Coffeeshop Writers' Group - Two poems: Van Gogh at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Americans All, Under the Shell

My little leprechaun, Grace Catherine Deming. First foto taken last year. Foto on right taken today at age 18 mos.

Here's my favorite poem for St Paddy's Day. From Bartleby who I once had an intense affair with. Yes, I was in love with a website.

Violas in my garden. Before writing today's poems I had to take care of business such as watering these brand-new plants and the bird bath.
I actually didn't recognize Kym Cohen b/c her blond hair was replaced by a warm brown today. "Doesn't she look fabulous?" said Carly Brown to her right.

Carly wrote a poem about not writing a poem. And Kym didn't have one for today, but went to the Bensalem Library and came up with a good one!
Donna Krause wrote a lovely poem for her 3-month-old grandson, John Dillon. "Frame it and give it to the parents," urged Kym and Marfa. Here's Martha now in her St Paddy's Day attire. Her earrings blinked on and off.

Martha Hunter in her amazing earrings. Thanks, Kym, for taking this great picture I stole off FB. Marf's offering was the beginning of a series on her Scottish grandmother. She found info on ScotlandsPeople.

And, me, well, I worked all morning on my two poems when I wasn't making breakfast, talking to my mom who's making me lace curtains for Sarah's old room, cutting new daffodils from the backyard, tripping on the new fence we put round the daffodils so the school kids won't trample em when cutting thru the backyard, and answering two dozen emails.

I knew I wanted to write a poem about the Van Gogh exhibit. I had no friggin idea what I wanted to say.

And when I got gas at the Giant the other night, I knew that experience deserved a poem.

Almond blossoms (I always thought they were dogwood blossoms)

VAN GOGH AT THE PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART

It was the almond blossoms,
white
against a cerulean sky,
left for last
in this exhibit of
borrowed paintings
I came to

Saw the blossoms from afar
and waited,
a shy lover,
averting my gaze,
hands behind my back,
an aging ballerina,
I float closer
an acorn in one pocket
and the long white ticket of
entry in the other,
your straw hat
long gone
your darting eyes

When the Red Sea
parted,
I came to you,
sideways,
not daring to view
your planetary mind
up close
gazed at your
brushstrokes
prodigious
knowing in your soon-dead
heart
your sunflowers
your bedroom at the asylum
your butterflies and moths
would fly with you through
the corridors of forever.

AMERICANS ALL, UNDER THE SHELL

We are all of one family
here under the aluminum shell
of this popular
filler-up join

If attacked we would cling
together
like wagon trains rolling
across the virgin plains

Bucky, the manager,
would protect us,
so would the tie-dyed Harley rider
the woman in the burka
would look to him
maybe fall in love
with his tattooed muscled might
what loins lurk behind her
black full-length gown?

I've already fallen for Bucky.
I like his name
his tallness and
the way he shook my hand
and said, "May I inquire who
I have the pleasure of speaking to?"
He is mine.

Blushing tenderly
Bucky and I elope
cross country
"Yeeha!" he cries to the horses
as we settle down in Jackson Hole
to birth babies and plant corn
I can still feel the wedding gown
brushing along the dirt road.

Fickle woman
I fly back home
scan my Giant bonus card
under a blaze of light
then fill her up
the way we did the mares
with wheat and corn and apples
back home in Jackson Hole.