2025 Storefront Poetry

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King David of Exeter (fl. 1875-1885)

 

Picture King David, in his coat-of-many-colors.

He was homeless.

(His Bible was, by necessity, condensed.)

He was harmless.

You’d see him walking down Exeter’s streets

deep in conversation with Himself,

smiling for reasons only known to Him.

 

He was a jack of all trades.

Need a fence painted, a stone wall fixed? Find David.

Need some help working on your roof,

building some shelves?

David’s your man.

In exchange, you’d give him a meal,

a little cash, some used clothes maybe.

One Christian soul

even let him winter in the garden shed

for several winters running.

 

Who else could be trusted

to teach your children how to fish,

drill them on their times tables,

or help you dad with the haying?

If you’re curious, there’s a photo of him

in Images of America: Exeter (Dover, Arcadia:1996, p. 80).

​

Or, next time you’re out walking, look for him.

He’s still out there.

​

John-Michael Albert, Portsmouth

--

​

​

Poof

 

There he was, almost alive, on a tiny cassette tape

found in a desk drawer. Face I couldn’t see without help 

from a photograph. Voice I couldn’t hear without this gadget.

 

Hello, this is Dad. Sorry you aren’t there. 

I’ll talk to you on Sunday, God willing.

Just when had he started adding that little prayer?

 

As if he were sitting beside me. Brown recliner tipped back, 

glass of Bud in his hand, cigar resting in the amber ashtray,

and a PBS special on magic tricks blaring from the TV.

​

A quiet man, except when he’d had a few. Soft-spoken 

even when stern. Why is it, when his words still circle

in my mind, I can’t hear the tenor of his voice?

​

Like slippery eels we tried to catch on a NJ pier

or female crabs, carrying eggs, we had to let go of.

Neither ear nor brain can hold onto sounds that matter.

​

Gone, gone, so quickly after death. Voice 

and visage—disappearing from the mind

like the white rabbit from the magician’s hat. 

Barbara Bald, Alton

--

 

Inside the Red Barn House
 
built on a bedrock of granite, coarse grain and ledge
pressing in and in from all sides, at times, I could feel
the maple, its gentle hum. I was certain it had a heart. One
that did not quiver, like mine. It beat steady. A timeless drum.
The maple was not bothered by the shedding. Bare and crooked
branches. Chipped off bark.  It did not feel imprisoned
beneath sheathes of ice. It splayed its shining sleeves. Dead
stick-bones stilled inside glass scarves. All winter, it lorded
over the snowy gravel of our drive. And when the sun rose
behind, sometimes I’d dash out through the kitchen  
in my shabby robe, barefoot and craving, knowing I could not
witness the blood rising up through the massive trunk,
wanting to reach for that eternal pump, to taste the rush,
before turning back to face the door.

 

Jessica Barlevi, Stratham

--

 

 

Dungeons and Ponies

 

When I was in elementary school,

I thought making friends was as easy as walking up to someone and saying,

“Hi! My name is Lily. I’m 8 years old, my favorite color is pink, and my favorite animal is a jaguar. Want to be friends?”

 

Turns out, when you get older, it’s a lot more complicated than My Little Pony made it seem.

​

Now, I sit at a table in front of a battle map,

Looking over my options and trying to find the best strategy.

​

I take a chance

And roll the dice…

 

Nat 20!

I’ve just blown up a cult’s hive of murderous bees that were sent to kill my party. 

Turns out, making friends is as easy as saying,

 

“Hi! My name is Lily. I’m a 7-foot tall half orc and I have no supplies because I spent all my gold on weapons.

Want to join my DnD campaign?”

​

Lily Bozenski, Exeter,  EHS ‘26 ----------------

​

​

Boxing the Mannequins

​

These beauties, models 

of how we might appear, 

don’t grin, don’t pout,

don’t love, don’t fear,

don’t hate, don’t doubt,

don’t roll their eyes

or dwell on the vagaries of sin.

Built for display, they seek 

to connect by not seeking,

by holding it all within. 

Puncture a cheek,

they’ll still stare into 

the middle distance 

as if mesmerized by 

that calm forever place. 

We call them dummies. 

Even here in the factory 

where we build and box 

and ship these bodily visions, 

we call them dummies, 

as if that puts them in a place 

below ours. But when, 

out in the world, we come 

face-to-face with these 

hollow hallowed beings,

they have a way of finding

the thinnest cracks in our lives —

finding and slow prying

the fissures wide or wider.

These anodyne beauties!

Their hair is perfect, 

except for the dust.

 

Michael Brosnan, Exeter -------------

​​

​

The Point

for Beauty

 

There’s a game the dog and I played

most nights on the way to bed.

At the top of the stairs

she’d wait for me

to stop on my knees

three steps down

and pretend to try

and grab her paws.

She’d pretend to try and bite

my hands, tail wagging

and a soft growl, dancing

from one paw to another.

In truth, I was better at this

than she, four-footed,

could be; I could’ve easily

grabbed both of her front feet

and won. But winning

is not always the point.

​

Bill Burtis, Exeter ---

​​

Splinter

​

I want to write a poem

tiny and sharp as a splinter.

I want it under your skin.

I want it to bother you, I want

you to keep thinking about it

until at last you pull it out,

read it, hoping the pain will stop.

 

But what will stop the pain

is to know the splinter

for what it is

and leave it in.

 

Bill Burtis, Exeter -----

 

 

"Stories Old and New"

in "Skazki: A Spell of Ice and Snow"

 

Inside of every story, there’s an ending.

Inside of every rhyme, there is a spell.

Inside of this new story were some old ones.

There’s only one way this ends well…

 

A god’s a god,

A girl’s a girl,

And witches bridge the gap!

Be mindful what you’re saying.

How spells and tales entrap!

Stories are a power beyond anything you see,

And if you deign to meddle with that which you cannot flee,

I’ll give you some advice

And I promise you it’s free:

 

Tell not what is

But what could be!

Give someone some hope

Balanced with tragedy and glee.

And before you bring the cheers,

The clapping and the tears,

Before you say a word

Of a spell to change the world…

Make sure you pour some tea!

 

J. X. M. Corriss, Dover ----

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​

The Sun and the North Star

​

I am the north star, and you are the sun. 

Kids learn about you, but it is all a lie

I am truly the biggest star in the sky

Sailors look to me when they are lost.

They burn their eyes, but at what cost?

Kids draw you in the corner of their paper for fun, 

What they should be drawing is me, not the sun

I come out during the night. 

When it is my turn to shine, you simply take flight.

I am the biggest star in the sky,

People will soon see who you truly are

 

Cayden Culbertson, Exeter   EHS ‘27 -----------

​​

 

A peaceable existence

 

When stillness settles into this two-hundred-year-old house

an antiquated furnace rumbles and huffs through tunnels

of ductwork and into the rooms where cat and dog

claim a private seat to practice their rituals.

​

They each press against a metal register to soak in the heat.

No priest attends. Neither cat nor dog hold prayer beads

or bow in reverence or lift their forepaws to those glory angels

rollie eyes cast to heaven’s golden voluptuous skies.

​

I’m grateful for this prayer shawl, the old furnace,

and the arms of this rocker I just happen to knock for good luck.

​

A creature’s gratitude is body spoken curled

pressed warm on this frigid night.

​

Trina Daigle, Newmarket---------

​

​

Three Sheds to Save

​

When there’s a father and son

with wood to be divided

with wood to go around

there is one kind of thinking

when body feels done

mind pulls hard until it’s done.

 

Father and son go to their back wood

together to cut, haul and stack, argument would

go around until all could be said became wood

wood split, stacked neat into the shed, save one.

 

This shed holds last year’s words fixed tight

as cord wood, dry, like the knot

in a son’s throat when he sees his father

lean into the ash and pine, then bend.

Within this shed, and the other

first year wood is marked for winter.

Son takes in the last cord,

a splintered rhythm

as familiar as a father.

 

Trina Daigle, Newmarket ------------------

​

​

Shimmer

​

Sometimes

 it’s just the shimmer

that lifts your

bone tired soul above 

the mistakes, missteps

Unacknowledged, 

corrected, or remembered.

 

Listen, some days

it’s like this:

you walk outside and

there’s heavy traffic 

by the birdbath,

in the apple trees.

 

Or it’s the gaze out 

the bedroom window

through 

thicket of maple leaves—

to glimpse the chickadee,

fine wire feet clutching while

hammering diligently

at one small seed.

 

Holley Daschbach, Exeter --------------------------

​

​​

The Year I Went Without a Car Stereo

 

My ears heard what my eyes saw. And so, I read into everything. The trees hiding the deer. The deer hiding the trees. Their diet of twigs and editorials indistinguishable from the twilight. The bright sugar we poured on our tongues. The visors they wore when the sun drove their eyes into slits. I’m on time in my own head. That year now revered by the town. The town now in twinkling lights. My ears hearing what death saw in me. And so went easy on it. Reading little else into it. Severing light from everything it held dear. Star none ride. Star leaf. I could only feel my fingers. Doing what they had done all along. Felt them touch where the world had left off. A sort of tingling. Given over to song. My ears hearing where the sea had once conned me. Into being more tender. No deer hurt in the making. The same hair on my tongue for a week now. How I tried to return to that side. One desire as insufferable as the other. One bluff. I sniffed out my 11-year-old self. Like a melon slice. Like a moon skilled in tides. Like the trees cooling off on the side of a hill. That I give the same name as my mysterious foe. Despite the silence. The system will assure me. You are still working. I am still working. Waist deep in candy. In the candy mine.

​​

Mark DeCarteret, Rye   First appeared in Pithead Chapel -----------------

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​

February

​​

O final transit of Venus I am stepping out

to mark your passage across

the arctic air barren

but for

little tables dormant

beneath their evening snowfall it arrived

before our prophecy it will outlast us our greatest

instruments and measuring tools

when we are gone

my love

 

the tables will be waiting silently they miss us

 

our June nights

before the illness they remember us as we were

(quite luminous)

the bottles of decent wine

o little table which held my love’s cup

you are more fortunate than the animals

who centuries ago turned their faces

skyward as the planets first set out

tentative

in their pavilion of heaven

​

Samantha DeFlitch, Portsmouth-----------

​

​

FALSE INDIGO

​​

These blue mouths

eating light at

the creek side,

I could kiss them.

Like the smell

of opals or the

sound of stones

the weightless

blue moths

flock onto the

branches.

They too can make

exquisite dye: blue

the way brass is

bright, the way

jazz is fast.

Daring and

improbable as

love, their color’s

true the whole blue

month of June.

​

Maggie Dietz, Exeter------------

​​

​​

Whirlygigs

​​

The toy shop in town thrives on shimmery bits of yellow

Nostalgia and boarding school kids hungry for it.

​​

The shop’s teenaged clientele, starving, roams

 ‘Round in circles as the colors grow less

​​

Saturated by the hour. For they’re drunk

On life, and to treat their hangover they

​

Must hang onto this thread, taut, tethered to a time

When memories were made to be used, made

 

To be wasted. But then when the googly-eyed

Rabbits & plastic doll houses & model train sets seem to

 

Soothe us at last, we rush back again to indeed try to intoxicate, one:

Ourselves, with the rill of life, and two: this practice, for

 

We know these visits to the toy shop are no sustainable

Treatment. But until then I will wade in the shop’s shallow of yellow bits,

​

Apathetic to the fact that the substance is now up to my chin. For this pharmacy

Of playdough-scented salves must thrive, as I must feast on the prescription of these bits

​​

Here that glint for me, no longer golden, but at least still a dizzying yellow.

​​

Erin Han, Exeter, PEA ‘26 ---

​​​

​​

EVERYTHING MUST GO

​​

April.  Early morning.  And the junk lady hunkers

on the stoop of her junked-out storefront porch

​

hawking her ephemera—sidewalk hoards

of plastic Santas, snow globes, yoga videos,

 

porcelain bunnies an army half the size

of Mother China it would weary 

 

even Elizabeth Bishop to recite.

Everything must go! she tells you, wide-

 

Cassandra-eyed, her sagging lower lip

balancing the unlit cigarette she’s had

​

dangling there since June.  She squats, 

hag-Buddha, as commuter traffic whizzes

​

and the bicyclists looking mildly ridiculous

in fluorescent-colored tights confetti by

​

a black lab hunching itself into a tailed 

question mark—also looking mildly ridiculous—

​

and you, chronicler of the momentary

monumental, money up and walk away

​​

as the pink sun strains through the anus of itself,

delivers up another day, thinking, 

​

Yes, Elizabeth Bishop, surely 

some dumb bunny loves us all.

​

Todd Hearon, Exeter---

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​​

Rapids

​

My mother finds beauty in the tropical waterfalls 

of the Hawaiian islands

My sister finds beauty in the pinks and blues 

of the early sunkissed sky.

My best friend finds beauty in the yellow bouquet 

of tulips left on her doorstep.

​

Beauty is subjective, but

Not therefore eliminated

 

I find it in a long deceased January oak,

 

The life it promises soon again.

In the rings of the decomposed birch,

The many years of stories and life it lived.

I find beauty in the rapid movement of a flowing river,

The water splashing against the smooth, 

Stream pebbles 

 

Each drop with a story just as unique as yours.
 

Caroline Henning, Exeter   EHS ‘27 -------

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​​​

Scattering My Aunt’s Ashes

​

My aunt made no decisions at the end.

No final say about her body 

being raised up or burned.  

I wonder if she will be reborn.

​​

Mythology says a peacock’s flesh never decays

and that two peacocks drinking

from a chalice symbolize rebirth.

I wonder if God allows ashes in heaven.

 

Really, all myths and symbols are useless

unless we can steal light from the scattering.  

​

Nancy Jean Hill, Exeter-------------------------

​

​

VACANCY

​​

hunger suits her
radiant emptiness
a tourist
in her own body
she sits
where she is
satisfied
beautiful
and not beautiful

 

Lesley Kimball, Portsmouth-------------------

​​

​

Recipe

​

You take a dozen chocolate bars

And melt them in a pot.

Then add ten scoops of ice cream

(That’s really not a lot.)

​

Throw in a hundred marshmallows—

The number never varies—

But have as many as you like

Of maraschino cherries.

 

Some butterscotch (you pour it in),

And don’t forget the nuts.

Remember first to chop them up—

You mustn’t take shortcuts.

​

J.D. Landis, Exeter--------------​

​

Artificial Intelligence as Jellyfish

​

As the world’s climate changes, the rate of ocean warming is accelerating at an unprecedented rate, sea levels are rising and many ocean species are dying out. However, one species that is not feeling the heat, but is, in fact, thriving in warm waters spurred on by the climate crisis, is the jellyfish. –Earth.org

​

Ligament, parasitic tulip, electric and adrift. 

A colony, its chronology of traces underneath.

​

A sift of hisses, rib with a slight fracture, a calcium 

embryo. Glottal limbo that pulses and preens,

 

fingers at the snow of wounds. Moon between 

branches, bead-spill from weeping fringes, 

 

etched windowpanes, linens pale. Its nocturnal 

blossoms frost, its herons tangle and smoke. 

​

A frail sun grooming itself at the edge of 

a threadbare carpet. Ode to what cannot be touched.

​

Jennifer Militello, Goffstown, Poet Laureate of NH, (from Poetry Wales)

​​

​

Restless

We—are the Birds—that stay.  ~ Emily Dickinson

​

To flee the risk of winter’s grip

genetic imprints urge the wise 

to leave, give winter’s chill the slip

and head for warmer, southern skies.

 

The arctic tern completes this move

on average, twenty thousand miles, 

attains a trans-Atlantic groove 

by stopping on deserted isles.

​

It samples what the isles provide

and what the ocean knows of perks. 

It takes the earth’s arc for a ride. 

For millions like the tern, it works. 

​

And I’ve been known to stay indoors, 

turn up the heat, find reasons for

the need to leave a list of chores

undone, then make a hundred more. 

​

My mind once drove a Buddhist car, 

could meditate, wake up, feel fine—

but still, sometimes it flies as far 

as any distant kin of mine. 

​

Bob Moore, East Kingston----

​

​

The Meadow 

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee ~Emily Dickinson

​

By fall, the goldenrod is rich 

in blooming uncut fields, its yellow-

gold ignites as if a switch 

is flipped. The sweeping greens, the mellow 

grasses stand in contrast, bend

their heads a little wilder, let 

the daylight warm their seeds to end 

up amber, riper, florets set 

above each blade, the low-cut run 

of pasture near the road gives rise

to blooms of chicory-blue with sun-

burst centers, daisies with their eyes

of orange, yellow toadflax wearing 

dragon faces, clover free

to feed a passing bee, their pairing

is a boost to both the sea 

of unseen gases and the dirt

enriched by nodules in the root. 

Their intermingling roles convert 

their needs into a shared pursuit. 

​

Bob Moore, East Kingston-----

​

​

Unlove

​

when unlove enters, do not say thank you. 

do not set another place, 

do not make it a sugar-butter sandwich

 

unlove makes the world stand still.

unlove has no desire 

but that you remain unfulfilled

​

unlove is an act of endless blame 

a disdainful look that becomes a habit

it is grey bread that cannot be swallowed

​

the dull prose of conscious thought

love is the only broom that can sweep unlove 

from the heart’s cobwebby corners

​

Andrew Periale, Strafford-----------------

​​

​​

Brave is a Verb

​

Brave the tundra, where species cling to life.

Brave infusions that chemical a vein.

​

Brave a city blackout with its window-shatter,

and lightning igniting a forest away.

​

Brave scoldings and finger-pointing.

Voices louder than yours. 

 

Brave aloneness.

It is not loneliness.

​​

Brave the horizon of gray. 

Brave the whimper of years. 

​

Brave these trees, first maple, then oak, 

losing their familiars, one by one.

​

Breathe again and again. 

Brave again. 

​

Kyle Potvin, Exeter, First appeared in SWWIM Every Day---

​​

​​

Something That Matters

Golden Shovel After Charles Simic’s There is Nothing Quieter

​​​

The river barely flows today, and other than 

a whirl of pollen that promises to tell the future, calling softly 

think about your life, there is only a falling 

petal or two of summer snow. 

The bees are fussing, 

wise and brutal, over 

each purple pistil, every 

yellow stamen and flake.

Tell me something that matters and 

I will dig my fingernails under the soil, making 

room for more planting, sure

to say a prayer in your name. It 

is humid and you are dying but I won’t 

press a cold cloth to your forehead, afraid to wake 

you, although, in this life, I want to touch someone.

​

Kyle Potvin, Exeter------------------

​

​

After Pruning

 

In this brown pause after the snow has melted,

Before the blunt thrust of bud and bulb,

We have this unhurried stooping along together

To gather the prunings.

 

Ahead, cut branches bristle around the trees;

Behind, the orchard stretches clean as a past

Without great sorrow, a future without surprises,

A well-swept floor.

​

Hour after hour we circle the trees.

Our minds are nowhere, our minds are in our fingers

In the matted grass, the leaf-scraps and bits of bark,

Picking up sticks.

​

Some windless evening, they’ll burn with a frantic crackle

And sting our bare arms with sparks as we feed the flames,

Then die to a scab of ash that will hoard for days

Its red-hot core.

​

But now in this pause after the snow has melted,

Before the blunt thrust of bud and bulb,

We have this unhurried stooping along together

So much like love.

​

Charlie Pratt, Brentwood, 1935-2012---------------

​​​

​​​

The Jar with the Dry Rim

—after a title by Rumi

​​​

It hasn’t always been dry.

Once it had the kiss of a salty lip.

The jar had been opened

in a moment of need.

The design met the desire

of the opener. First, a hand,

damp with sweat and grimy

with garden dirt reached out

thought nothing of future want,

eventual need, swivelled

the metal lid after a brief effort.

The dry tongue and aching lung

tipped the glass jar to the sun

and water was like a meal, elemental,

like breaking the surface of water

after holding a breath for too long.

Now, its rim is dry, a vessel

awaiting the richness of refilling.

​​

Jessica Purdy, Exeter----

​​

QUANTUM NEWS

​​

We’ve all heard too much about Schrodinger’s cat

--you know, the one according to quantum theory

who is half-alive and half dead in a locked room

with a ticking radioactive source and a flask of poison gas.

But no one cares or asks about his dog, a French poodle,

who died in one universe, but is still alive

And refusing to obey his owner’s commands

in infinitely many other worlds.

 

Harvey Shepard, Exeter    1938-2022----

 

Bad Hair Day

​

Loss is part of life, but to

lose

     someone I depended on is just unfair.

Someone I’ve poured my heart                                                                                             out to, at least once a month.

Someone who’s listened, comforted,                                                                             counseled me through trials, 

swapped recipes, offered advice,                                                                                   shared family stories—

even gossiped with me.                                                                                                    So to just up and move away, 

it’s like she died.                        

I am grieving so

badly                                                                                                                                        

for my hairdresser.                                                                                                                I’m a mess!

​​

Rosemary Marshall Staples, Eliot, Maine---

​​

​

Meet Mama Rosa

​

Mama Rosa, also known as Red, wears red all the time and is plump

like her crop. Mama can be a bit seedy, at other times a bit acidic.

She’s well known for tending her night-shade vegetables into evening’s light.

Those tomatoes are world famous, known for their heavenly aroma.

They are meaty and shimmer on the vine, have perfectly round navels,

are incredibly juicy and succulent, their skins taut.

When making sauce, she adds a pinch. Her saltiness makes all the difference.

Her secret ingredient-- we will never know, and she will never tell.

Mama always sings as she works--You say tomato, I say tamahto,

You eat fajitas, I eat fajtoes. You eat tomatoes, I eat tamahtos,

Let’s chop this whole thing up. Mangia, Mangia, Ciao!

 

Rosemary Marshall Staples, Eliot, Maine....

​

​

i had nothing against my hips

 

but most of my female friends

hated theirs. most loathed

everything about themselves.

their legs ran marathons

but weren’t shapely enough.

their butts were too flat or too

scrawny. one had asymmetrical

breasts which she laughed about

too often. but we knew the real

reason she never let a boy

make first base. For me, it was

my mouth with one hand over it,

head down when the cameras

came on. only three school pics

I couldn’t pretend I was sick for.

but my tongue! my tongue was

so sharp it cut through the shame

of an entire childhood, and

an advertising world filled

with skinny, silent, good girls.

it couldn’t be held back

even in those rooms of academia

where the smell was primarily

aftershave. once I listened to

my tongue put a spell on an ex-

husband and spin a path

just for me, clear to my future.

​

S Stephanie, Rollinsford  (After “homage to my hips” by Lucille Clifton) ----

​

​​

The Afterlife 

​

When finally it happened, two faucets

turned themselves on, a warm wave  

passed through me as I stood in the garage  

right before the call with the news, and her  

pictures cycled through the digital picture frame  

like a past life review. Lights in my bedroom 

later flickered and when I asked my mother             

if it was her, if she was there, they went out. 

 

Let me explain. The plumber came 

and left a bill on my kitchen table while I was at work, 

the window unit air conditioner was overloading a circuit,

I’d just taken a long drag on a cigarette in the garage 

for the first time in six years and it gave me a rush

so strong that made me almost sick. 

But there’s no answer to the digital frame. 

In her room I’d surrounded her with life,

ferns, pothos, and calathea to survive low light.

I brought her jewelry from home, a black onyx ring,

a fake ruby pendant. The brass elephant collection,

a ceramic bird my brother made when he was eight.

I filled her room with things needed for the next life

like the ancients did an important tomb.                    

​

My mother lay prone and unconscious near the end, next

to a window, last October’s flies between the sill and screen,

her skin growing white from morphine and Ativan: 

one body tethered to this world by sound, the other

an ice ship beginning to move its oars again.

​

Bill Varner, South Berwick, Maine----

​​

​​

Antlers of July 

​

The Japanese Maple waves its droplets at me, magenta gentle

like a necklace of cubic zirconia — this June that only rained 

Been staring at the words “diamond simulates” & wondering why diamonds need stimulating 

​

Falling backwards, smoker’s beige siding focuses in and out 

Been reading a novel about such things, but we’re thinking differently about falling

There’s a downward spiral we don’t find ourselves out of—

Does it ever get better outside of fiction?

 

I read about the buck moon in Capricorn, new beginnings and all that.  

But its top half was laced in clouds, obscuring its pale disk 

 

The smokestack of the water treatment plant emits a heart-shaped puff as I drive by,

as if to mock me, racing fireworks another year. 

I don’t need to have my fortune told 

But what is the opposite of fireworks?

​

The screen tells me the severity is unknown, the urgency is unknown

Stopping mid-sidewalk to take in cerulean dandelions, fuchsia centers 

champagne sparklers — everyone should have a sparkler on their birthday 

 

The smoke returns to columns, sulfur, and skunk.

 

Brittany Wason, Rye---

​​

​

morning poem

 

Every morning I wake up

surprised at how old I am--

a marvel that deepens

as age advances and

my numerical life becomes

an opaque contraction.

Is the present all we have

in any case? The present itself

is endlessly inconstant: On

one day I want to see

birds or friends, another

to read, a third to go back

to sleep, sluggish in the face

of the newest number.

So many have gone before.

Still, today on a broad flat rock

in the early sunlight

I was reading about dragonflies,

and a small blue one lit

on the base of my thumb, my

wordless thumb.

​

David Weber, 1943-2023

Founding member, Exeter LitFest

---

​

Every poem I write for my father is called twilight

 

Clouds make shadows on the mountains.

I walk through their green darkness.  I want 

a wind to silence thought, a storm to drown 

out prayer, electric stillness, the promise 

of breaking. You can walk three days

into woods and not find a single birch

​

worth a canoe. I know. I have done it.

I have loved slender saplings peeled white

and mourned for their cracking death

in ice. You never trusted your canvas

to my hands, never taught me the courage

 

of rapids. But I learned to read cocoons

and the wings of beetles, spider silk

and the veins of fern. I can follow bear 

spoor studded with blackberry seed, 

walk through thorns and not care if my legs 

 

are bloodied. I have knelt on bruised knees, 

mouth to rough water, asked the snake 

to rattle your path from his one rock.

I want to remember dawn. I will listen for 

the hawk to fold his wings. 

 

Kelley Jean White, Philadelphia via Gilford ---

 

Not Mimi

 

The man on the bobsled is faced

upward, his body tucked

into a tiny space.

I cannot make out his eyes,

nor the color of his hair,

but the handwriting on the back

of the curling photograph

is my husband’s. Illegible, compact

and to the point:

Not Mimi.

Funny how he made sure

that I would not get credit

for this small

reckless flight

hurtling

through winter’s arctic air.

I am the photographer

of such abandon,

witnessed again years later

while rummaging through books.

There it fell; that day, that one moment --

my love zooming toward the finish line

in a cradle of paper not dated.

​

Mimi White, Exeter---

​

​

When Lavender In Bloom 

 

Dogs ought not

but they do

die living

with abandon,

faithful as monks

who fill the Abbey 

with light

that seeks 

stone chinks

and is gone

as if nothing

had been song.

Dog’s gone, too,

so lavender in bloom

must do.

 

Mimi White, Exeter---

​

​

​

MYCORRHIZAL

​

It wasn’t like the sun

warming the water or

the wind shimmering pine

boughs, shaking their small cones

over the ground. It wasn’t

like a hand on your shoulder,

a chair readied for you

or the consoling rootedness

of growing older. It was

never the shadow of clouds

rolling over the far shore

forest or the anchor of laughter

dropping through birch leaves––

not the loon diving

for salmon nor the salmon

roe nested into the streambed.

It was your welcome, father,

after an absence, like phosphorous

steeped into roots, truffles

grown bulbous from spring rain, iron

from bound soil, sunlight traded

for nitrogen. I’d give up

anything to hear your voice again.

​

Chelsea Woodard, Exeter

​