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Living Poets Society

To celebrate National Poetry Month in April 2023, the “At The Parish House” arts series of Emmanuel Church hosted a poetry event featuring local poets of all ages reading their work. 

Their poems are below for you to enjoy, too!

Once There Was Another In My Shoes

Romy Curtis, Middleburg

Once there was another in my shoes:

Someone who lived by very different rules;

Someone who danced the night away

Then rose afresh to waltz again next day.

 

Someone who ran a mile or more

To arrive happily at the shore

And plunge in deeply, unafraid

Of the great breakers where she played.

Communion

Pat Price, formerly of Middleburg

Early

I prepare

Shake the finch feeder

the hulls of Nyger seed dusting

black the Big Daddy Hosta below

Feed fresh food into the thistle sock

Fill perched tubes with sunflower chips 

Pop a suet cake into its cage

 

Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer

Aydan Wallace, Hill School

Fall Winds

The October wind,

Subtle and warm.

It grows louder.


Winter Trees

The tree rests southwest

dry, cold dark against the bark

now faces a house

Wheat Straw for Bedding Horse Stalls

Wendell Hawken, Millwood

The best comes from the Taylor place

near Lincoln, the field at Thunder Run.

 

Each bale unfolds open-minded

when I slice the twine, shake each flake.

 

Particles like embers fly from my hands.

I shake fire at the beams of light,

​

The Art of Repair

Alice Robinson, Middleburg

Mint white, never used, never torn

Sheathed in plastic, unloved and unworn

Smiling patiently on the shelf

Admired yet lonely by itself

Engulfed in the hum of setback’s chatter

Smashed and jagged pieces matter

Raked up and coming to

Acting what you always knew

Broken can be fixed

Valerie's Garden

Frances Farley, Middleburg

Valerie raised her children in other people’s houses.

She put them to bed under borrowed roofs.

In every landlord’s yard Valerie planted a Garden.

She was forced to move on before roots and blossoms

Could flourish under her tender care.

 

Roses and Lilacs and Lily of the Valley,

Flowers her Mother had taught her to grow,

Peony, Iris, Lavender and Larkspur,

I Wish I Had Said It

Kathryn Matheson, NYC

My great-grandmother hated

the color yellow – wouldn’t wear it,

no matter the shade,

and when she was dying

she looked like a baby bird,

a fledging, perched to fly.

 

So, there is that.

​

A Monument of Ashes

The Rev'd Linda M. Kaufman, Arlington

When my obituary is written

there will be no heroic moment

or grand accomplishment

to take your breath away.

 

There will just be, I hope,

little moments of love,

spilling over. In love.

Maybe you caught,

The Strength of the Hills

W. Perry Epes, Lincoln

The strength of the hills is God’s, who made them,

but feeling as old and worn as they,

I daily I try measure

what it takes for me to climb the crest

of our far field over the road

where our neighbor shepherd grazes his ewes

till moving them to the lambing barn

in late winter.  Then the field is open for us,

the people of his pasture,

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