well every year i think our right out the best introduction to this event and every year i'm at sixes and sevens and never get it done but this is our thir poetry reading and writing workshop and we have some veterans we have some new people and i don't know that i am but i have just had a wonderful time and our topic this year we have a different topic every year just to have some poems to read and think about and to perhaps inspire people to to think about that topic and maybe write poems addressing that topic but people can do whatever they want and they do so you don't have to stick to our topic this april was history and the poetic imagination and i have been interested in that myself selfishly every topic is something that i am interested in if i'm going to do it i want to be interested as well and we've done a lot of different things but i think and maybe it's because i'm the age i am that history has a particularly significant word but oh of us have histories histories of place we have histories of family we have histories connected with the larger picture of our country and our world and so those things really fascinate me and so and we've had just there's some you'll be so pleased at the results of what everybody has done and i'm going to ask that when we sort of just go around and each person reads one poem then we go around and each person reads another poem if that person wants to and sometimes people might read three poems and what i would ask people to do is two things one introduce yourself by name and i think i didn't do that for myself i'm mary jane dickerson long time resident now of jericho center and our own i would also like each person to say a little something about the poem and poems that you're reading because i think it helps to have a little context that helps often listening to poems and so if you will do those two things your name and then something about how you came to write that poem something in the poem about the point that you think it would be helpful for us as listeners to know about that would help us april meeting and i thought i won't read my lab report and this wonderful why barry that has been so good to me through the years the name of the book is her reading a meditation a touch of recognition even that of a small staff and yellowing library card translates itself into a rush of since ations tumbling over themselves to propel me into our small ante room it's high windows d m in that late afternoon of both time and place a quiet workspace off the main room of cameron school's library where we disappeared into books after school while our mother finished her librarians work for the day often lending our hands to what needed to be done in those wartime forty years and later teaching both biology and english much of the day girls basketball coach in season without ever having played the game she told us that if you could read you could learn to do anything in this life not the end in that earlier time when reading meant jean stratton porter's girl of the lemberg lost a beloved tomboys tale or the sweet mysteries of francis hodgson burnette secret garden but now in another century tea with its power of transporting him into the cumbrae of his childhood that french countryside with its landscape and its inhabitants recognised as the marrow of his being now here in the sanctuary of my book lined room and a house of many shelves lined with the titles of books i can almost locate in the dark this library card with its manually tight book title and scrawled list of readers s gatherings and inhaled again the hypnotic and sweetly metallic odor of the show lack we painted over each new books cover after numbering it's fine with do you a decimals and bright white for me even then long before reading that borges what imagined paradise to be a kind of library i already knew in our time of the ebook with words appearing of the ether on to a lip screen pages to be turned back touchpad with no real need for the bookstore the public library that holding a book opening it and even taking in i think mustin age and readers past would remain as needful as i hear thank you eye was a book called and they were all older there they were all cards there are some photos of you know the old colored cars that we used to use and sign our names on at the library in wood and the one that catholic school from kindergarten to twelfth grade three just three different schools so my poem is titled sister angela seeks the truth with sagging generals and eyes narrowed at the sight of my name on the roster sister angela sat erect in her chair behind the barricade of desk i didn't know how much power there would guess and sister angela's universe my sister did not exist i knew what sister was really asking was i cerebral like my oldest brother or a being of carnal knowledge and destruction like this second son in our family of six at fourteen i didn't know having my own identity was an act against the very nature of her life as a servant who recall my answer just my surprised sister angelus first inquiry of who i am i don't know which words i used whether the eldest came from my lips which would have elevated me in her perspective of heavens and or if i said i was like the second son putting her on guard scuse me on guard for any indication that i participated in any earthly pleasures for years but in the last couple of years he's had to spend much of his april in italy because just because and and we mis i got a telephone call from the he had written poems on his way back on the plane coming back from italy because he wanted to rejoin us this doctor so he came to my house and have my name is rose i cast a lot out and i've been in vermont about five years and my husband and family we moved to underhill in october so we're so kind of new to this town and new to the workshop but it's been really great both town and the workshop  the palm i'm going to read tonight the first poem is called star trek and it is a little bit about my father but also a little bit not in the way that i think opens kind of are true and untrue anyway star trek it always comes back to the prime directive which my father claims was a protest of the vietnam war i think back then he saw himself as a black captain kirk cruising the cosmos and afro and tight gold shirt when he was eighteen he moves that way traveling where no colored man had gone before carrying the doo wop street corners of his neighborhood with  he crossed over into suburbia reading ringing door bell after door bell and holding his breath waiting for the pale face to materialize behind the screen in this moment he was captain of a starship and like the space men witnessing kirk's arrival those housewives saw something alien among the marigolds good afternoon ma'am sometimes the only part of his speech he said before door slammed sometimes they invited him in curious ladies wanting to know why he wasn't over in vietnam or if he'd met dr king one woman wondered over coffee if black women had their own kind of make up in living rooms haunted by the nightly news he gave monologues on the merits of britannica while they searched his face for the evidence of the fire they'd seen the night before and the sanitation workers from memphis who marched across the screen i am a man printed on the signs they carried sometimes they chased him off before he had a chance to speak throwing rocks or sticks after him like a rabid dog in some towns the air itself seemed to want his blood and he struggled to imagine spock and mccoy flanking him phasers freddy on the road he owned nothing but the sky and what he could imagine the of light the currents on the sea designed very much my teachers and i need to reground myself i often go up and sit in the pasture with them above the house and just drink in the peace that here year round with them right now they are the last of them was the last one of them and still carrying lambs and if i had a beeper i could get called out me and this point is called spring slow to come two thousand and fifteen walking the fence line i am reminded that even farmers with small pastures need to do this bring tasking les tarr flocks quite literally deserted us i am surprised to find above the house out of sight and out of mind three pine branches across the pasture fence waiting for me to remove them a farm even a small one bears a constant care and watching the nets never stop falling down the weeds never stop coming up and it is always feeding time for someone or watering time or sharing time or or of course birthing tem as it is now for sweet pie and her cousins this winter so fiercely code reluctant to let go its grip sti alternating frosts every other night in a row now i wait watching their expanding belly is still standing others counting seven woolly pastore and for two weeks i leave the bedroom window open listening my name is peter anderson and i've been a pastor for about forty years and so i've written sherman's for forty years and i decided to take mary jane out of her challenge to take a historical event and look at it from a poetic viewpoint i think this is probably self explanatory and something that most of you are familiar with the title is grave clothes part one hurrying to finish before sunset to men feverish work winding strips of linen around the bruised and bloodied body secret friends who only of late found courage to give this body a proper burial joe's of the owner of the tomb winds while the other knitted demas sprinkles murder and  seventy five pounds worth between the winding cloth gluing linen to the body not less firmly than lead  hard cold bench newly human from the rock wall supports the rigid body windings nodded and tied off no cushion to ease pain or to a extended sleep the chamber darkens as the sunlight dies work stops the men exit rolling a large stone across the entrance shutting out jackals and grave robbers who prey upon the dead two women look on from a distance desperate a race grizzly images of their loved ones crucifixion images seared into their memories the sabbaths sundown arrival delays their part in the burial no work allowed not even the work of grief dispirited and lonely they watch as joseph and they could dem tried home broken hearted shoulders sagging under the weight of the day's events part two the next day  requested by the religious leaders a guard is posted at the tomb they seal placed upon the stone lest anyone should try to steal the body part three sunday morning early two men are running to the tomb simon peter and another disciple alarmed by mary magdalene's report they have taken the lord out of the tomb and we don't know where they have put him breathless and bending over they enter the stone chamber finding not an em lying where the body had been placed upon the hard cold stone bench except for the face cough rolled up by itself separate from  joseph and nicotine mrs carrington work still intact not strewn about the floor but lying there strips of linen just as they had been so wound around the body strips of linen lying by themselves strips of linen only only linen strips the windings still in place not cut off not stripped off not torn not unwound not removed from the body the body removed from them linen myrrh and aloes grave clothes shed like a chrysalis peter went away wondering to myself what had happened i name is adrian fisher and i am delighted to be part of this group this is well a student group i live in jericho and have been coming to the worth several years seasons of the centuries summers he has settled the shackles guard earth as grieving hearts settled into healing prayers of winds have swept away regret by layers coaxing time and love and life itself into wisdom for the tradition of growing into the elders p weeping winter rains have healed shovel scars as waves smooth sand easing the exchange of grief for peace with what remains seasons mark time by months of memories while we cycle through life and loss by degrees rituals endure to comfort families spring then commands here we stand this small group wearing our sadness of drab overtones dignifying the demeanor we carefully chose in the sea of grass green against gr stone engraved in imbedded in the ground a year has passed and with it the raw sadness of the last time we stood huddled here reluctant lee familiar with our loss we come together to love each other and miss our father and now our mother we feel her presence as we almost kneel in gratitude for warmth of the sun and family for the sky and less possibility she instilled within each of us we stand as her legacy to remember today with her one true love by her side in life for fifty eight years and now in death for one together again like us in the sea of memories they left behind we remember and remember end and i live in heinsberg and i am the novice of the group by far i've known mary jane for many years and she's inspired me in many many ways beyond my wildest dreams she's just unbelievable and i think girl so lucky to have someone like her around to share her gifts even now that she's not teaching you again a more she's still continuing to inspire people so i've always wanted to take this class and  i decided to do it this year partly because i am leaving for a mont i've lived here for thirty years and now my husband is retiring and we're on to some new adventures that we'd like to try but i have to leave my house and heinz bread that i love finally and so this poem is about the process of leaving it's called things i keep these walls these scratches on the floor so familiar to me some even made by me will soon be along to another time peach pink light behind the mountains at dawn wake idling by the dock the rider hustles to ready his gear the rush of the motor and the smack of the board shatter the glass to a foamy jet stream this shady place  heads with the pine needle carpet where my little dogs played in the rain and heat where my old cats waited for an unlucky mouse on the deck on a starry summer night the smell of the lake and the sounds of life a t v a radio a barking dog laughter a baby crying dishes being put away someone across the lake is practicing his guitar such moments and places edged on my mind will never disappear but live on as part of me like the old house son bring his street and the sassafras trees the smell of my dad's shop uncle henry's sprawling apple tree these places i have left these places i will leave what i take with me wherever i go i like playing cards with my mom on the breezy porch to the  glass wind chime went to vote at the town hall and mary jane looked up to me because you know she was taking care of the d s for bristol and i said that she said oh we missed you all right so i went home and wrote a very nice little note anyway she invited me to join this year and so i've written a series let them stay in the hol they'll never fly the devil with the crew in the screen mothers and brats i'll never be out on this ocean they'll not keep me below not with this night of wild have stayed with my mates if not for all you've done in your frail hears in the steel lance of johnny blast him you took me in when the others were left and as we were talking about history in the first meeting that we had she said this could be personal history this could be joint history and at the time the historical event that was happening in my life is that my mother is about to turn five so this poem is called grace at ninety five i've always wished they named me nancy it's hard to be graceful when i don't love than in bed after a ruptured appendix you grow five inches in six weeks i remember being fourteen my dad rented a rowboat we put in the niagara river on the new york side below the falls of course he rode i swam poling ashore in canada a mile across and seven miles down river in his face so my five younger brothers became his focus he taught them to sail on his two masted sleep after dinner he played tennis with them on the court by the vegetable garden he told them he told me i had to stay in the kitchen and help the hired girl finish the dishes elephant i was called at school not by the other kids but by nasty mrs rep's and the high school principal upon meeting my suitors my father announced whoever gets her will find she has a big appetite and expensive feet even as children we knew she had to be doing proving something it often took her eight cups of coffee a day from that hour glass sunbeam coffee pot to get everything accomplished ironed six white shirts for the week serve nutritional meals on a budget have a roast with potatoes after church invite anyone you'd like count noses then put that many places on the table in between she was our house mother to college girls ran a tourist home summers finished her abandon undergraduate degree and even got her masters later she won the club championship defeating the younger women at the golf course i'm doing as well as i did five years ago i can still drive i could drive to albany if i wanted to my children they're wonderful children mind you but they're trying to run my life they've harassed me into using my walker i don't need it they tell me not to talk to strangers on the phone what they don't understand is i'm really helping the police by talking to the scammers these men are so polite only want a small donation and i get their phone numbers at ninety five i must still get my job's done finished done is for the grandfather clocks deep resonant by declares the morning hour make my bed press the button signal the front office i'm still alive put in the laundry check my email if that confound it computer will do what it's supposed to do get ready for the bridge game at virginia recheck my calendar if it's in my calendar it's in my life monday bridge in the social hall tuesdays at virginia's and wednesdays in the library this week i substitute in the friday group so agnes or carole will have to die or move to a nursing home before i'm a regular now how did that and a point with an attorney get into my calender i don't like to think about such things let's change the subject i really do wish they named me  nancy few years ago i went to scotland and i was climbing around in a prius store or auld couple thousand year old to structure and there was graffiti all over the inside of it and the graffiti were rooms from the eight hundreds that viking ten messed up their things so i became fascinated with ruins and i just learned them and and so i'm writing a poem for each room and this has to do with the one that comes at the beginning of spring and which is has to do with moving forward in progress and and many other things but it's a symbol of those things so that was the that was the inspiration for this poem along with of course the history the history part to mary jane's for chop spring plowing with the girls grown and he to gun she stood at the edge of the fellow field behind the two horses fletch and freya looking toward their flanks she clucked and the team began their work white feathers swishing like snow in storms finished for this season sweeping the grass still brittle and browned as under the single blade plough the earth roiled rolled up and under itself in constant undue lation of revelation and concealment she tried in the six inch trench they cut knowing the first pass must be straight to set the pattern for following ro and locked her calloused hands on the wooden handles trying to control the jump the blade should it hit rock or start to veer off course she cooed the horses names felt the sureness of this one thing at the end of the first for she threw the blade to its side and let the teen continue a few yards before calling hall come round fletch come round for a girl and stop them at the edge of the second pass she sat down then out of shape from winter's indoor work she'd been proud once of the farm of him even of herself but now the sharp edge of the plow line a few feet with the horse a temper and a restlessness then she never had with her own husband fletch stamped she stood up to him put the horses in motion she wanted the beautiful tension of tugs between horses  plow and arms and her whole self a valiant she had watched him patiently create over the years as he learned how to orchestrate the crude instrument the creatures she knew what sweet rhythm could rise from th her ankles twisted in the ruts behind the horses sure plan by the end of the second row sweat shone on the team's backs and she set them up for the third for all before arresting them wiped her sleeve along her own forehead what good was it all now was she wasting her time she could leave follow the girls in the comfortable with one or the other they'd have her probably would be relieved if she gave up depending on rain and sun the cold wet mornings wind in february august dust she narrowed her eyes at the teen they had a long way to go and there was life in her yet she would make it she showed on the girls how to do it hadn't she she had plenty of time years even forecast for the week was good  it's such a pleasure just another great thank you to mary jane for holding us all so beautifully and encouraging us with something absolutely different every single year that  about the people's war memories and i was avoiding it studiously until this poem arose and it was it's about my father's uniform his army uniform but before i begin i just want to give a shout out to all the people who were here that came from class really really great to see everybody and friends as w my father's uniform my father's uniform lived upstairs in a cedar closet a room of red washed wood no windows a door that shut so tight one could expect it was only a matter of time before the air ran out at thirteen i took refuge here left the door open a crack to visit with cocktail and christening dresses my father's uniform the only clothing not sheaves and plastic in the dim light brass buttons against drab  shone like little suns the ribbons and needlework something to finger there were stories stitched in ones my father shrewdly chose to embellish his army career in the big war over there as an officer of goods how lucky he was to have nothing to do but move fine wines find uses for parachute silk decide whether or not to keep up pastry chef on payroll at the austrian large big commandeered one day in the closet i patted down pockets that sat below his belt and found the oddest thing and narrow syringe the workings of which i commenced to explore in the closest bathroom sink my older sister came in visiting from the way she saw what i held rage contorted her face i froze she lunged for the syringe hissed words i do not want to remember she slammed out of there it was years before i fathom the brutality my father saved for horses and his wife the brutality his uniform must have witnessed and the other secret  its pocket the heroin in my sister shot into her veins a casualty in eight more years of that other silent war i'm wendy anderson and my first experience was farming was my danish immigrant grandparents and i've been passionate of food production class with her before this workshop so but the one i wrote for the workshop is the psycho's called down on the farm and the one i wrote for the workshop is called tobacco girls granby connecticut hundred fifty eight gaz shaded fields rose stretch tobacco plants droop in the heat tying their height was string thirteen year olds be reach loop bend again slight quick of hand the field boss guards the water cracker girls a thousand miles from home while florida field should bear dormant mid summer bust up north they work beside the young locals all are poor and all are paid just pennies in three weeks they'll pinch plants top most flowers find broadly if their wraps world's best cigars connecticut sun sucks well throw part throats parching on row await the lunch guns boom kids clock together boys crew girls crew in shade of drying sheds slake suppress thirsts in heat of insects or water then pile them gently into canvas bins they pull inside the show doors looming dimness girl stand working at sharp pointed sa mounted at the back of when you fly tables small fingers quickly learn the certain deafness defying danger pierce the stem string leaves from three foot less men grasp the strips climb high hang them on racks that alternate in steps high overhead fragrance starts to fill the drying sheds where warm spills leaves from green to supple gold play excited where bosses restless circle the ripe young migrants men way summers and and of their harvests girls wet sticky handed and long hot tears explode in virgin bellies while drying fill with the scent of money saw my husband and i had honeymooned in the mine we had always wanted to move here and i will go into details of why we moved here but we moved here without any jobs and had our savings and the reason i'm in the trenches classes i can see in her classes helped tremendously and this is a poem about the healing process and i did not expect the joy i would have the overwhelming feeling when i first saw the mountains they were mine now mine decline to conquer mine to snow the dew drop pines hear them whisper the air as we sat there they were gazing at me across the lake i did not expect for them to keep me alive for the thought of them to pull me through my darkest days thinking of the hard climb my husband and i would take some day to the top looking at the blue shimmer of them the glittery snow in the last of the sunset my mountains my lake now i will never leave you i did not expect nature's poor to want it crave it need it for my healing my survivability i did not know did not expect for bird song so sweet and clear seeing the read of the cardinal in my mind's eye without seeing the singer himself i did not expect for the bird song to string my heart along so i could breathe deep again they were breathing for me so i could take a deep breath on my own i did not expect for the hard won path to the cut top of the cliff doggedly moving step by painful step i did not expect for it to have such meaning the few that's all i wanted seeing the distant green center off the valley floor while i sat there to catch my breath while i sat and said never why i leave you for i need you my mountains i need you as much as air i want you to think way back into the recesses of your mind do you remember about three weeks ago the temperature got up into the sixty's so i took a walk in our neighborhood in i walked around starboard which is just off of packard road and these were my observations as i walked around the circle a couple of times and i went back home and i just wrote down my observations and this was just for fun the first warm day people surge out of hibernation to herd leaf or winter jackets pouring into their yards in shirtsleeves like a silent neighborhood fire drill no one is  barometers of boredom the sun will not wait for such banter it's april warmth too ephemeral dusty bicycles and motorcycles not having seen the light of day for months suddenly appear taking the place of sleds and skis and snowmobiles mothers rake leaves like private investigators searching for evidence of tulips snow drops and crocus is pushing their way up through moist earth fathers in driveways baby very prized possessions dislodging deposits of sand and salt while doctors sunbathing on lines dream of the very things being washed away neighborhood boys play ball a girl flies a kite in the warm breeze dogs are out walking their owners and i visit with a neighbor across an invisible fence the same sun warms us all penetrating to the core a welcome relief from winter's protracted stretch of below freezing days a clear blue sky overhead the sun beats down on the brown grass forcing the last vestiges of snow and ice to retreat into the shade although temperatures soar into the sixty's but the branches remain bare against the backdrop of a wintry snow covered mount mansfield the first warm day does not mean spring is here we know better it's but a harbinger giving one the hope of springs long awaited arrival as the sun sets people really entering their homes as if the all clear bell had sounded leaving the landscape silent once more the neighborhood fire drill finished until the next warm day every once in a while there is an article that shows up actually twice today someone has said there's a poem in those earrings so i don't know whether that's true i haven't discovered that yet but as i was getting ready to set up my christmas tree there was a poem in there this is called an angel with a broken wing frazier f secure lights twinkling through unfolding branches recalls the pledge this will be the year to downsize the jumble of accumulated ornaments how to choose among the colors shapes and memories angels a trio of hammered brass and copper each with a star and ascend to the highest branches a hand made petit point guardian hovers over the manger two small wooden angels one with symbols one astride a violin and a theory a choir pressed from pewter make music high the next an angel a quandary this small cherub in red and white polka dot garb sitting on a yellow sled dragging a bright green tree has one arm and the opposite wing missing this celestial tyke once belonged to a three and a half year old  boy to a nearby felt ornament a picture of that boy stares back dressed for sunday school clothed in a handmade checked jacket his face too serious for a child a child caught as his family dissolves around him a child who overhears his parents discuss thing which furniture each will take a child who concludes mommy and daddy are deciding who to give me away to a child abandoned no longer able to trust that anyone will look out for him a child who did not hear the father insist he take the eldest son and the mother could have the newborn child who did not hear the mother's reply only over my dead body know all eighteen angels ribbon metal and start crochet mr cart joining snowman santas and oversized jingle bells as garage sale fodder the polka dot angel with one wing takes its place high in the branches keeping watch over the little boy plenty of protestants here just like home saved us about her father's a korean war experiences the second half of which is imagine from the perspective of a korean woman and it's just splendid and mary jane this poem really has written a wonderful book  was a born and bred city girl and had never ever moved to the country before so i had some learning to do and this was about moving to bear town when i first take a lo to the new place late son lies at the third curve in the open field a red truck sets across from an under apple tree windows rolled all the way down gunbarrel stick out clean black to shadow man in the cab at the house i dump the boxes then drive the car fast past their truck my car is if it too is alarmed turns in to meet the nearest neighbors wayne and anna we visit i ask about the land here those fruit trees were part of the old farm a cellar hole be careful we had to sell it off you know wayne was born right up those stairs she talks he listens when i ask about the truck the man i tell them i am nervous a single gal i'm sure of country ways next day when waves me in dark blue work shirt cap on white haired and i wipes hands on her apron she nods to him he tells me he pulled his pick up crossways cap pushed back as he says when they came knocking i told them boys if they had no business up there don't bother coming back and again the unspoken your hours now as astonishing to a town girl as the dear who offers me her clear when i drive home calm and say you did with apple have wanted to write about for a long long time things i have thought about for a long long time the title is wrong hot summers times in my father's store following long mornings under the back of shared where mounting heat beat down to ripple in waves along the tin roof at the lunch counter i put together hot dogs by the dozens to for a quarter stacked moon pies and poor old cold crutchfield and graham i took worn dollar bills from hands black hands and white my hands and there's calloused with sticky traces of black tar from a morning together handling tobacco when i placed change silver and copper onto their outstretched poems those coins felt coup against the lingering heat from our skin was it during one of these moments i our white store owner daughter was making change for white and black farm laborers exchanging the day to day words of our small town world was it then that in money mississippi fourteen year olds in it said something to the white store owner's wife words still in dispute words perhaps net perhaps never spoken it oh words we'll never know from lips forever sealed only hours later in the brutal violation of that other teenagers growing body was that the summer the k k k left a stack of printed brochures on my father store counter paper he set fire to on the cement pavement separating the store from the gas pumps how much did i think carolina women's college had integrated itself by placing its first two black women in isolation just the two of them on a