Category Archives: Uncategorized

No Kings and Spring

Posted on by

Monday Morning Musings

No Kings and Spring

“Our task is to pay attention and listen… Finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find.”
—Terry Tempest Williams

“History has its eyes on you.”
–Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton

Soul-flying
through contemplative crow clouds,
over a ruminative river

an eagle flies, ospreys gather,
geese squawk, honk, and scatter,

the world sighs—
a breath of spring-yearning-forward-looking-back

march
march on

catch the rhythms of the past

snap of twigs
pound the asphalt

toe-heel, heal-toe
booted, bare-footed
toe-tap

two-step under
cerulean blue,

“History has its eyes on you”

View from Washington Square Park, one of the original squares laid out by William Penn. It served as a burial grounds for the poor, free and enslaved Black people, Native Americans, Revolutionary War soldiers, and victims of the yellow fever epidemic.

End of March 2026. Brick Path by what was the front entrance to the Whithall Family’s house, which served as a field hospital during the Revolutionary War battle that took place there on October 22, 1777.

power wanes and waxes,
but we are a tide

surging

as the world around me
erupts in lemon meringue
and pink macaron

and the trees are draped
in bridal lace, stars come to Earth

a time of rebirth,
history’s rhyme,

we live,
we die,
we share our stories

Nothing new–and ever-changing.

Hello again! Another week of wondering what I’ll wake up to both in weather and current situation. March’s weather has been all over the place—shirt-sleeve warm to winter coat wearing and back. The non-war war still going on, the demented one still writing and saying bonkers looney statements, as Stephen Miller puts up a fake videos to keep his toddler brain satisfied. And House Republicans in full-on reactionary mode refused to sign the compromise bill their counterparts in the Senate approved. The always-Trumpers are NOT conservatives, they are reactionaries who want to tear down our democracy, not preserve it. Apparently, the TSA workers are going to get paid because Dumpty waved a magic wand that he could have waved six weeks ago? However, according to the NY Times, it’s unclear exactly where the money is coming from, only funds somewhat adjacent to immigration enforcement or some such. And there are other DHS employees, such as those who work for FEMA who are still not being paid. (For non-US, the TSA agents work in airports; DHS is Department of Homeland Security, and FEMA is Federal Emergency Management Assistance. Among other things, they assist when there are natural emergencies, such as major floods, hurricanes, oil spills, etc.) Sigh.

And there is Dumpty’s insistence on passing the SAVE Act, for which there is no need. Voting by noncitizens is simply not a thing. The act will only disenfranchise US citizens and make voting more difficult. (See Joyce Vance here.)

On Thursday, I participated in Paul Short’s Write Here Right Now online writing group. It was as interesting and collegial as always. You can find Paul at @paulwritespoems on Bluesky, Insta, and X (which I’m no longer on). More news on Paul tomorrow.

On Saturday, we joined the 8 million or so patriotic Americans marching and rallying at No Kings events. There were also events on every continent (including Antarctica)! We decided to go to Philadelphia and met up with my niece and some of her friends. I know my brother was there, too, but this time we didn’t run into him. The crowd was very chill, and so were the police. No real MAGA crazies. Madeleine Dean, my niece’s representative, was one of the speakers. Another good speaker was Michael Coard from Avenging the Ancestors, who spoke about the current regime’s attempts to erase history. This group was key in getting the President’s House in Philadelphia to acknowledge the enslaved people there. The current regime tore down the displays. The court battle is ongoing.

The event in Camden, where my Senator Andy Kim and others spoke, was also well attended, and even the visibility event in Glassboro had over 1,000 people!

I didn’t get great photos, but here are a few.

On Sunday, we saw The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington
(The title is often shortened to Miz Martha), by James Ijames. This is the play that announced Ijames was a playwright to watch. It is surreal, funny, and unnerving. It takes place like a fever-dream of Martha Washington as she is dying, and the enslaved people around her are waiting to be set free (as per George Washington’s will). It includes song and dance, a game show, and trial of Martha. You can read about it here.

Before the show, we walked through Washington Square Park to the Magnolia Garden in Old City, which is just beginning to bloom. It lifted my spirits, even if a cold wind was still blowing. There are a couple of photos above, and here are a few more.

We’re watching, How to get to Heaven from Belfast (Netflix) and enjoying it. It reminds me a bit of Bad Sisters, same kind of vibe, with a hint of Yellow Jackets. We almost always have closed captions on but suggest it here. 😉

Early in the week we replaced ceiling tiles in the kitchen, stained after bathroom leaks. The boys were very helpful, as you can imagine.

Passover begins this week on Wednesday night. We’ll be hosting a family dinner next weekend.

I’m sharing the words Joanne Freeman uses to end her talks:

“Be strong and of good courage.”

(Chutzpah!)

Look for the helpers and be one if you.

Susurration of Water and Light

Posted on by

Arkhip Kuindzhi, “After the Rain,” 1879

Susurration of Water and Light

The rain puppy-tumbles down panes,
aching beauty in its music,
a thousand whispers of ages past,
a haunting, an if

it’s the flowering of eternity

in after-shimmer, luscious licks of light
call,
float

blood and blue
dark and dazzle
carried to the sea,
on fiddle-strings of time.

My poem from the Oracle. I liked listening to the early morning rain the other day, but the thunderstorms we got yesterday afternoon were wild.

NaPoWriMo 2025, Day 13 : The Crows Will Have Their Say

Posted on by
Vincent Van Gogh, “Wheatfield with Crows”

The Crows Will Have Their Say

1.
Perhaps it was his brain, chemistry of wonder,
that made him see that light and color, the Van Gogh
that we know it now, oh that yellow shade of his
that sun-tempered his soul, field and flowers, Van Gogh
saw the crows rising, cawing, crying to be heard,
he blacked them on his canvas, now see how they’re heard.


  1. I watched the three atop the beached, bleached wood, the crows
    perhaps a family, black-winged glowing, knowing
    breeze and river flow, the blue of sky, white of snow,
    the water wending under ice, the blooms—knowing
    that they will come, even if the world’s undone, bye
    they might call, if anyone would listen, good-bye.

3.

All is rooted, windswept, greening, spring is springing
boughs are draped in bridal veils; crows call out beware.
And do they know? And dare we ask? What comes round here?
What should we fear? And now the river sighs, beware.
Yet, here comes the light with soft silver paws, I bide
to hear the robins trill, April fool, I still bide.

For NaPoWriMo, Day 13. This took some work, and I’m not sure why WP decided to indent the second stanza, but I’m leaving it for now. The optional prompt was to write a poem using the form created (it appears) by Donald Justice that includes 6-line stanzas of twelve syllables, and repeated end words in the second and fourth lines and in the fifth and sixth lines. The example is his poem, “There is a gold light in certain old paintings.”

Swirled Secrets Beyond the Night

Posted on by
Odilon Redon, Reflections, c.1900-1905

Swirled Secrets beyond the Night

Marble men, ghosts of lost
fathers, brothers, friends roll,

across indigo seas
filled with fish-fire
unbound by time,

but no night needs a prisoner
at the window

we wake with steel sky
and iron resolve

as an angel bleeds–
or blushes–

lion-fierce and dazzling,
like a hard flower of light

shifting scents of coffee and caramel,
clouds in cups half-empty and full

desiccated and glisten-splashed
with vibrant color–

you, we, all of us,
with our salted, star bodies
born to growl,
and glitter.

My poem from the Oracle, and she led me to a Redon I haven’t seen before.

At the Crossroads of Imagination and Fate

Posted on by

Monday Morning Musings:

At the Crossroads of Imagination and Fate

The enemy’s success or failure rests on our resourcefulness. One woman shot down a drone with a jar of pickles in the Goloseevsky District. Stay the Course. Glory to Ukraine. Glory to the heroes. Plug your windows with soft foam. Sleep by load-bearing walls.

—Excerpt from Mama’s address to the nation from Sasha Denisova, My Mama and the Full-Scale Invasion, Note from Director Yury Urnov, Printed in the Wilma Playbill, Feb. 2024.

Every day we know the sun will rise and set. We watch it, adjust our clocks and our lives by it. Some days it snows, and then the snow melts. The waves sigh, there is smoke in the air, and litter on the ground. Gun shots fly, people die, and we scarcely notice it anymore. In other places, bombs have fallen, are falling. But you cannot remain an island. A jar of pickles can kill. Never question the power and resourcefulness of mama bears. Listen when a crow warns, or the bell tolls.

This thing
of shared souls, perhaps circumstance
leading to connections–

once there was a boy I helped,
we found light, lit our world
and fueled our journey

Doug and Merril, Valley Forge, summer of 1974

with the quiet power of held hands–touch
a language that calls and slays the darkest dragons,

we have breathed scarlet flames, have blown white dandelion fluff
into blue-sky breezes–

energized with laughter, we cross intersections,
jaywalk through time’s boundaries, squinting at the diagonals
of the future, check this box, done—

on to the next one and the next,
pick roses, careless of the thorns,

I hear wing-flap, feel the air move

as geese soar into sapphire skies,
into the unknown.

It already seems a while since Valentine’s Day. We celebrated with wine and cheese and a virtual tasting event with Tria in Philadelphia. (We pick up the wine and cheese at Tria, then the online tasting event was that night.)

We streamed the movie, Costa Brava, Lebanon. It looks like it’s from 2021, but I think it’s new to Netflix. It’s about a family “in the near future” who have fled Beirut for their own hillside retreat. They live there in a sort of garden paradise, growing their own food, and swimming in an inground pool—until the area next door to them becomes a landfill site where garbage is dumped. The movie is more of a family drama. We both liked it very much.

Sunday was my husband’s birthday. We celebrated with delicious Indian food, leftover Crémant, and I made him a cheesecake. We saw the final performance of My Mama and the Full-Scale Invasion, at the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, a co-production with the Woolly Mammoth Theater Company. I really enjoyed this play—at times poignant, tragic, and also laugh out loud funny. It developed from the playwright’s conversations with her mother (born in a bunker while the Nazi’s were invading) who has remained in Kyiv. The playwright imagines her mother talking to world leaders; Biden and “the Putin” both visit her. I learned the word “Ruscist.” Since it was the last performance, the director came out to say a few words, and there was a moment of silence for Alexei Navalny. Find out more about the play here. It was a cold, windy day with a bright blue sky. We walked around for a little while before the show.

Eat the Storms – The Podcast Podcast – Episode 4 – Season 7

Posted on by

I’m so pleased to be one of the muses for our wonderful and amazing Irish bard. This is a fabulous episode. I loved hearing the work of my sister poets, and of course, Damien’s, too. 💙 Listen to Eat the Storms on Spotify, iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.

deuxiemepeau's avatarStorm Shelter

Podcast available on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, OverCast, Player FM, Radio Public, PocketCast, CastBox, iTunes, Podbean, Podcast Addicts and many more platforms.

This episode of Season 7 aired first on Saturday 10th May 2023, produced and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. Below are details and links to the guest stars…

Merril D Smith

Merril D. Smith is a poet who lives in southern New Jersey. Her work has been published in poetry journals and anthologies, including Black Bough Poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Storms, Fevers of the Mind, and Nightingale and Sparrow. She holds a Ph.D. in American history from Temple University and is the author/editor of numerous books on gender, sexuality, and history. Her full-length poetry collection, River Ghosts (Nightingale & Sparrow Press) was Black Bough Poetry’s December 2022 Book of the Month. 

Follow Merril on Twitter at https://twitter.com/merril_mds and on Instragram at mdsmithnj

Read Merril’s Monday Morning…

View original post 627 more words

Tutankhamun: Wonderful Things Launch Feature

Posted on by

I’m waiting for my copy! I also have a poem in this volume. I believe there will be an online launch with readings soon.

Patricia M Osborne's avatarPatricia M Osborne

Please join me in congratulatingBlack Bough Poetry on the release of this wonderful poetry collection, Tutankhamun: Wonderful Things.

I am proud to have two of my poems included in this gorgeous issue.

About Tutankhamun: Wonderful Things

Black Bough Poetry celebrate one hundred years of the discovery of the tomb of King Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt, in 1922. This special edition includes illustrations by Rebecca Wainwright, a musical score by Stuart Rawlinson and is edited by Matthew M.C. Smith, Ankh Spice and Jack B. Bedell. Tutankhamun: Wonderful Things features prose and poetry from across the world. A collection of diverse voices with powerful, atmospheric, imagistic work taking you right there to the Valley of the Kings. Be prepared to be struck, moved and transported by this stunning collection!

ORDER YOUR COPY HERE

Visit Black Bough Poetry’s website and find out more about this wonderful poetry…

View original post 14 more words

Merril Smith – Guest Feature

Posted on by

I’m so pleased to be featured on Patricia’s Pen today! Patricia is a wonderful poet and novelist. She is a generous supporter of other writers, too.

Patricia M Osborne's avatarPatricia M Osborne

Patricia’s Pen is delighted to welcome poet, Merril Smith, all the way from New Jersey. I got to know Merril via Black BoughPoetryTop Tweet Tuesday on Twitter. Without further ado, it’s over to Merril to chat about her writing.

My Writing

Merril Smith

Thank you very much, Patricia, for inviting me to Patricia’s Pen! I appreciate this wonderful opportunity to discuss writing and my work.

I have considered myself to be a writer for many years, but a poet for only a few. After the publication of my first book, Breaking the Bonds (NYU Press), I wrote/edited several non-fiction books–monographs, edited volumes, and reference work on history, gender, and sexuality published. However, writing and editing these books did not fulfil me the way writing poetry does. I think I needed a creative outlet, but it needed to be at the right time. It’s hard to explain…

View original post 482 more words