Loose Leaf Notes

The evening sun streamed down onto the Hahn Garden at Virginia Tech as seven poets read among the marigolds and mums. The readings were in conjunction with the current outdoor art exhibit “Simply Elemental” and included an interlude of classical guitar, performed by musicians Ebru Bish and Renate Kehlenbeck.

Sharing silence with a heron, gravity, gourds, Indian cooking, the American landscape in the 1800’s and dealing with cancer and loss were just some of the topics poetically shared.

I was very happy that my longtime friend and poet Alywn Moss (pictured in pink) was able to make it.  My husband Joe came too!

What better way to deal with the stresses of today’s world events than to sit back and enjoy flowers, poetry and music, our emcee Diane Goff asked before introducing the first poet. The event was free and open to the public with refreshments included.

As one of the seven poets, I read new poems from a working collection titled Objects May Be Closer Than They Appear, which explores conversations with a lost loved one by way of accessing memories, signs and dreams. I can’t make poems happen, like I can’t make dreams happen, but I am open and waiting for both.

I introduced my poem Everything I’ve Learned About Life I Learned from Sewing, by mentioning that my late sister Kathy was a talented seamstress. I was not, but being short and petite, I’ve spent a lot of time altering clothes, taking up pants and skirts, taking in shirts and moving buttons, which has led me to say, “Maybe if I was taller, I would have read more of the classics.”

Poet Mary North read a poem titled Gravity’s Garden ….”we are abandoned here on this Earth / left to fall irreparably in love / with gravity’s garden / trying our lives to persuade a different ending / or some other sense of time / while our souls swagger towards eternity / leaving ghosts or trails of us behind.”

Among the poems that Chelsea Adams shared, there was one about a brain surgery nightmare and one called The Encounter, about meeting and not recognizing yourself on the sidewalk.

Believe it or not, poet Piper Durrell came from the same town in Connecticut that Chelsea did.  She read a poem about it.

“Beyond all the little kindnesses, our animal bodies sense the truth …. The doctor, his hand on my wrist like a paw …All those years ago, your hot flame drew me like a moth … Though I singed, I also kindled….” read Diane Goff as dusk descended. The poem, For Richard, was about how her husband fiercely saw her through her ordeal with cancer and chemo.