All tagged 2021

The Red Rose Girls

Artists who lived together, first at the Red Rose Inn in Villanova and later in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania, and who vowed to stay together their whole lives – though Green married at age 40 and left the ménage. Each achieved acclaim in the early 1900s, Smith and Green as illustrators, Oakley as muralist. For more information, consult – as I did – Alice A. Carter’s The Red Rose Girls: An Uncommon Story of Art and Love, 2000.

The Keys

Somehow I’ve always planned to visit you
in whatever is your off season, to wander
your back ways and appreciate sea level,
where I have lingered but never lived.

Coffee

I used to keep fresh beans around
and grind them on demand.
But not for me: I’m bigger on tea.

Here, parked with the hard cider:
a can and a bottle of pre-made brew,
cold pour and so on. What was I
thinking in late summer?
Dreaming of guests who never came.

Meadows

First remember and enter the meadow, then follow the blaze of color
Medwo, metwa, to cut down, a mown field
Meadowlary, meadowy shadow
To flower is to be vigorous, prosper and thrive
Plant, bud, adorn, cover with flowers, blossom

Mask

I made my mask of many charmed doors
Of sunlight and folded song
Fomentations of linden
Of night, of silence dipped
A subtle concentration
As lilacs contemplate opening
Lids extend, down, dawn