Equinox

Tomorrow, marigolds alone will keep
in silver gardens. Red pines will bequeath
plump sporophylls to fill the Christmas wreath,
as Cortland windfalls swell the cider heap.
Tomorrow, geese turn southward, while below,
the woodchuck girds for winter sleep. My field,
but fallow, will leave furrows unconcealed;
my lusty stream will seal beneath the snow.
Tomorrow. Nature’s moratorium.
So now, when sun and moon bisect the sky,
I dance, regardful of the hours gone by;
I dance, regardless of the hours to come.
And though my feet shall bleed in this ballet,
a barefoot girl, I dance, dance, dance today.

Artist’s Statement

I ’ve been writing poems since the age of 11 or 12. Being the eldest of seven children, it wasn’t easy to find a quiet place I could call my own. And so I braved the attic’s stifling summer heat and bone-chilling winter cold, commandeered an old desk and chair, painted a little poster declaring Sandburg’s “Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits” (complete with a terrible sketch of a hyacinth and a Pillsbury biscuit), tacked it on the wall, and began my career as a poet. My first “published” poem was about the autumn, and it appeared in my high school magazine in 1964.

Of course, life has a way of getting in the way of quixotic dreams. I took the roads most traveled by and became Someone Else. But the Muse was always there, prodding me on, asking me when I would lend her an ear. I wrote lots of “occasional verse” for the family over the years—Christmas poems, poems for weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, and the like. I also wrote lots of metrical poetry (I am unable to write free verse) but knew it wouldn’t get published anywhere, and after a few feeble and unsuccessful attempts at submissions, I destroyed all of it and wrote nothing for twenty years.

Then, in 2004, I realized it was either now or never. I was 53 years old. The children were grown (in fact I already had three granddaughters!) and I had more free time to dedicate to my “vocation.” “Equinox” was the first poem I wrote at that time. Ironically, and perhaps subconsciously, it was, like my very first published poem, about autumn. I submitted it to The Lyric, along with another poem, “Franconia,” about Robert Frost’s New Hampshire home. Both were accepted and published. Since then, with the help of my dear fellow poets on the Eratosphere and the Poet and Critic online workshops, as well as the private encouragement of several outstanding formal poets, I’ve been trying my best to “make hay while the sun shines.”