TRIP
upstate
years ago
boating memory
balancing on a wave
crossing Lake Superior
“nearly capsized that frightful day”
The colors of the dying summer. The nature's splendid farewell
They're orange, red and vivid yellow. The fall rings loud chroma bell
Gold, crimson, ruby, lemon, amber. The most glamorous palette
Unhurried drive. Upstate New York. And beauty I wouldn't soon forget
October 29, 2020
New York, USA
(c) 2020
Nightbird croons at me again, again
beneath a sheet of clouds,
like cozy pillow to my moon
to tuck my ruffled mind away...
Through drizzle's fading glint and flow
I muse about my man's upstate ride
quite distant , quite stretched the miies
as evening floats in decibels of gust,
rivering in tuneful pitter-patter of ticks.
~°~
Winds brush gently... outside my sill,
that between teapot and lamp’s flicker
slow gush of trickling dew rolls away---
The phone rings in a hush-a-bye,
chiming low, his voice drones to sigh
like tangy breeze on moistened flight
telling me ...my face outshines
all nightstar beaming,
that he called to simply say
he loved me more fearless in the rain.
First Place
You and I
Were once two trees–
Two budding saplings
Placed too close
To grow together
An Upstate transplant,
My midwestern limbs,
Opened wide to hold you,
Casting too much shade
On your bright canopy
Your restless, nascent roots
Still longed to wind and stretch
Beyond my sturdy trunk,
And deeply drink
From cooler earth
And so we said goodbye,
Shedding our early leaves,
As I was suddenly uprooted,
And carried west
To my native range
Countless signals fired and died
From our maturing foliage,
As we battled blizzards, bugs, and blights
Growing taller and stronger
With each passing year
But as the seasons came and went,
And we both grew apart,
We kept the warmth
Of a sun once shared
Etched forever in our bark
Until one day we were tall enough
To see each other from miles away,
And felt the pull of an old apricity,
Willing our boughs to reunite,
And share the forest together.
Shimmering in a chilly mist,
skyscrapers overlooking NYC.
August left into September's cooler mornings,
schoolchildren dressed in plaid and Hush Puppies.
In Central Park the leaves are a green-yellow,
squirrels scurry to store acorns.
Pretzel vendors appear as joggers feel
relieved from humidity,
in autumnal New York.
Driving headed north,
Upstate farms yield cider,
and the Catskills and Adirondack mountains
are banners of emerging colors.
Deer gather from the edge of the woodland
to drink from a pond as the fading moon sails,
in autumnal New York.
Years ago my siblings and I in our Long Island
suburban yard,
leapt into golden and red maple leaf piles,
and ate candy apples-
How much simpler and joyful our lives
were then,
in autumnal New York,
I wish I were still in,
autumnal New York. ~
Up in long bands of gray and white
angry clouds are whirling,
fingers stretch downwards to the ground,
faint traces of swirling.
the farmer sees it and suspects
what nature is unfurling.
Glad at least it came in the day,
not stole in come evening,
he locks the barn and heads downstairs,
in basement remaining.
The air moans loudly when it starts,
vortex boldly roaring,
snaps tree-trunks off like they’re matchsticks,
Sends the branches soaring.
Birds fly off in a panicked flock,
much too scared for crowing,
the wheat flexes, and flattens low,
disturbed from its growing.
A mad chaos, its motion blurred
by the rush of spinning,
if any storm-chasers lived here,
you know they’d be grinning.
But alas, this is not the plains,
with their F-5s looming,
oh no, this is upstate New York,
and those hills aren’t moving.
The block the flow, they interrupt,
winds are quickly fading,
it barely lasted three minutes,
the dark whorl abating.
I like my vegetable women raw, raw, raw
This was sung by the local lah-dee-dah
He is a jokester from upstate near McCaw
We did not know if he meant “rah rah rah”
Or did he mean rather “raw raw raw”.
The vegetable women rolled their eyes.
They were unhappy for sure, no big surprise.
One was a cabbage woman full of ants and flies.
She had lots of ideas, but many were not wise.
Never liked the lah-dee-dah she said to the sunrise.
Gagged by the navy neck-tie crowned upon him by the last soldier, the businessman precariously waltzes the death march down into “Sam’s Greens and Grains”, a specialty salad shop that locally sources lettuce from Upstate and everything else from a Houston retailer – an obvious choice for a death row meal…yum…plastic forks taint the flavorful bites into an experience similar to the lighting in the daytime dwellers dungeon – harsh, catalytic and monotonous but yet another day passes through the consciousness of the unlucky ones, flickering a spark of ambition to do something, be someone or feel a step above content however with no wick to ignite, the wind takes ahold of the spark and shuns it reminding him to resume the nightmare of day-to-day livelihood of spreadsheets, unintelligent jargon and empty coffee mugs
eh maybe tomorrow we’ll try Chipotle for lunch
I like my vegetable women raw, raw, raw
This was sung by the local lah-dee-dah
He is a jokester from upstate near McCaw
We did not know if he meant “rah rah rah”
Or did he mean rather “raw raw raw”.
The vegetable women rolled their eyes.
They were unhappy for sure, no big surprise.
One was a cabbage woman full of ants and flies.
She had lots of ideas, but many were not wise.
Never liked the lah-dee-dah she said to the sunrise.
My father lent his car to me,
My driving skills brand-new,
To take a weekend trip with friends,
Which I was shocked he’d do.
We went upstate and stopped for gas
Where we were most surprised
To find the pumps for serve-yourself
Were cleverly devised.
We laughed and posed for pictures
At this novel fill-up way.
Though that was fifty years ago,
I thought of it today.
At Michael’s crafting store, with not
A cashier to be found,
I used the self-check kiosks,
Noting how things come around.
What once was such a novelty’s
Become the way things are.
In future years, there also won’t be
Gas for any car.
RISKING REPUTATIONS (written in Samantha's invented form, a poetic trinitas)
Lipstick smears,
Pillows stain.
Lack of forethought?
Surprising tears –
A cleansing rain.
Noah knew
What was coming –
A boat
Comes in handy in storms,
but
A captain,
Wishing to avoid an iceberg
Must think ahead.
Still, it can’t always save
A reputation from its fate.
---
Samantha Terrell is an internationally published American poet whose work has received five-star reviews. In 2021, she earned First Honorable Mention in the "Anita McAndrews Poets for Human Rights Awards" organized by Poets Without Borders. Her book, Things Worth Repeating?, features her invented form - the poetic trinitas. Terrell and her family reside in upstate New York.
WHERE I AM!
“Where am I?” I ask,
an aging citizen in a small cold place
in Upstate New York
…..but my fellow citizens
in the suburban towns have
given up on my City and its
proud but struggling peoples,
they want to slink in and work
then flee as fast as the Interstates
will allow….but I want to live
in a work of art in progress,
participate in the unfolding of
faith, opportunity, good work
rewarded not only with money,
property and the pursuit of
happiness, but with the spiritual
fulfillment of taking care of
one another……..
Yesterday, the afternoon high was nine degrees,
it was bright and sunny, I shoveled the snow, said
a prayer of thanksgiving for the place where I
live, knowing my wife was waiting
inside, knowing I was blessed and
always have been!
A crude young fellow from upstate New York
He never learned to handle a fork
He jabbed at his food
In fact, he was quite rude
And he behaved like a back country dork.
Written May 29, 2022
10/10/6/6/10
THE VISIT
Our son has flown west
to visit his sister
Left the steel-gray landscape
of a snowy Thanksgiving in
Upstate New York for the hazel
brown mountains above the
sunny Rio Grande in distant
New Mexico
There the capricious testosterone
of his sister’s new man and
their eight-year-old son
orbit closely like moons around
her shining bright energy, tugging
at her moods that migrate like the
weather, often raging like storms
that are cyclonic and elliptical
on the surface of her spirit
in the shadows of
her soul
Special though they are
our son is her brother, a primeval
connection like interstellar light
and for two and a half days he will
circle my daughter like the rings
around a planet, reflecting frequencies
of light in the facets of his being, and
embracing with his colors, make her
radiant and pretty, a diamond in the
sky, distinctive in the family
of the sun
HIGH SUMMER
End of July
The ridges, moraines,
mountains and valleys,
the meadows and farms of
Upstate New York are a living
mosaic of yellows and tans, vermilions
and browns framed by the forests of deep
Lincoln green which, a month beyond
solstice, mark the halcyon days of the high
tide of summer, when Great Lakes and
Finger Lakes and lakes in between all
shimmer with color and the bees in my
garden all hover like helicopters brimming
with cargo for constructing a base in some
foreign war zone where the color of summer
is a deep reddish-brown, staining the sands
and the streets of their cities with
bloodshed and sorrow
But my good wife and I,
bathed by the sunshine and glad
for our lives, even in an era consistently
subject to car-bombs and lies, listen to the
murmur of a bountiful season, hear it
humming and chanting like the gathering
voices of wind-song and women singing their
devotion to the whispering rhythms of sunlight
and soil, their songs of thanksgiving
pulsating softly, like a new baby’s heart,
like the generous breezes of
a new mother’s breath
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