Spark your creativity, make connections, and share the gift of poetry! Bloomfield Public Library offers readings by notable poets and a warm, supportive atmosphere for sharing your own work. Everyone is welcome!
The Wintonbury Poetry Series is held on the third Thursday of the month, October – April, at 7:00 PM. Open mic follows each program. BPL also hosts two poetry workshops in May.
Residents of Bloomfield and surrounding communities are invited to submit your poetry for consideration to appear on the library’s Poetry Sharing Page. Contact Tom Nicotera at tnicotera@libraryconnection.info.
BOOK BANNING?
A Villanelle by Sharon Scull
Banning books is a disgrace
Growing movement, though not new
This insult smacks me in the face
How sad, this ban we did embrace
List keeps growing, now a queue
Banning books is a disgrace
All forms of bigotry do we replace?
Oppression, LGBTQ?
This insult smacks me in the face
Frightening campaign, bereft of grace
History ignored? The facts, no clue?
Banning books is a disgrace
Should not truth be in place?
Parents fear guilt will accrue
This insult smacks me in the face
Favorites emptying from bookcase
Appears to have an air of coup
Banning books is a disgrace
This insult smacks me in the face
SHIFTING YET SOLID
Dry grains of sand are swept along the slightly moist beach,
a reminder that what is light is easiest to move.
These tidbits of earthly essence are but a tiny swirl ln the
revolving continuum we know as our planet.
Each sweeping gesture is like one human life,
a definite yet fleeting impression of humanity’s
and Nature’s ever-shifting but firm foundation.
by John P. Kneal
Walking in Winter Wind
The wind came like a red-tailed hawk,
Dispatched collecting lethal fee.
Quashing any chance for talk,
Unleashed to act sadistically.
Wind’s depth and vastness scalded cure
Wind stretched out time to make thought wince;
It mocked the thought I could endure.
And left in tatters hope’s vague hints.
Wind’s disproportionate blind rage
Imposed a chilled eternity;
Each snow slowed step, wind built a cage,
To use abuse effusively.
Throughout it all, heroically,
My dog companioned stoically.
by Kim Hunt
COMING TOGETHER
That airport landing I will many times recall,
not for meeting my friend who toured Europe for the eighth time
but for the words I heard and my mind was slow to process.
The woman near me proclaimed she was connecting
with a full-blooded sister she had never met,
over sixty years of conception, deception, and separation,
victims of parental lies, secrets, fears, and guilt
with more twists and turns than a mammoth roller coaster.
A cousin, probing ancestry like a bee hunting for nectar’s cache,
dodged their blood brother’s cease and desist warning
and connected the dots that shaped this union.
One sister, flanked by curious but caring strangers,
approaches us, a group nearly surrounding her nervous look-alike.
Smart phone videos run and photos in machine-gun fashion click,
tension and relief melded into a human welcome mat.
The sisters lurch ahead and cling, years lost squeezed into seconds,
while applause erupts richer than bubbling champagne,
joy’s tears the universal link,
the landing nailed, epiphany rising—
by John P. Kneal
The Flower Fades
“The grass withers, the flower fades,
when the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
surely the people is grass.”
Isaiah 40:7 RSV
When I was young,
my father splashed
Yardley of London, English Lavender
on his face
every morning after he shaved—
fragrant, healing lotion.
This morning, so many years later,
I stepped into the shower
with a new cake of soap,
Yardley of London, English Lavender,
redolent of gardens in bloom.
“Yardley” was sharply etched
into the surface of that soap,
But I know that, with a second shower and more
the name will fade and disappear.
The cake of soap won’t seem to shrink
but after a time I will look at it
and notice how small it has become.
Finally, after weeks of use,
it will be a thin chip
ready to break if thrust against the body too hastily.
How did it get so small without my noticing it?
Day by day, shower by shower, year by year
the cake of soap wears away until
its brittle remainder,
a poor reminder of its fat beginnings,
is ready to be thrown away.
by Richard N. Pierce
Picture a Garden
Henriette paints her garden with
A many hued palet of plants with
Brush strokes of flowers and leaves,
A spectrum of reds, oranges, yelllows,
Blues, pinks, and purples
over bright green stems.
Looking at this colorful display,
One can almost feel the range of texture
From delicate flowers to ridges on
Stems and broad leaves.
There is such a range of color for the eye
That it soothes the brain.
The sound of the bees is heard as the
Hummingbirds sip nectar from flowers,
A Caterpillar munches on leaves before
Forming a chrysalis to
Transform into a butterfly.
This wondrous spectacle is a morning
Treat for everyone’s walk to their cars.
by Michael S. Feinberg
In the Woods
In the workshop of the mind
One can pluck the strings
Of time while singing
And dancing with the
Faeries and spirits
Of the kind that
Dwell in the forest
Of this surreal dream
That can become real
When one embodies
This spirit of being
And in so becomes
The joy of doing
So wonder comes
From this act of work
Which is the power
Of the heart
To do and to be:
I think ……
I see………
It is love
by Michael S. Feinberg
Father’s Painted Butterflies
(Elmer Tarwood 1915-2003)
Twirl, glint, suspend free
of time and gravity
five pairs of wings spin wildly
darting in and out, gold-flecked bodies alive with silver-
wire antennae strung off balsa sticks
in three levels
reincarnated in a float dance
from a machinist’s fancy
strung on fishing line and breath
born of a retiree’s craft, hanging unmoved
now like dead insects. I nudge them, send them
whirling erratic again, a circular chase
click-revolve veering, sometimes clinking
mute chimes. Cold, fragile blue
yellow-gold monarchs
gliding over, under,
around each other, glance-a-chance, click-a-miss,
no win, dreams
of the maker and the watcher
lost
with the dust on their wings
merely basement
dust
by Marilyn Johnston
Three Hundred Poems
After all that came before, isolation
and a jealous stepfather, crossing the border,
your mother, a mere girl, too young for parenting,
yet you were confident. Under watching
moons you explored miles of railroad, desert
and highway, carried your own blessed heart
out of muddy wetness, walked yellow fields hunted
by hawks, grazed by starlings. You rearranged
your life on the northwest coast at the water’s edge.
Slept in the narrow bed. Kept cabinet doors closed.
Learned three hundred poems to save your own life
and much later, at a microphone,
shoulders squared over flat green earth
your voice sang out, with an opening poem,
a calling, like a deep and heavy bell.
by Sherri Bedingfield
Night Wind in March
It was a monstrous welling sound –
Loosed bowels of acoustic hate –
A rupture working to rebound,
Forbidding one to contemplate.
Then, unquietly subsiding,
A sound felt hollowed out,
With moan that mocked, deriding,
In orchestration of dread doubt.
This wind built of destructive scorn
Cowed me inside my house of brick;
Gored fears with its satanic horn;
My life felt but a card sharp’s trick.
It was a raw relentless rasp
That bound pretension in its clasp.
by Kimball Hunt
After Shave Champagne
I ask her what she’d like me to bring;
cake? A pie? Salad?..WINE?
Ah yes, “BRUT,” she responds.
“Please bring a bottle of BRUT for New Years.”
There are those, the cultured, who know their drink;
fine Scotch, the most appropriate wine, a cordial.
They don’t even have to ask the host;
it’s a given that what they bring will hit the mark.
Then, there are those who are simply guided
by what they remember…
albeit, perhaps forty years ago,
but never the less, a name brand is a name brand.
I mean, think HOOD…KING ARTHUR…CHOCK FULL OF NUTS;
synonymous with consistency for decades! And still here.
And so, the expert on sweets, not booze, concedes; Brut means Brut;
the one Joe Namath spoke for…the ONLY one I know.
The large chain pharmacy still carries it.
Looks like they only have the single-serving size,
so I purchase enough to fill a pitcher.
Twenty-three bottles…should be enough for the get together.
As luck has it, upon opening several, it’s flat…no fizz.
Hey, my motto…”always be prepared.”
I open the bottom kitchen cabinet…still there…
three large bottles of seltzer.
I go to it. Just the right amount. Give a taste…PERFECT!
And you know, the stuff smells nice too!
I arrive. Host doesn’t question the pitcher; I just know
she appreciates this classy, sans the bottle act.
And so, a fine evening. My contribution was a hit, with all asking
how I was able to find such a great vintage.
I’m then reminded of another dinner get together next month…
and would I please bring simple salad greens with OIL and VINEGAR.
I respond with an affirmative;
easy….simple salad greens with OIL and VINEGAR.
Hmm…could have sworn I saw a bottle of Mobil 10W-40
on the shelf in the garage…
by Andy Weil