul Street Tree Project Pilot begun by the Montpelier Tree Board and Parks Department 5 years ago this year. Its purpose? To see what it takes 1) to create an edible landscape on a city street for the residents; 2) to rebuild ecosystem services lost with the death of more than 10 large maple trees over the past decade; 3) to greatly increase the street's biodiversity.
Neighbors met, graciously hosted by the Lighthouse Christian Church; we ate food together, looked at pictures of trees, talked about possibilities; we signed up those willing to care for a new tree in their yards.
Tree Board Volunteers marked planting sites in yards, called Dig Safe, dug 22 holes, brought compost, buckets of water, and lifted/dug/coerced 14 well-established "sapling" trees out of the tree nursery at the North Branch Nature Center; eight other trees were donated.
Over 3 days, 22 fruit, nut, and berry trees and shrubs were planted in April and May of 2016, along St Paul Street. The trees have grown, flowered, produced pears, plums, and nuts, and increased the beauty of the street. Sadly, we lost one tree, the beautiful and prolifically productive Mount Royal Plum.
Although I set out to write about elderberries and their role with wild blackberries in providing food and habitat for the Indigo Bunting, it's the impact on St. Paul Street of all the trees and companion plants together that created the real poetry. So here you have Envision.

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Lynn A. Wild

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Lynn A. Wild

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