Front Porch Editions, 2011
This book is an up close and personal look at the world outside the watery windows of my greenhouse. I love the idea of what happens in the "yard" becoming poems. It was fun to write this collection, to muse upon the natural world and become a bit of a nature flâneur. Rather than digging around in the dirt, I prefer a more observational approach, with pen in hand and words during down like rain.
When I sat in my little greenhouse, using my potting bench as a table, I felt the heat and the colors and the scents of yard and garden. My imagination led me to the natural world beyond my perch, to the countryside lane and the shore. Nature and human nature,, lifelong lovers. I strove to put that love on every page.
As the poet says in her opening poem: Allow. Allow these poems to move you, get inside and stir you with their attentiveness and wisdom, the freshness of the world they bring directly to us, the possibilities that hide within loss. These poems allow loss and beauty and earth, and they allow us to feel deeply. What a gift!
— Betsy Scholl, Late Psalm Maine Poet Laureate 2005-2010
Sample poem from the book (p.5)
Allow the Year
Allow the year to end, clouds
gusting in an ocean overhead
and the sun on its passage
to solstice, sinking near earth.
Allow the thickets of winter
shadows to cross the yard
and ivy to ascend chain link
crimson as a neighbor’s light
brazenly on and off. Allow loss.
Allow the grinding traffic
whatever its various ends
to stop unseen and the mice
under the bird feeder to eat
among sparrows. Allow them.
Allow the trash pickers. Allow
their bottles, plastics and cans.
And the old cat her last patch
of warmth on the back steps.
And the housefly on the wall
its frail hold. Allow the year
to end, whatever the way, allow
the kitchen curtain to blow
in and out, and in and out.
Allow the year to end, the soul
to rise and fall, then rise again.
Go Back to Books and Media