Poetry and Music at Beaver Pond - St Philiip's Episcopal in Lambertville, NJ / Daylilies at the Side of the Road - The Typewriter is now a Collector's Item

Altho it takes only 45 minutes to get there, there's miles and miles of seemingly endless driving to get there. I usually get lost but armed with great direx from Scott I easily found the church.

Liz Bowman, who runs the group, was sitting outside on the patio. We would've read our work out there but it's extremely noisy. Motorcycles and cars zoom constantly down Route 32, beautiful River Road.

The new pastor put in a beautiful garden that includes a Labyrinth.

Liz Bowman earns her living as a gardener, landscape designer.

A while ago, she sent us an email asking us to pray for her grandson Malcolm. He was a little guy diagnosed with Gaucher's disease. Every case is different. You can live till you're 81 and never know you have it, she said.

Malcolm didn't make it. He was well-loved. And had treatments at Duke U in North Carolina where his parents live.

Liz, who describes Malcolm as an old soul, spoke with him the day before he died. She told him he was a strong little man and that he should come back when he's ready.

She believes everyone serves a purpose on earth. Malcolm served many purposes including to show Craig how to grieve.

Sandy Bender drove up. Inside the chapel we went.

We sat and talked quite a while. I had just come from seeing Grace and Max.


Talking about old souls.

Grace is in her new tent in her bedroom. We walked outside in the backyard garden looking at a few specific things: moss, roses with prickers that hurt, and bird poop.

I told my son Dan I wanted to get her a subscription to Ranger Rick mag for her third b'day. I was reading a gardening book and the ad fell out.

I also brought in my newest poem and started reading it to Dan.

"You lost me at the part about buying a new typewriter," he said.

I was un-shook and ready to read it at Beaver Pond into what I pretended was a live audience of 2,000 people at the Mann Center downtown.

Sandy, an architect, was offered a job at FEMA to assess damages from Hurricane Sandy. He stayed in a hotel for 5 weeks and brot his banjo with him.

People are intent on ripping off FEMA and taking advantage of the federal government. Sandy is a man of integrity and wouldn't kowtow to the people who tried to stretch the truth and say things were damaged by the hurricane that really were not.

"I'm very discerning," he said.

The situation was very political, he said, so he was glad when the job was over.

Here we are the last time I went to Beaver Pond... exactly a year ago.  It's far far too long. I love being with these people.

Both Liz and I sang or chanted as Sandy strummed his banjo strings. That man is good!

Liz, who lives on a lot of acreage in Lambertville, lost power for 10 days during Hurricane Sandy. She crooned from her journal how it all went down.

She and Craig talked more to one another than they had in years. They lit a stove and felt very cozy in their old farmhouse with stone front. I'd been there several times years ago when The River Poets group was still going strong.

One night during the storm, she went outside to pee and whom should she meet but Mr Big Brown Bear.

He stood on his hind legs when he saw her.

GO AWAY, she yelled. He retreated but not entirely.

She walked s l o w l y  back into the house b/c she needed something from the car.

Her husband joked, "The wife always goes out when there's a bear."

Sandy put his finger-pickin things on his fingers and tuned up.

When he started to play, I couldn't sit still in my chair, so I went into the back of the church and started dancing.

I sang a couple of my poems while Sandy strummed away.

Amazing how we all brought hurricane-themed works and stories.

I sang my poem about a tree who was felled by the storm, but she was actually happy b/c it gave her a chance to get her wish: being able to move.... walk, dance, view the scenery from a different perspective.

Then I read my poem "Mail Order Couch" about this very couch I'm sitting on, "my couch for eternity."

Plus two new poems I wrote this morning, including the one Dan didn't like.

I think it was Liz who told me to disown him but I said I can't on account of my grandchildren.

Here I am taking my bows in the spotlight of the Mann Center.



DAYLILIES BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD

bumping over backroads
in my muddy sedan
you appear right on time
are you waving at me
or is it just an illusion?

orange trumpet-shaped blossoms
your wildness
catches my heart
you are not dainty
like lily of the valley
or tough like rose of sharon

you have always seemed to me
like pieces of heaven
fallen to the ground

you remind me
time is fleeting
remain in the now
I still have much to learn
and much to teach
a little piece of heaven
can do that
while riding on the backroads
all over town.



THE TYPEWRITER IS NOW A COLLECTOR’S ITEM

I have it on good authority
that manual typewriters
go for thousands on eBay
the first thing I’d do with my newfound
wealth
is buy me a new Selectric
I never really mourned the old one
beige
Phil Weber
the typewriter man’s
name was pasted on the
the spacious fields
where no elms
or wildflowers
grew
just alphabet keys
fat and sturdy
wren-gray
smoothly lickable should you wish
I admit I beat those keys
like a dray horse
ploughing fertile rows
of soy

Next time
watch me
I will drink tea between
sentences
watch the maple trees waving
from my window
as I insert a hyphen or semi-colon
and together again
Selectric and I
will tread the starry path
that goes by one name only
The power of the written word.