May 2015
I'm a poet and writer living for the past six years in the South Jersey shore area. I moved here from North Jersey in 2009 after the 2008 death of my husband William J. (Bill) Higginson, author of The Haiku Handbook, to be closer to my daughter and family. I'm a mom, grandma, and sometimes poet-teacher for the NJSCA. My work has appeared in many journals, and in twenty-some books (including chapbooks). I read at the Dodge Festival in 2010, and have enjoyed two poetry residencies at VCCA (January 2011; March 2015). Please visit my website:www.2hweb.net/penhart and my blog: http://penhart.wordpress.com
Carillon
Remember the rusting bell on the
handle of your bicycle, the one
with the lever you pulled, zing-
zing, announcing I am here,
as you pedaled up the hill or coasted
down at the seeming speed of light into
the valley where your grandparents lived,
their old brown house born in a forest.
Tonight the bell in the steeple,
chimes old familiar hymns through
a welcome rain that falls like manna
through dusty treetops.
Not yet that family of bats in the belfry.
Not yet wondering for whom the bell tolls.
Instead, remember fragile woodland bells—
lilies-of-the-valley ringing in spring sun.
Remnants
This morning in the grass at the road’s edge
above the oily runoff from last night’s storm.
I find the severed blue wing of a bird.
In the gutter below the wing, a flattened can
hugs the curb, and a torn photo of a helmeted
soldier has washed up, its paper edges curling in.
Wing bones are a hollow scaffolding for flight.
Soldiers fall dead into the mud. An angel
carrying the soldier lost a wing in the wind.
A local widow’s lost her only photo.
I kick the can aside, and then the wing.
There’s no use in holding on to anything.
The Eastern Bluebird on Spring Grass
On this spring equinox, a bluebird flits from
newly green to yellow patches, flashes a rosy
breast, then flies to the fencepost.
I think of you, husband—how every Easter
afternoon before we were together you went
in search of Eastre, pagan goddess of spring,
tramping out into woods or fields, looking
for her signs. Fly here to my window, I silently
ask the bluebird, your talisman of rebirth,
bring me birdsong from the dead. All night
I listened to sleet pinging outside my open
window, pulled aside the curtains in the gray
pre-dawn light to see glistening pebbles and the
silver slope of the lawn. Yet this morning every
blade of grass, every bud slipping yellow from its
green stem tells me that tonight’s full moon will
scatter brilliant light above the clouds while the
bluebird, nestled on her eggs, will warm us all.
Remember the rusting bell on the
handle of your bicycle, the one
with the lever you pulled, zing-
zing, announcing I am here,
as you pedaled up the hill or coasted
down at the seeming speed of light into
the valley where your grandparents lived,
their old brown house born in a forest.
Tonight the bell in the steeple,
chimes old familiar hymns through
a welcome rain that falls like manna
through dusty treetops.
Not yet that family of bats in the belfry.
Not yet wondering for whom the bell tolls.
Instead, remember fragile woodland bells—
lilies-of-the-valley ringing in spring sun.
Remnants
This morning in the grass at the road’s edge
above the oily runoff from last night’s storm.
I find the severed blue wing of a bird.
In the gutter below the wing, a flattened can
hugs the curb, and a torn photo of a helmeted
soldier has washed up, its paper edges curling in.
Wing bones are a hollow scaffolding for flight.
Soldiers fall dead into the mud. An angel
carrying the soldier lost a wing in the wind.
A local widow’s lost her only photo.
I kick the can aside, and then the wing.
There’s no use in holding on to anything.
The Eastern Bluebird on Spring Grass
On this spring equinox, a bluebird flits from
newly green to yellow patches, flashes a rosy
breast, then flies to the fencepost.
I think of you, husband—how every Easter
afternoon before we were together you went
in search of Eastre, pagan goddess of spring,
tramping out into woods or fields, looking
for her signs. Fly here to my window, I silently
ask the bluebird, your talisman of rebirth,
bring me birdsong from the dead. All night
I listened to sleet pinging outside my open
window, pulled aside the curtains in the gray
pre-dawn light to see glistening pebbles and the
silver slope of the lawn. Yet this morning every
blade of grass, every bud slipping yellow from its
green stem tells me that tonight’s full moon will
scatter brilliant light above the clouds while the
bluebird, nestled on her eggs, will warm us all.
©2015 Penny Harter
