I wrote the following poem three months ago, when ICE was terrorizing the good people of Minneapolis. The news reports and videos were quite shocking — I couldn’t believe this was happening in Minnesota. My cousin Elizabeth lived there for many years before her death from a rare form of cancer. She lived most of her life in the upper Midwest, and she epitomized “Minnesota nice.” I shared the poem with her sister, so I can now share it on this site.
Her Little Home in Minneapolis, January 7, 2026 for Elizabeth Meylor, 1953 – 2023
My cousin lived among you, on Zenith Ave in a little house surrounded by flower beds and filled with her music, stacks of library books and contented cats.
And I mourn for her today, dead more than two years, because, like you— her adopted city— Elizabeth was “Minnesota nice” and tough and deep-rooted like her sunflowers and prairie ancestors.
As you grieve another one of yours, a wife, a mother, amid the specter of George Floyd and nightmares of your twin’s fiery streets, I reread my last letter from Elizabeth, written in elegant cursive, about nieces and nephews she adored, treatments coming to an end, moments collected, grace welcomed.
If she still lived among you, she would pull on her snow boots and blow her whistle and leave a light on all night in her little house to give shelter to her neighbors.
And no doubt, she would echo your mayor’s order in her heroic librarian voice: “Get the fuck out of Minneapolis!”
Thank you to The Heartland Review for publishing two of my poems in their latest 2026 publication. It’s sometimes months before you hear back from a journal, and this time they all got back to me about the same time. So it’s been fun to get the journals in the mail. This journal is well done, and it includes poetry, art, short stories and nonfiction articles, so there’s a lot of variety. Nice communication with the editor too!
Kindness, 1986
It is 3 a.m. in an emptied Iowa airport. Our plane has ricocheted across the Midwest in attempts to find safe passage around lightning strikes, hail and never- ending tempests.
The balding farmer picks up my bag “You’re coming home with us,” he says. His wife, who reaches to lift my daughter from my arms, adds, “Of course you are.”
I have already called nearby hotels— every room is taken for a baseball tournament. But these two, who sat next to us on the plane, know I have come home to surprise my dad for his sixtieth birthday.
So, despite my protests, despite gut fears spinning inside me, despite distance that took root in city life on the East Coast, I follow the couple like a cow with her calf. It is another hour to their farm.
I awake in late morning in bed with my daughter to find coffee, pancakes and bacon in the kitchen. From the porch, I see the woman picking tomatoes in her garden. The man, now in overalls, carries a basket of sweet corn.
This is when the dry knot in my throat lets go. I know this life—both making do and doing for others. I call out the door to say I will call my dad. The man says, “No, we’ll drive you home.” “You want to surprise him,” she says.
Today, I am older than my father who met us outside a farmhouse that fell in on itself years ago. My daughter is a mother. Kindness still keeps me whole. And the couple is buried in a country cemetery, where the wind blows and blows.
Geography Lesson
In the dead of winter, our teacher assigned my fifth-grade class to memorize the fifty state capitals in alphabetical order.
Every Friday we lined up next to our desks as each of us recited faraway cities, from Montgomery, Alabama,
to Cheyenne, Wyoming, labeled on the map in our geography books. Mrs. Wright marked our mistakes
on a chart with big red checks as we rooted for our friends and feared our fallible memories.
By late February the brightest chanted all fifty and sat down. In early March four rows of students
had stars after their names, while a handful still struggled to get past Providence, Rhode Island.
By late April only shy Eloise Borden stood alone as she confused Columbus, Ohio, and Columbia, South Carolina.
We watched Mrs. Wright slash another X after Eloise’s name and learned to remain silent, to look away when Eloise stood up.
I don’t remember if the girl ever recited all fifty state capitals, but I do recall waitressing with Eloise at the town cafe
my senior year, and how I never saw her except at work, where we played cards and fed the jukebox on quiet afternoons.
How Mrs. Wright came in and sat alone at the counter after her husband died. And how Eloise memorized her order:
coffee with two sugars, a well-done hamburger on a toasted bun with sour pickle chips, and cherry pie with vanilla ice cream.
How Mrs. Wright looked away whenever Eloise warmed her coffee, while I pretended to be busy in the kitchen.
And how Eloise took off when she turned eighteen, headed to a far-off city marked with a gold star on the map in her car.
Thank you for visiting. I hope you’ll share your poetry with me!
I’ve lived in Connecticut for a little over eight years now, after having lived more than 30 years in Rhode Island and exploring almost every inch of that tiny, quirky state. Today, I still have no clue where most cities are located in Connecticut, and I have to GPS them all the time only to realize I’m more than two hours away from a good chunk of them.
With that said, I love living where I do — still close enough to Rhode Island, close to the beaches, right off I-95, and close to my grandchildren. I recently had a poem selected for an anthology of poems about Connecticut, and it just came in the mail this weekend! The Nutmeg Anthology: Contemporary Poems of Connecticut, edited by Ginny Lowe Connors, includes 78 poems that look at the state from all different angles: from special memories of the past, historical figures and places, and the ever-present land, water, and weather.
My poem, “For Those Who Must” is dedicated to the staff at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, where I worked part-time for five years. I remember wanting to work part-time in a bookstore or an art museum when I retired, so I got my wish! I enjoyed working at the front desk, where I talked to visitors two days a week because everyone who walked in the door wanted to be there — and I learned so much about art and artists.
My thanks to Ginny Connors and Grayson Books for including my poem. The cover art is beautiful, and I’ve enjoyed the variety of poems and learning more about my adopted state.
For Those Who Must For the staff at the Ly man Allyn Art Museum, New London, CT
I have watched an artist hang her canvases with breathless care—unswaddling her work like infants from family quilts—but who attended her own opening with reluctant dread.
I have listened to daughters tell stories of their artist mother, whose paintings once hung in their childhood home, and how they cried upon seeing her art on a gallery wall for the first time.
I have gazed through a magnifying glass to focus on ink strokes as fine as cilia in miniatures painted by eighteenth century sisters, one of whom went blind after years of plying her trade.
I have interrogated a roomful of abstracts that smash and trash and rehash boxed conventions of beauty and truth while standing in awe of countless hues of blue.
I have searched newsclips about a 22-year-old artist who jumped off a train in New London, where she gave drawing lessons to the city’s children and collected their coins to feed her passion.
I, too, have tasted an artist’s need to create— it is the dark pit that sprouts into tender vines despite row upon row of infertile fields. is the must that burdens us—and unburdens us.
The Nutmeg Anthology: Contemporary Poems of Connecticut, Grayson Books, 2026
I wrote this poem a few years ago based on a prompt for a exhibition of Saturday Evening Post covers by Norman Rockwell at the Mystic Museum of Art (CT). I chose a cover of an old woman sitting in an airline seat in 1938, when flights across country were just beginning. I loved the excitement on her face and her fearless energy to experience something new. It reminded me to keep on checking off items on my bucket list as long as I can. 🙂
The poem is not a memory of mine, other than the fact that the library in my small Iowa town was named after to a rich woman named Gund who set aside money for a library. I also remember going down to to the city hall basement on Main Street to take out books. Oh, and my grandma had a sister who lived in California named Esther. Otherwise, the woman is totally made up — it was fun to do.
The poem found a home in the winter/spring 2026 issue of the Naugatuck River Review. Although it didn’t take a top place in the contest, the poem was a finalist — and I am quite grateful for that. I’ve had a few other poems published recently, but it’s been several years since I’ve regularly sent out poems for publication. I’m also so grateful for my Sunday evening poetry workshop organized by the Connecticut Poetry Society. I’ve received some solid feedback and enjoyed commenting on and learning from other poets’ work. I’ve shared the poem and a crop of the cover below.
“After midnight, the moon set, and I was alone with the stars.” —Amelia Earhart
The Tale of Our Town Librarian
Grandma liked to retell this story whenever she took us to the M.E. Gund Library in town. About how, back in 1938, the librarian tacked a map of North America to the adult fiction stacks housed in the musty city hall basement.
And how Miss Lizzy, who never spoke above a whisper, plotted the course of her 18-hour Transcontinental & Western flight from Boston to Los Angeles with three stops in between, come June.
The spinster’s journey would begin in our New Hampshire village and roll to a stop under palm trees in Pasadena, California, where her sister Esther worked as a hairdresser to the Hollywood stars.
The town was in a tizzy. What had gotten into Miss Lizzy? Not even our banker and his wife had flown on a commercial aircraft. Why, the search for Amelia Earhart was still front-page news. And, honestly, how could a town employee afford a roundtrip ticket?
Miss Lizzy was never one to chitchat. She simply crossed out each day on her 1938 calendar until she reached June 5. Then she passed her leather valise to a Greyhound bus driver and ascended the first flight of steps that winged her cross-country.
Six months later, after Miss Earhart had been declared lost at sea, our mayor received a letter from Esther, who said Miss Lizzy had died while gazing at the stars. She had gifted her bungalow and all it contained to our town.
When our council members unlocked Miss Lizzy’s front door, they found news clippings about Miss Amelia and Lindbergh. Her prim bedroom was papered with maps marked with shiny stars next to exotic locales like Athens, Bangkok, Calcutta, and Baghdad.
On to her nightstand, they found a note in flowing cursive: If you are reading this, it means I am gone. Know I feared nothing except the thought of dying without ever touching the stars. If you are reading this, it means I did just that.
P.S. Please use my family inheritance to build our town a real library where my home now stands. Her looping signature—Mary Elizabeth Gund— circled and soared across the bottom of the check.
Thank you for stopping by! Let me know you were here!
I don’t know what happened — I guess, quite simply, life happened.
It’s been more than two years since I last posted. It seemed I couldn’t get onto the site the few times I tried. But I’m back now, and I need to brush up on the new tools and layout designs. Anyway, I’m hoping to write more here — and post some newly published poems in this new year. How quickly the years roll on now!
I still live in Connecticut along Long Island Sound. When the windows are open in the summer, I can hear the Amtrak trains heading out of New London; tractor trailers on I-95, the major conduit along the entire Eastern U.S.; and the fog horns on the coast. New London is home to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy on one side of the Thames River and the U.S. Navy is on the Groton side. I have yet to see a submarine glide up or down the river on its way back home or out to wherever, but I always look for one when I’m walking at Avery Point.
My last post, in 2023, described my visit to Italy with Christopher Blake, where we visited Florence, Rome and the Amalfi Coast — absolutely gorgeous! Since then, we went back to Italy last summer for the wedding of Chris’s nephew in Tuscany, and on to Milan and Lake Como. Again, can’t say enough about the people, places and food. Such a memorable experience!
This summer we are going to Paris — my first time. Everyone keeps telling me how much I’m going to love it. I know, I know! It’s all booked and now we just wait. I keep thinking that I’m going to learn some conversational French. Maybe. I took two semesters of French in college ages ago — and was horrible at it. Maybe I’ll just smile a lot and say merci.
I met Chris four years ago on an online dating site (after quitting one site and trying another), and as of September, we are now living together. He is a kind and thoughtful man, who loves the same things I do. He also writes and belongs to a writer’s group in Westerly, RI, where he used to live. He was a reporter for years in Connecticut and now teaches journalism courses at one of the state colleges. He held on to a great group of friends from his college days at the University of Rhode Island and his reporter days — and I’ve enjoyed getting to know them.
Well, that’s enough to catch you up. Now for some photos and poetry and book reviews. All the things I love to share. I’m not sure who’s still active on WordPress. I used to have a solid group of readers, but I’m sure that has changed too. I looked into Substack, but I need to learn more. I hope some choose to pop in every once in a while, but maybe this site is more for me than anyone — an audience of one.
Take care out there — if you need to take a breath, come on in. That’s why I’m here.
Taking a quick break from my posts on Italy to share a special afternoon of poetry organized by Notable Works Publications and the Audubon Society of Rhode Island. My poem, “Here on Earth” was published in a collection of poetry that speaks to the connection between the human and natural worlds.
I took part in a reading on June 11 at the Audubon Society of Rhode Island’s beautiful wildlife refuge in Bristol. This was very special to me because it gave me a chance to visit the East Bay Bike Path, which is right off the refuge, and where I biked for years when I lived in East Providence.
Shhh! Mother Earth cradles kids on a street corner in Rio de Janeiro, in a tent made of cattle hides in Kenya, in a room where corn is stored in Nepal, on a mat with 21 other orphans in Thailand, outdoors on a piece of carpet in the West Bank, in a bed shaped like Cinderella’s coach in Kentucky.
Shhh! Mother Earth sings a lullaby to Roathy, asleep on old tires in Phnom Penh, to Ahkôhxet, whose Amazon tribe worships the sun, to Juan David in Medellin, dreaming of life in America, to Lamine, bone-tired from harvesting maize in Senegal, to Alyssa, in a shack heated by a wood stove in Appalachia. to a Romanian boy, counting stars on a mattress near Rome.
Shhh! Mother Earth cries alone for landfills that seep lethal black liquid, for mountain quarries stripped night and day, for skies seething with smog and city high-rises, for once green fields pockmarked by bomb blasts, for human-made quotas and hate-filled boundaries, for a vanishing tribe that still reveres nature, here on earth.
One more day, I said yesterday.
Tomorrow I will proudly pick two perfect tomatoes,
the largest my 10×10 garden has produced
during my first year in this community space,
surrounded by people who give advice,
water my vines while I’m away
and remind me to lock the gate.
Today, I walked past wild vines
taking over Connecticut soil and stopped short.
My two perfect tomatoes were gone.
The space they occupied yesterday
stripped clean as if they never existed.
A thief had bent over my chicken wire fence
and plucked my perfect pleasure.
I blamed myself for not picking them earlier.
Those huge red orbs taunted anyone who came near.
Maybe they thought I was away, that the fruit would rot,
Maybe it was a stranger who jumped the fence.
Maybe it was simply someone who had bacon and lettuce,
but no sun-ripened, summer-kissed Big Boys.
I forgive you, I whispered.
Between Land and Sky 