A Non-Personal Memory of Wendell Berry

I first saw the news Monday about the death of Wendell Berry rather obliquely. Two Facebook friends independently posted poems by him. I stared, realizing the coincidence meant only one thing. He’d died, aged 92. 

Some news events shock you, upending what you understand about the world. An assassination. The fall of the Berlin Wall. A terrorist attack like 9/11. Others reduce you to a sense of profound quiet. It was that second kind I experienced on reading those two poems. Neither post mentioned his death. They didn’t have to. I knew.

 

I don’t have a personal story about Wendell Berry. I know people who’ve gone to his lectures, and people who’ve made pilgrimages to his home in Kentucky. People who’ve met him. But I don’t have a personal story. What I have is a one-off story, which probably tells you more about agriculture, biotech agriculture, and the wars that raged over genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, for three decades. The story also tells you more about Berry’s impact and influence than many obituaries.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Thursday Readings

 

The 2026 Society of Classical Poets International Poetry Competition and the International High School Poetry Competition. 

 

“The Elixir,” poem by George Herbert – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

After the Storm, Still I Float – poem by Riyanka Paul.

 

“The Blind Man and the Elephant,” poem by John Godfrey Saxe – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient & Modern. 

Poets and Poems: Jen Karetnick and "Organ Language"

A grandmother’s jewelry. A heavy rainfall. The fruit in a pina colada. A soccer game. Accompanying a parent to a medical procedure. Waiting for biopsy results. A can opener. Grief. Riding in the car with your sister. Gardening. A frog. Cicadas. Arthritis. The neighbor who calls you by the wrong name. 

What all these disparate things have in common is that they’re familiar. common, everyday. They’re so familiar that we often forget them or overlook them. 

 

In the hands of poet Jen Karetnick, however, the familiar and the common become something else. She reaches into her own childhood. She considers the experiences of her own children. She looks at the life she’s living now. The subjects are largely what we know as experiences common to all of us, but Karetnick shows us how the familiar will also indicate something deeper, something more profound. That’s the heart and soul of her new collection, Organ Language.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Night jar – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Planted – poem by L.L. Barkat at Every Day Poems.

 

“You, Andrw Marvell,” poem by Archibald MacLeish – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Poetry Club Tea Date: The Pershing Hotel – Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Do You Hear Birds? – poem by Elizabeth Wickland at Rabbit Room Poetry.

How the Norton’s Anthology Shaped My Understanding of Poetry

I still own four of the textbooks I used in college: Investigative Reporting, The History of Journalism, and a two-volume set of the Norton’s Anthology of English Literature. The fact that I was a journalism major explains the first two. But those two volumes of the Norton have their own story. What those four books have in common is that I took those courses all in my sophomore year. You can do the math: my sophomore year was 1970 to 1971. 

The vast majority of my sophomore class took the required English 55 and 56 classes – American literature. There was also another option – English 51 and 52, English literature.

 

No one took English Lit, except English majors. It was notorious for the rigor of its instructors, focused as they were on educating the next generation of English teachers. That’s who generally took the two courses.

 

I don’t remember why I decided to go with the English majors. I was in journalism; I was not going to be teaching English literature. I suspect it had something to do with T.S. Eliot, whose poetry I’d discovered in high school. Yet that’s not really an excuse; Eliot was also taught in the standard sophomore courses.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Thursday Readings

 

September Sunflowers – poem by Cameron Brooks at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

Night Sky with Strawberry – poem by Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

 

“There Was an Old Woman, Tossed in a Blanker,” nursery rhyme – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Poets and Poems: Peter Murphy and “You, Too, Were Once on Fire”

About the time my mother turned 75, she said something to me that she’d been apparently been saving up. “You know,” she said, “I’ve reached an age when I can say what I think, and I don’t have to worry about what happens because of it.” This was something she learned from her own mother, who’d made some kind of similar announcement at about the same age. Except my grandmother had been doing exactly that long before she announced it. So had my mother. 

I remembered those statements as I read deeper into You, Too, Were Once on Fire: Poems by Peter Murphy. Ad those thoughts hit me as I read “Stairs to All Levels,” a poem about Frank O’Hara and New York City and the Twin Towers and 9?11, and you don’t even realize it until the end of the poem hits you upside the head with a smack. It was that poem, followed immediately by “Miss Besieged Sarajevo,” about a beauty contestant during the Bosnian War in 1993, that made me realize I needed to make sure my seat belt was buckled and tray tables were locked securely for takeoff.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

A Giant on the Shoulder of Giants – J.C. Scharl at Public Discourse.

 

Hands of Christ – poem by Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

Your Poems: The Beachy Poem Challenge – Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (excerpt), poem by Samuel Talyor Coleridge – Every Day Poems.

 

“Jabberwocky,” poem by Lewis Carroll – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Poets and Poems: Gabrielle Myers and “Go Forth: Lose Yourself into Life”

The end of a relationship with a spouse or partner is like a death – a death of familiarity, a death of structure, a death of how we live our lives and who we share that life with. I’ve never experienced that kind of loss, but I’ve seen it happen to close friends and family members.  

Gabrielle Myers experienced that kind of loss, a relationship she ended after “five years of verbal abuse.” She did what many poets do – she turned to writing poetry to understand it, assimilate it, and resolve it –if such a thing can ever truly be resolved. But she did it in a rather unique way, by using the natural landscape around her to structure and explain her poems. And her loss.

 

The result is Go Forth: Lose Yourself into Life, Myers’ fourth collection of poetry. It could also be subtitled with the words she uses to begin her introductory essay: “Begin to Know the World Again from Nothing.”

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Thursday Readings

 

The Splendor of the Orient – K.S. Bernstein at Apple Blossoms in a Mournful Wood on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 17.

 

August, in Passing – poem by Riyanka Paul.

 

Sonnets in St. Louis: The Life of Sara Teasdale – Zoe Korte at Missouri Historical Society.

 

Piets and Poems: Martyn Hesford and "Ash Light"

I don’t know if grief is really a thing with feathers. Sometimes I think of it as a ghost, sometimes there, sometimes gone, but able to suddenly appear and startle you almost to tears. My father died nearly 40 years ago; grief didn’t hit me until three years after his death. My mother died 12 years ago; I felt it immediately. My half-sister, 11 years older, died several years ago; it felt like part of my childhood died, the time I knew her best. My half-brother, eight years older, died last year, and that one hit me harder than all the others. The best and worst conversation of my life was our last phone call, when he knew he’d die soon and was saying goodbye.  

But all these griefs return, not at once and not with the same intensity. Some dull with time; some don’t. The ghosts of grief are likely a measure of the strength and depth of the relationship. What I’ve learned is that grief, with all its ghosts, can be another form of love.

 

These thoughts about griefs and family and ghosts came bubbling up when I read Ash Light: Poems, the latest poetry collection by Martyn Hesford. (The collection is available through both Amazon UK and the publisher, Grey Swan Press.)

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Thursday Readings

 

St. Clare: A Sonnet – Malcolm Guite.

 

Summer Camp Highlights – poem by Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

 

The Ragged Hand of Winter – Sonnet by K.S. Bernstein at Apple Blossoms in a Mournful Wood.

Poets and Poems: Sally Nacker and "My Wild Yard"

Poet Sally Nacker lives in a house in or near a woods. That means her home is surrounded by nature. To experience nature, all she has to do is open her door and inhale. It was perhaps inevitable that she would find poetic inspiration here. All she had to do was walk in her yard. 

Find it she did.

 

My Wild Yard is a small taste of living in a natural setting. The 16 poems of this chapbook are simple and direct, inspired by the landscape around her. The poems are short; the longest is four stanzas of four lines each.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

How a Luna Moth Grows Up – poem by Adam Whipple at New Verse Review.

 

The Weight of Time – poem by Padraig O Tuama at Poetry Unbound.

 

“On Vacation,” poem by Sally Thomas – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

The Sleep of Seeds – poem by Lucia Cherciu at Every Day Poems.

 

“The purpose of poetry is to tell us about life” – Steve Knepper at New Verse Review.

Poets and Poems: Tamara Madison and “Morpheus Dips His Oar”

I don’t think I was quite ready for Morpheus Dips His Oar: Poems, the 2023 collection by Tamara Madison. The word that comes to mind is raw, something beyond candid. These are the words of understanding of what has shaped a life. 

Most of that shaping is by people – parents, siblings, family friends who might be a bit too friendly. There’s the mother who is mystified by her own grandchildren and any other children not her own, but she can quickly sketch them, “stilled like insects on flypaper.” The postmaster, her mother’s friend, is a little too friendly with his hands. Her friend’s father, a professor who seems so sweet, drives his daughter to attempted suicide. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Twwwtspeak Poetry.

Some Thursday Readings 

 

“The Toys,” poem by Coventry Patmore – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Marriage – poem by David Whyte.

 

Excerpt from The Portal to the Mystery of Hope by Charles Peguy – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

Poet Laura: Summer’s End – Donna Hilbert at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Poets and Poems: Trish Hopkinson and “A Godless Ascends”

Poets, and writers in general, write from their own lives, their own experiences. How we are shaped as individuals is reflected, consciously or unconsciously, in what we write.  A Godless Ascends, the 2024 collection by Trish Hopkinson, kept punching that home in my head as I read. 

Shew rites about her family, her childhood, and herself. She writes about her mother and her father. She says this about her father: “Truth is, / my dad’s book closed before he learned / to read, so he bult a burning house instead / & when a thief offered him gold, he didn’t fight or turn to run / but swallowed it whole, carried it like lead in his throat.” That may at first sound cruel or uncharitable, but it is precise, a daughter weighing what she finally understands. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Bathing – poem by Sonja Bnskin Mesher.

 

“The Village Blacksmith” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – Kelly Keller at On the Common.

 

Waiting at Life’s Window: R.S. Thomas’s “The Word” – Alexander Fayne.

 

Blankets & Boston Terriers: Interview with Tania Runyan – Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Under the Harvest Moon – poem by Carl Sandburg at Every Day Poems.

Poets and Poems: Sarah Dickinson Snyder and “To Eve”

The Book of Genesis says that Eve was created from a rib of Adam, to provide a helpmate and companion. Many have pointed out that it was a rib that was used to create her, implying equality or, more pointedly, “equalness” in the eyes of God. The story of the fall is familiar – Eve is convinced by the serpent to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, she convinces Adam, and they’re both thrown out of Eden. For their disobedience, Adam has to work the soil, and Eve gets pain in childbirth. And we know the names and stories of her first two sons, Cain and Abel, and the name of her third, Seth, whom she recognizes as a gift. 

Beyond those basic facts, there’s no further mention of Eve in the Bible. In To Eve: A Book-Length Poem, Sarah Dickinson Snyder doesn’t envision what Eve’s life was like so much as she considers Eve’s mind, her thoughts, her feelings, her hopes and dreams. And she uses Eve as a kind of lens to consider some of her own life and the life of women more generally. The poem is less an imagined biography and more of a reflection.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Thursday Readings

 

The Ballad of Zebulon Pike – poem by M.D. Skeen at The Society of Classical Poets.

 

“Jordan,” poem by George Herbert – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Poets and Poems: Tina Kelley and "Field Guide to North American Words"

Poet Tina Kelley seems fascinated with words, unusual often obscure words. Have you met an aeolist (a person who claims to be inspired), or been blessed by one? Have you experienced a diapause (a period of suspended development? Have you discovered that you might, at least on occasion, be a prosopagnosic (one who suffers face blindness), or that you can practice steganography (a form of writing that obscures, like invisible ink)? 

In Field Guide to Noth American Words, Kelley takes those unusual words and others and creates poems, poems that are not obscure or unusual, vivid poems about life, birthdays, aging, hacked passwords, birthdays, the future (as seen through birds), an old doll in an attic, all those rooms that the hallways of unusual words can lead you to. Like any proper field guide, the words are arranged alphabetically.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Words – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

The Beachy Poem Challenge – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Here in This Room – poem by Larua Wifler at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

The Land of Childhood – poem by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell at Every Day Poems.

 

“A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” poem by John Donne – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Poets and Poems: Arlene Demaris and “Instructions for Use”

I’ve read poems that are filled with tenderness. I’ve read poems that have an edge. But I can’t think of a collection I’ve read that have both tenderness and an edge. 

That is, until I read Instructions for Use: Poems by Arlene Demaris. Not only does she write poems that are tender with understanding, she also drops any idea of rose-colored glasses and smacks you with often-shocking reality. And what you realize is that this is life, with the good and the bad mixing together into one lump of what it means to be human. Or as Demaris writes, we forget “how much of us is salt water, how much of us is music.”

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Thursday Readings

 

“Brancusi’s Golden Bird,” poem by Mina Loy – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Poet Laura: One Fine July Day – Donna Hilbert at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Lifetime Lease – poem by Seth Lewis.

 

“Song of Marion’s Men,” poem by Wiliam Cullen Byant – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

“Omaha Beach” and “Common Sense” – poems by Bradford Skow at Society of Classical Poets.

Poets and Poems: Christy Lee Barnes and “Commodore Rookery”

We just finished watching our youngest son’s wife navigate the first two stages of motherhood – pregnancy and childhood. She was a trooper, and I spent a lot of time in simple, quiet awe. And now our and her families have been blessed with fraternal twin boys. 

Poets have addressed motherhood probably ever since poetry first existed. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (”Mother and Poet”) and Christina Rossetti (“To My Mother”) come to mind, but even Edgar Allen Poe wrote “To My Mother.” Other poets who’ve written about mothers or motherhood include Gwendolyn Brooks, Sylvia Plath, Nikki Giovanni, Sharon Olds, Louisa May Alcott, Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, William Blake, and Sara Teasdale.

 

Christy Lee Barnes navigates the territory of motherhood in her 16-poem chapbook, Commodore Rookery.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

10 Things Poets & Writers Can Do with the Small Moments – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Always, there is this fear of others falling – poem by Andrew Roycroft at New Grub Street.

 

“I Felt a Funeral in My Brain,” poem by Emily Dickinson – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

The Book – poem by Robert Cording at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

Gleanings – poem by Scott Edward Anderson at Every Day Poems.

Philip Freneau: Poet of the American Revolution

We learned this back in elementary school. If one poet’s name sits atop the poetry of the American Revolution, that name is Philip Freneau (1752-1832). And like the new nation he was part of, he kept re-inventing himself.  

The Freneau family came from La Chappelle, France, in the Ardennes Forst and near the current Belgian border. The family was Huguenot, not exactly the best faith option in Catholic France. In 1707, Andre Freneau emigrated to New York in America and became part of the Huguenot colony there. He married and had five children. One of his sons, Pierre, became part of the family business married in 1748. His oldest child was born in 1752 and named Philip. Ten years later, the well-to-do family moved to New Jersey, although Philip remained in boarding school in New York. In 1768, aged 16, the boy entered Princeton University, set upon becoming a minister.

 

At Princeton, however, Pilip discovered writing. He’d read widely in the English poets and Latin classics, and he was already composing poetry. In his class at Princeton was a young man who became a lifelong friend – James Madison. Freneau, Madison, and others were beginning to get up in the spirit of the times, and it was an anti-British, increasingly independent spirit. (In 1770, the senior class voted to wear only clothes of American manufacture for commencement.)

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Illustration: Philip Freneau.

Some Thursday Readings

 

Dust – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Metastatic – poem by Maureen Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

 

Orphan Lamb – poem by David Whyte.

 

Kurt Vonnegut’s Ambivalent War on AI – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

“Chicago,” poem by Carl Sandburg – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

“The Battle of Blenheim,” poem by Robert Southey – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Reading Moby Dick – Chris Arnade Walks the World.

Poets and Poems: Bradford Skow and “American Independence in Verse”

Before the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution, there was at least some 15 years of growing American disenchantment with Britain. The roots of the American Revolution lie in the French and Indian War (1756-1763), but it’s often said that the American Declaration of Independence has its roots in the Magna Carta.  

Fortunately, the historical landscape is littered with documentation of what was happening in the American colonies: statements, declarations, letters, newspaper reports, speeches, and more. The 15 years before the Declaration was a ferment of ideas, debates, and arguments that grew with every new event, every new action by the British government.

 

What is striking about all this is what a literate ferment it was. Menand women argued literately on both sides of the governance and independence question. You can read only some of these documents before you realize how articulate and passionate they are.

 

And poetic.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

4^th Sunday of Each Month – poem by J.A. Gilbert at Frivolous Quill.

 

New Video! – Brookhaven | Civil War Novel – Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

Seeing Slant in the Company of Others – Eric Malczewski at Front Porch Republic.

 

“The Men That Don’t Fit In,” poem by Robert Service – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Crème Brulee -- poem by Toby Alfier at Every Day Poems.

Poets and Poems: David Livewell and “Pass and Stow”

It was the title that attracted me to David Livewell’s new poetry collection, Pass and Stow: Poems. It sounded like something related to transportation or hauling freight. It turned out to be people’s last names. 

As Livewell explains, John Pass and John Stow worked in the foundry in Philadelphia that recast the Liberty Bell in 1753. The foundry was in the same neighborhood where Livewell grew up in the 1970s. In his words, the two men “serve as reminders about the city’s layered past and what outward and inward repair can achieve.”

 

In the collection, Livewell applies the idea of layered past and repair to tell a story through poetry. And he is a grand storyteller. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Thursday Readings

 

10 Things Poets & Writers Can Do in the Small Moments – TS Poetry at The Write to Poetry.

 

“The Fairies,” poem by William Allingham – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

“A tailor-bird’s song of triumph,” from The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling – Anthony Esolen at Word & Song.

 

“Redcar Collector,” a short story by Glenn McGoldrick, is free to download today at Amazon.com. 

Poets and Poems: Fanny Howe and "This Poor Book"

Fanny Howe (1940-2025) was the author of some 13 poetry collections, five novels, and numerous short stories and essays. Her collection Second Childhood: Poems (2014) was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her Selected Poems received the 2001 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and she received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2009.  

Shortly before her death in 2025, Howe completed another manuscript, This Poor Book: A Poem. It is and isn’t a poem. It is and isn’t a poetry collection. It is and isn’t a memoir, an autobiography, a poetic essay. It is one of the most unusual works I’ve read.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Bringing Characters to Life – 1 – Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

“An Irish Airman Foresees His Death,” poem by William Butler Yeats – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Poets and Poems: Erin Murphy and "Swoon"

I’ve read a considerable number of poetry collections subtitled “New and Selected Poems” or “Collected Poems.” But it was only reading “Swoon: New & Selected Poems” by Erin Murphy that I realized that such a collection could also be a biography. 

Murphy has assembled poems from 11 previously published collections plus a few new ones. The result is a collective story of a life, from childhood memories, through young adulthood, the arrival of children, changes in relationships, the deaths of friends, the music enjoyed, travel, vacations, worries about physical appearance, observations about celebrities. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

The chain ferry – poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Emily Dickinson, buttercups, and death – Padraig O Tuana at Poetry Unbound.

 

“The Waste Land,” poem by T.S. Eliot – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Uncharted – poem by Bethany Lee at Every Day Poems.

 

Crossing the Trestle – poem by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell at Rabbit Room Poetry.

Poets and Poems: Diana Lockward and “The Color Wheel”

I don’t recall where I read it, but some blogger or publication or Substack posted a poetry prompt: write about a color without ever mentioning the name of it. It’s both easier and harder than it looks. To make it more difficult, try writing a poem about a color with mentioning the color or an associated feeling or emotion. 

An exercise like that does make you immediately aware of the importance color can have in poetry and even in everyday conversation. We feel blue. We see red. We’re in the pink. That potato salad made me feel green. His mood was black. 

 

Poet, editor, and publisher Diana Lockward says she’s long had an attraction to poems that use color. Over the years, she kept a folder of poems that did exactly that. And then, she had an idea – an anthology of poems that make strategic use of color. She put out a call for submissions. 

 

And poets responded. At least 117 of them did, and likely more, each by a different poet. And The Color Wheel: Poems was born. And the result is, well, more diverse and colorful than you might expect.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Thursday Readings

“The Ballad of the Dead Ladies,” poem by Dante Gabirel Rossetti – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

“The Cottage on the Ridge” and “The Garden Hermit’s Confession” – poems at Martin Rizley at Society of Classical Poets.

 

“And if I Did, What Then?”, poem by George Gascoigne – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

Poets and Poems: Joanne Esser and "Nothing Is Stationary"

Something happens when you read a poetry collection, while you watch soft rainfall outside the kitchen window, raindrops making tiny splashes in the birdbath. The birds have taken cover somewhere. So have the squirrels, especially the one who likes to dig up the zinnias. The young rabbit who finds the rose bush – with all its thorns! – delicious is missing. And you find yourself slipping into reflection.  

If the poetry collection is one like Nothing Is Stationary, the new publication by Joanne Esser, your reflections are not only sharpened but also take you down paths you didn’t expect to go. Esser is realizing that most of her life is behind her, and she’s thinking about where she came from and where she is. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

The Sowers – poem by Gabriele D’Annunzio.

 

Mr. Pope – Poem by Allen Tate at Academy of American Poets.

 

“Dover Beach,” poem by Matthew Arnold – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Dark Green, Forest Green – poem by Linda Nemec Foster at Every Day Poems.

 

Stern Shoots Marilyn – poem by Mauren Doallas at Writing Without Paper.

 

“Sheep,” poem by W.H. Davies – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient an Modern.