Tag Archives: Leslie Schultz photography and poetry

April 29, 2018 NaPoWriMo Challenge Poem: “Winged Mystery”

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Mercury Dime in Salt Cellar

Winged Mystery
for my father

Not long before you passed over,
I telephoned. I’d been posting
an airmail letter and received, in change,
a Mercury dime—silver, incredible.

Minted before the time
you gained your paper route,
this coin had slipped out of its era
into our age of base metal.

Father, passionate numismatist,
we used to use your flip-up loupe
to examine mint marks
on Standing Liberty, count

kernals of grain on wheat pennies,
marvel at the engraver’s banner
over the dollar bill’s Divine Eye:
ANNUIT COEPTIS.
 
I profited by your sight and insight.
Can it be chance that this disk
of Mercury, guider of souls,
came into my hand with his winged helmet

just before your departure,
before it again disappeared, and you stole
away, quicker than the silvery moon
slips through a slot in the clouds,

or a coin drops through a dark crack
in the floorboards? No obol under
your tongue, you were tendered to flame.
Now your name is new-minted in song.

Leslie Schultz

My father’s love of coin collecting was ignited when he had a paper route in the 1940s. He introduced me to the legend of the Mercury dime (a coin which I saw in his collection but never found still in circulation). About this time two years ago, I wrote another poem based on my dad’s interest in coins, titled “The Value of Pennies.”

In the course of writing this poem, which was based on a true incident from the fall of 2003, I learned that the coin (1916 to 1945) does not (as its common name asserts) depict a Mercury but rather Young Liberty, a goddess. Further, it is believed that the model for it was Elsie Stevens, wife of the great American poet. Wallace Stevens. More to ponder…

Thank you for your company this month–just one more day and poem to go!

May you find a lucky penny today–Leslie

Squirrel with Mercury Dimes, Roosevelt Dime, and Liberty Head Dollar

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April 28, 2018 NaPoWriMo Challenge Poem: “Onion Garden”

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Onion Garden
for my friend

This winter, a small miracle,
the ordinary kind yet no less
arresting.

It’s been a season
of unwinding, paring back,
rinsing worries into the river.

Rest and nourishment
despite drear
skies and snow scud.

Internal weather, too,
unsettled, you saw
the need to allow.

Here, on the western verge
of your clean, warm kitchen,
this all-unlooked-for.

Evidence, Osiris-like,
of life arising: single, green
astonishing spear.

Leslie Schultz

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April 27, 2018 NaPoWriMo Challenge Poem: “I Imagine I’m Moving in Water”

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I Imagine I Am Moving in Water

I’m just standing in my kitchen
in the early morning darks,
but I imagine, slowly at first,
that I am swimming toward the day
ahead, like I used to swim toward
the blue raft in the far-off middle
of that lake at Camp Birchwood,
hoping I could make it over green lengths,
glide over the snags and slime, weeds
beneath me, tickling fish for company.

Peanut, my small dog, looks at me
oddly, yawns, brushes my ankles.

The only water is held by the kettle
over blue flame. I stand near the stove,
make hesitant motions toward
the ceiling. Is this the breast stroke?
My arms arc and contract, tire. But I
keep going, adding legs, bending
my knees, bobbing up on my toes,
whole being flailing, never reaching
the ceiling yet confident the new day
is out there, and that I will arrive,

spent but happy. Later, I will pull myself
onto the blue raft of another evening.

Leslie Schultz

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April 26, 2018 NaPoWriMo Challenge Poem: “Coasters”

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Coasters

I’ve been the type who keeps plenty at hand.
Protecting the furniture
is second nature.

Yet, I am noticing, with each pump
of my heart, a certain tiny
fling of abandon;

someone small inside me who seeks
the thrill of discrete danger,
blasts of wind, speed.

She is getting closer to the crest, the place
before the plunge, and she might
take a small risk,

disregard the safety bar across her knees,
wave her arms in wild joy—
even screeeeeeam!

Leslie Schultz

Photo by Paul Brennan (Shutterstock; used with permission)

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April 24, 2018 NaPoWriMo Challenge Poem: “Good Weather in Rice County”

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Good Weather in Rice County

No smog here or typhoons
or salt-baked land.
This is blizzard country.
Occasions of roof-splintering hail.
Some weeks, acres of grey drizzle,
lingering fogs,
molds and toadstools jubilant.

Sudden afternoons, skies turn
eerily green, lindens utterly
still, poised
for the slash of twisters,
snap of downed power lines,
barricades of trees
unnaturally horizontal.

Or the usually placid
Cannon River, turns
torrential, runs
out of bounds,
floods our ears
like the foaming rhetoric
of fascist orators.

Soon the stench of manure,
drifting from fields circling
the town, will cling to everything;
Asian beetles will infest
our roses and wainscoting;
and it won’t be just the heat
but the humidity.

Today, though, mild April
sun exhilarates. Girls don
flimsy dresses. Daffodils shoulder
up through muddy duff,
and Siberian scilla wash
through scuffs of dry leaves,
wave after wave.

Today, it is as if blue
shadows from these inert mounds
of snow have run away,
stolen from sidewalk margins
to limestone building edges; as if pale
suggestions are leaping into
heart-cracking, chromatic tune.

Leslie Schultz

All the images in this post were taken in this month within walking distance of my home. I still can’t get used to the sight of bare legs and spaghetti straps!

Hoping your internal and external weather today is heavenly! Leslie

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