dogtrax

They like to label your lake, with humor, an ocean, but Goshen, I have to tell ya, you're the smallest town in Western Massachusetts I'd ever want to live in - I can't even begin to say why we bought land that day, but after a year of searching, it seemed to us, right away, that this, someday, would be the place to root us home

for #VerseLove

My mother was in a college class at Quinnipiac when she asked us to take a handful of glass tubes to the Mill River to collect water for samples to see what was in there that we couldn't see

Curious, we did as she told, and then waited

We skipped stones, and walked across bridges, and in winter, we teetered on ice barges; One spring, we saw the largest snapper turtle ever and ducked down on a summer day as a heron descended

In memory, it took forever for her to know

Then, she warned us to never ever to drink the water of the river that ran through all of us, and we never looked at the flowing currents the same way, ever again — only the factories

for #VerseLove

In poetry, we say: Stick Season -

New England's reason for cleaning up

We're teaming up to remove debris

It's clear to me the metaphor here:

We make the fallen disappear, so we might remember

the storms of December and winter's brittle winds

for #VerseLove

Fourteen thousand years ago the wild dogs came home, and we welcomed them - if at first, warily, then later, with love - these beasts feeding on our scraps and warming the cold nights, our bodies built to lean in on each other;

Rayna remains resting in repose on the couch as I write her this poem - she's sleeping through verse

for #VerseLove

For(I), give this a thought - forgiveness(am) is an odd spice (sorry) and my palette remains passive(for), but I was never taught to open(my) up and become(unkind) the man(words) I hope to be

for #VerseLove

This entire day - damp and raw – but hope is a bud about to bloom

for Algot

You saved me, you should remember me — Louise Gluck, Vita Nova

You lost me, now forget me - for I have anchored far from where we once were when our lives entwined, though little tidbits of talk remain stashed like eggs on the Internet - I am no longer the person I once claimed to be

for #VerseLove

Original poem: https://poets.org/poem/vita-nova?mc_cid=a2878e066c&mc_eid=ed9c8bae96

The clerk at Deep Thoughts Records asks me where I'm from

and I remember as a kid watching Chick Corea at Toad's Place, in tow with my dad, fingers flying over intricate key changes in a room built on angled chords

and then to the Coliseum with my brother to catch Yes, my first rock concert, and Chris Squires' bass guitar thumping its way into my musical DNA

and I recall the vision of Shawn Colvin, alone at Oakdale with only her guitar, seemingly fragile, until her voice and song carried everyone of us into the night

But I only replied: Connecticut as a kid; Northampton, now – and left it at that, ticket stubs still rubbing against skin, musical echoes of places I've been

for #VerseLove

A moment of frozen explosion

every remnant behind the task of making the object by hand now carefully arranged like a line of vision -

the remains of an old red oak, carefully placed upon the floor with an invitation not to sit and rest but to wonder at the work

we're witness to the debris scraps and ring lines of a fallen tree, and the artist who sees it, becoming something else, entirely

for #VerseLove inspired by One Half Log Divided Into Chair And Scraps by Gina Siepel, Smith College Museum of Art

The road sign read, Rough Road Ahead, and every pothole in the pavement was another reminder of what impending trouble brings - Winter's shout out to Spring

for #VerseLove