literal walking poetry in mont clare, montgomery county.

since the weather left us questioning how we could enjoyably spend our morning on friday, my traveling poetry class first met at steel city coffee house in phoenixville, chester county, and later shifted into river-hunting in mont clare, montgomery near lock 60.

more truly than even in the past, for being a traveling poetry class, we were walking poetry and explored expanses which two of us hadn't seen before. and notable scenes below are sam traten holding a shore-found bobber in honor of his neologism of bobber-fling, along with him sniffing a nearby electric pole to determine if it was made of red cedar wood or not.

from before we were so footfall-oriented, i shared a poem which i wrote about barbara tucker, in the class, after reading her latest river poem. below is a poem.

*

barbara tucker takes to water

when she writes whims of poetry

you write like water, like the river,

barbara. it is something beautiful

to notice, to take in, whatever waves

are when they're less broad, moving

their route southeast but free of salt

like what sloshes around in the sea.

your language pours outward with

this natural flow so fitting that it is

a little hard to fathom—graceful

and deep like the caverns and all

complexity in your heart. it doesn’t

surprise me that you live less than

six miles from a river, the schuylkill,

and that its name means hidden river

in dutch from the explorers who

aimed ships here around 400 years

ago (its previous name from the native

americans was turtle river, or tool-pay

hanna and also turtle place or tool-pay

hok ung). none of this surprises me, but

the better water in your inching words

always tugs behind my ribcage ever

so slightly in a way which teaches me

that i love land, wet sections around

                                             it, and students who embrace this all.

family fun night at nockamixon state park in late september-- crafting animal poems.

on the last day of september, i made my way to quakertown in bucks county to teach my animal poems workshop as a part of a family fun night at nockamixon state park. 

after reading through some of my sample poems, a boy named austin told us about how he saw a momma and baby deer on the drive into the park. from what he could see, the momma wanted them to get back on their way, into the forest, but the fawn seemed interested in anything but stamping a path of footfalls into the woods. austin used these little moments as a way to put his first animal poem together, which he read to us at the end of the evening.

some other stories which were shared involved a dog named holly spooking a chicken to fly over its own coop and a dream of red, purple, blue, brown, and black bears circling a house, doing their best to get inside the home-- a bit scary, yes. but we had a great time even on a rainy friday night.

photography here is kindly courtesy of rebekah sheele

a second farm-to-table dinner haiku from frecon farms.

cider, apples, and pears—oh my.

the second farm-to-table dinner hosted by frecon farms last night involved not one but two truckloads of dinner-goers. it only makes sense to have a good time when you're hopping onto the back of a truck with strangers who will eventually be your good friends hours later, all in the name of dinner amongst apple trees in september.

and a haiku to match the evening.

*

light shimmers across

branches of apples as smiles

span each lip, mid-sip