poetpotter

Summer turns to fall, it seems, in the blink of an eye. We had a cooler summer and then a warm fall. Autumn has been a time of fall fairs, growth slowing in the garden, but we still have carrots in the veggie garden and some last tiny tomatoes ripening in early October. Today's poem calls up images of fall fairs and midways and people gathering. I don't have images of the midway, but I do have some of displays inside the arena. Ferris wheels are part of most midways and today I share my poem, Ferris Wheels. The Ferris Wheel The wheel goes round and round carrying anyone who can take the rocking turning the altitude anyone with time on their hands and nickels to spare If this wheel could travel how far would it go? what sights would they see? Instead they travel up and around filling the air with shrieks exclamations, even the silence of the awed. They end in the same place they began no wiser for the experie

Billboards send some interesting messages, some better than others. I remember reading a particular one before I wrote a poem about it. I was thinking about a friend whom I couldn't contact. She'd moved away without a forwarding address. We later got in touch again when I saw the obituary of her husband in the paper. But while I was puzzled about where they went, I wrote this poem that was published by Tower Poetry Society (Summer 2009). The billboard says "Afford to retire" What does it mean? That I can afford to retire? That few can afford it? There was a number and a place retire in Elliot Lake    you once said Is that where you went? The day I called a mechanical voice said "This number is no longer in service" no forwarding number    nada I've searched the book    hoping to find you I wanted to say goodbye, hello, where are you A goodbye would have been kind a forwarding address even better

Narcissus in my flowerbeds Here come the flowers, the springtime beauties, narcissus, daffodils, crocus—all signs of spring in our northern hemisphere. I can't remember a time when I didn't like spring. Plants poking their stems through the ground, the smell of an April wind, seeing the early spring flowers, and one of my favourites, the yearly trip to the bush on or about Mother's Day, Maybe the only thing I didn't like particularly was the mud that came with spring rains.  And yet, even the rain that made the mud, when there was enough of it, was refreshing. Imagine the rain coming down in huge drops.  I watched one day from inside my car while waiting in a parking lot to attend a meeting. The rain had come up quite quickly and I decided, rather than getting soaked to the skin before the meeting that I'd wait it out where I was.  I watched as the released moisture from the cloud danced all around me. Here's a poem of mine, inspired by the ra

photo by C. Wilker Today it's snowing, just the light snowflakes borne by the wind. Tracks in my backyard make me think that some rabbits in the neighbourhood had quite a time in the crisp clean snow. We could ask, what if they had a party out there, but I think this was a smaller gathering or one rabbit frolicking around having fun, making his own tracks. Then I think of fields covered with snow and of corn stalk stubble showing through. When I was small, we always seemed to have a lake in one front field, a place that was lower than other areas, at least  until Dad hired people to lay tiles to drain the water from the surface and draw it away. What I remember is skating on the small body of frozen (not deep) water with corn stalks poking through at intervals. Dad brought a few straw bales out from the barn that we could sit on to put on our skates. We played hockey or just skated around the stubble. My memory in a poem: Frozen weeds were goalposts where