This Sunday is Father’s Day. No doubt you’ll read many saccharine accounts of fathers and what it means to be a parent and to be parented. But reality is not usually as sweet. Sometimes the people in our lives cannot be summed up with sentimentality. One of my favorite poems is This Be the Verse by Philip Larkin because it views parenting as flawed at best. Of course it is overly cynical. Nevertheless, there is much truth in this jaundiced view of parenting as imperfect and … [Read more...]
Mother’s Day poem by Laura Rodley
It’s Mother’s Day weekend. Hope you have sunny weather ahead. How nice to open my email and receive this poem from Laura Rodley, the Massachusetts poet whose work is often featured here and in other places such as the New Verse News (where her poem Pushcart-winning poem Resurrection appeared in 2013). She is also a freelance writer for publications such as Country Folks. I can always count on her to give me something imagistic, evocative and full of feeling. These days … [Read more...]
Glimpse of solace: In flight by Laura Rodley
This seems like an apt photo for today, Election Day, where we don't exactly know where we will land. The photo is by Laura Rodley -- my gratitude to her for letting me share it here. Laura Rodley’s work has been nominated numerous times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of Net anthologies. In 2013 Laura was awarded the Pushcart Prize (for her poem “Resurrection,” which originally appeared in The New Verse News). She has two chapbooks from Finishing Line Press: Your … [Read more...]
Hunger by Laura Rodley
Hunger Does the maple leaf hunger for the sun, shaking hands with its light, the light that turns the maples’ leaves to rusty orange, heavy with color, so heavy they drop? Does the cardinal hunger for its mate, how they are never more than twenty feet away from each other, the wind of their flight, attaining bird seeds or shelter, so close they thrive? Do the deer hunger for acorns, remembering the buttery taste of those already eaten, or do they step … [Read more...]