Tag Archives: Leslie Schultz photography

April 6, 2017 Poem: “A Bowl of Blackberries”

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NaPoWriMo 2017 April 6

A Bowl of Blackberries

Like its very distant cousin, the crisply alabaster lotus,
the blackberry sinks roots deep in moist sand and mud;
but instead of a long, pure, central shaft rising
to support a single porcelain-white bowl filled with calm light,
the blackberry unspools its prickling brambles laterally—
meters and meters of looping, minute red thorns
spun headlong on tough, green cables resistant to pruning, each burning
with a myriad of fruit. Some I now see resting here:
a heap of honeyed coals, and each one alive with embers,
clusters of summer fire, alight with understory
of blood-purpled cordial, precious as caviar or eyesight or
fireflies; like justice outpacing mercy, each delivering
its complex cluster of sweet but stinging juice
with the prophetic bitter wood of seed.

Leslie Schultz

This poem started from looking more closely at things I see every day in my dining room and kitchen. I went to bed last night and awoke dreaming of blackberries, lotuses, and light.

Hope your day is full of sweet surprises!

LESLIE

Check out other participants at the NaPoWriMo Challenge 2017 home site!

Sign of Early Spring

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Every year, we wait for it. The tiny Siberian wildflower known to us as scilla, announces spring as nothing else does. I had never heard of it before moving to Northfield, but now it is one of my very favorites.

In a few weeks, the whole town will be awash with these intense blue blooms. For several weeks now, I have been watching the hearty green spears begin to poke out of the ground and take snow squalls in their stride. Today–when the sky was an iron-fisted grey, not allowing a single golden ray or a glimpse of blue to slip through the clouds–the muddy ground yielded this exciting vanguard of spring. Very cheering!

Leslie

 

April 27, 2017 Poem in Your Pocket Day & Poem: “Portable”

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Portable
for Sandy Petrek

A taste for home
pierces the tongue
early, is easy
to carry
across oceans,
or a whole lifetime.

You’ve been
teaching me
the anchoring tang
of the fresh-caught
raspberry, still dewy,
sun-and-wind
ripened, just outside
your door;

how to reach
through a forest
of obstacles—
tough green canes,
thorns, tears—
to lift a brief
sweetness to the lips,
and to let it linger.

Leslie Schultz

All over the country, today is POEM IN YOUR POCKET DAY.

(A few years ago, my friend, Sandy Petrek and I spearheaded an effort to bring this celebration to Northfield. Look for the red boxes downtown and elsewhere, or tuck a favorite poem fro home into your pocket–read it to someone else or just to yourself, and consider passing it along before the day is done.)    LESLIE

Check out other participants at the NaPoWriMo Challenge 2017 home site!

April 28, 2017 Poem “Death”

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Death

I hate you and the horse you rode in on.
I hate your black hat, your black boots, your cloak
darker than oblivion. Carrion
memories attend you, and I hate them—oak-

galled ink scribblings in the margins of your
book. I hate the pain you cut with a steel
quill across the faces I love, how you roar
in bone-silence, deeper and more surreal

than the bedrock ticking of clocks or time
itself. I hate how you invade this form
of love, this sonnet, twisting its pretzeled rhyme
to your own echoless ends: unsound, infirm.

I shall stare you down. I shall take the reins.
Pale horse, your rider walks away in chains.

Leslie Schultz

The photograph of the white swirl on the water was taken at the glacial pothole park at Taylor’s Falls on the St. Croix River, a bit north of here. The other photographs were taken in Savannah, Georgia.

LESLIE

Check out other participants at the NaPoWriMo Challenge 2017 home site!

 

 

On Inauguration Day 2017: Poem “Letter to Mrs. Olson”

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FlagChalkboard

My friend, artist, poetry lover, and community volunteer Bonnie Jean Flom, recently suggested that today would be the right day to share this poem more widely. Since I always heed Bonnie Jean, here it is. And here’s to the power of friendship, of those small kindnesses that add up to the world we want to inhabit.

Letter to Mrs. Olson

I am a happy wife and must report
my husband makes excellent coffee.
While I didn’t marry him for that skill,
it is a joy to wake to aroma
I have not brewed myself, or over-stewed.

We do not keep Folgers on the shelf but
French-roasted beans in the white freezer,
Grinding them ourselves, gently, a rich few
at a time.  Others also make excellent
coffee.  It is an open secret now.
We know all the fragrant places and drive
out of our way for the best.  Yes, it is

a different world.  Sometimes, I feel jittery.
The future looks dark.  Then I close my eyes,
sip the brew I’m offered from other hands–
deliciously bitter, something unknown
but needed, a cup I could not fill alone.

Leslie Schultz

(I took the image of the flag and chalk board in the school house relocated to Stone Mountain Plantation, Georgia. The image of coffee, table, and chair is from River Rock Coffee in St. Peter, Minnesota.)

IMG_0831

LESLIE

P.S. Beth, I’ll be wearing the socks all day, wiping the dishes, and thinking about those holding hands across the Golden Gate Bridge!

Rosie the Rivetter Socks