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Age brings me closer to Oz,
so oil me up with ibuprofen
against the stiffness and rust of years
where muscle aches measure days
as fatigue corrodes desire.
Love given by friends lubricates time,
grows the heart, spawns
an afterlife in living hearts
lest the soul predecease the body
since tin does not rust.
Joyfully I move toward the emerald
glow, horizon of dreams
where I might trip over a rainbow.
Eagerly I’ll pull back the curtain
and find whatever is to be found.
A Pressing Discovery
At noon on January 20, 2021, as President-elect Biden takes the oath of office, I will mark the moment with a few slices of locally sourced cheese as I watch the televised ceremony. It’s not just that the commander-in-chief might be called “the big cheese,” that politics is a cheesy business, or that frequently photographed new presidents tend to smile as if saying the obligatory word as their image is snapped. Rather, my snack choice is less about symbolism than homage to historical precedent. Ever since the election of Thomas Jefferson in 1802, few foods have received such chief executive notoriety.
I stumbled on this confluence of cheddar and history while on a summer trip to the Berkshires of Massachusetts that featured visits to contemporary art museum MASS MoCA in North Adams and a baseball game at Pittsfield’s venerable Waconah Park. Traveling north on Route 8, my wife Mary and I pulled into the small community of Cheshire in hopes of finding a cup of coffee. Across from the post office on a sliver of grass at the corner of Church and School Streets an unusual monument caught my eye. I couldn’t resist. With a quick turn of the wheel, I abruptly pulled over.
Shaded beneath maples and flanked by a couple park benches was what looked like a large, old fashioned hand-turned cider press. Somewhat boxy and fabricated of weathered concrete, what it lacked in elegance and beauty it made up for in unusual and curious materials and design. Affixed to the front was a bronze plaque bearing a bas relief of a stern gentlemen attired in the fashion of the early nineteenth century. Below was an inscription rendered a bit difficult to read from blue-green drips of corrosion. The text explained that the monument, placed in 1940 by the Sons of the American Revolution, was in the form of a cheese press.
The plaque depicted Elder John Leland, described as an “eloquent preacher, beloved pastor, and influential patriot” who “despite opposition of every other pulpit in Massachusetts, carried every vote in Cheshire” for Thomas Jefferson. On New Year’s Day 1802, in the East Room of the White House where foreign diplomats, members of the supreme court, and congressmen had gathered, Leland presented the new president with “the Big Cheshire Cheese weighing 1,255 lbs.”
Continue reading "Hail to the Cheese: A Presidential Snack for Inaguration Day" »
A long period of hospitalization and convalescence
following a spinal operation in October, 1954,
gave me my first opportunity to do the reading
and research necessary for this project.
John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage
Worn down, scolded by a nagging back,
I ask what the Carolina Rocker can do for me.
Embraced in steam-bent oak and woven rattan,
I find the angle of incline and the seesaw
swing and sway eases my ache.
It’s a brisk sit, like walking while seated.
At my mom’s skirt hem to the thump and hiss
of her ironing, Kennedy sparred with Nixon
in jittery black-and-white. A few years later,
a shot in Dallas sent me home from school.
I saw Oswald murdered live on television
and John-John salute a flag covered casket.
I could rock endlessly in a chair that sweetened
the president’s suffering. Rhythmic
motion stirs both memory and legs, pain
fires time’s essence, saturates the moment
with necessity, just as distance provokes
our reach beyond profiles to full-frontal courage.
Poet, novelist, and biographer Jay Parini, a professor at Middlebury College, writes that "David K. Leff coined the term 'deep travel,' and I like this." He goes on to say: "Having traveled deeply in Middlebury during the pandemic, I hope I've learned something I can take with my [sic] on my next adventure abroad. The skills of 'deep travel' may come in handy."
To read Parini's entire CNN opinion piece go to: https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/06/opinions/after-covid-time-to-travel-parini/index.html
Join me as I help host a series of virtual Earth Day poetry events sponsored by Connecticut Poet Laureate Margaret Gibson and the White Memorial Conservation Center in Litchfield, celebrating the Earth in a time of climate crisis. Introduced by me and the Center's Gerri Griswold, this series of videos features readings by a dozen poets, myself included, who appear in the nature and environmental poetry anthology Waking Up to the Earth, edited by Gibson and available from Grayson Books at:http://graysonbooks.com/waking-up-to-the-earth.html
The videos not only include Earth Day readings by anthology poets, but a talk by Gibson on nature poetry in a time of climate crisis, and readings from the summer of 2020 performed outdoors among the beautiful 4,000-plus acres of forests, swamps and fields of the Conservation Center. For more information about Conservation Center trails, programs and the diverse species of birds and other wildlife found on its grounds go to: https://whitememorialcc.org/
To view the program click Poetry For a Greener World - Celebrating Earth Day 2021
Read a little about my life in poetry and sample a few poems in this fine piece written and edited by Ginny Lowe Connors, former poet laureate of West Hartford. "The poems Leff writes are about relationships:" she states, "between and among people, with the natural world, and with a greater spiritual power."
To read Click HERE.
