"During National Poetry Month, Living Above the Frost Line celebrates Debra Kaufman, a poet with a keen eye and a sharp focus on humanity." 

--Nancy Simpson

THREE POEMS by Debra Kaufman

French I

Où est la bibliothèque? Voila la bibliothèque.

Quel temps fait-il? Il fait froid aujourd’jui.

I chanted French phrases in bed like prayers,

pleased with the way the language shaped

my mouth, ma bouche: lips puckered for tu

as if playing the flute, then softened like a kiss for je.

English words sounded like hammering on wood,

but translated en français they lilted and fell

like music or small birds.

Fermez la porte means shut the door.

petit dejeuner is breakfast,

de tout mon coeur, with all my heart.

Et alors… Jean-Pierre lifted my hair,

murmured into my neck, “You’re too good.”

And for the rest of that year I didn’t know where

the library was or whether the temperature

was froid ou chaud. As the class recited

je vais, tu vas, il va…, I could see myself

in a silk slip on a picnic, tipsy with champagne,

kissing, we’d be kissing the way the French do.

What I longed for then was beyond

language as I knew it, it was pure image,

or impure, mon Dieu! and my future?
My future was present, present perfect.

from A Certrain Light, first published

in The Idependent

Summer Solstice

The steamy morning 

teems with promise.

Today is the longest day.

Today I am opening.

It’s small changes 

and the cycle of days

I mark as holy

that sustain me now.

To crave solitude like a new lover

you can never get enough of—

is this good?

Love can die and even if born again

is weakened by the wounding

and the resurrection.

But sometimes—surprise!—

joy flies in like a jay.

It squawks, tilts its defiant head

as the cat slinks near.

What is eternal but the circling?

And now the katydids begin to sing,

kiss me, kiss me.

From The Next Moment, first

published in Pembroke Literary Magazine

SUNNIES

The sun had not risen
when I slipped into the kitchen

and saw my father at the sink,
where he never stood.

He did not order me back to bed,
but turned and gently

showed me the gold
he’d reeled in himself.

Their scales glittered like fairy wings.
He called them sunnies,

his voice a low rumble
like the night train that slowed

as it passed through town.
He too was always leaving.

He smelled of the lake and coffee,
happy and sad together.

The dome light shone on the cold linoleum
and a sifting sort of lavender

air made me shiver. A wren
chittered in the weeping cherry.

I stepped my bare feet onto his huge brown shoe
and balanced there.

Previously published in Wild Goose Poetry Review

Check out Debra Kaufman/s 

latest poetry collection, The Next Moment, from 

http://www.jacarpress.com/the-next-moment

Announcement on the Penultimant Day of National Poetry Month

Announcement on the Penultimate Day of National Poetry Month

Three stars shine bright in the south. Southern Independent Booksellers Award recently announced three poetry finalist for the SIBA Poetry Award 2013: Kathryn Stripling Byer of Cullowhee, NC for Descent, George Ellison of Sylva, NC for Permanent Camp and Natasha Tretheway of Athens, Georgia for her collection Thrull. 

Karen Paul Holmes - Featured During National Poetry Month

Karen Paul Holmes is one of my favorite rising poets. She is listed with Poets and Writers of America. Her poems have been published in Atlanta Review, Poetry East, Sow's Ear, Wild Goose Poetry Review and in several anthologies including Echoes Across the Blue Ridge and Sunrise From Blue Thunder. She is a resident of Atlanta and Hiawassee. Georgia.

Karen Paul Holmes 

DRAWN INTO CIRCLES

Last evening, I placed fresh towels on both dog beds, 

heard scratching and rearranging in the night. 

This morning, each dog lay curled

into a circle of towel 

like a bird’s nest.

How life loves

a circle: 

the sun

cups of tea

pizza, roses, embraces

wedding rings, cathedral domes

bells with fat notes radiating like ripples from skipped stones

the egg, the womb, the round opening, downy heads

suckling mouths, breasts, full stomachs, eyes filled

with delight for bubbles and bouncing balls.

Why do we box ourselves into corners

put our babies into rectangular cribs

build square houses and boxy buildings

drive cars to perpendicular crossroads

stare at newspapers, monitors, dollars

go to our rest in hard-edged coffins,

slowly lowered into matching graves?

It’s a comfort 

to imagine our rounded bones

becoming round bits of the globe, 

our spirits rising to orbit among spiral galaxies,

joining those who completed the circle before us.

by Karen Paul Holmes

published in

Poetry East, Spring 2010

Your Daily Poem, April 10, 2010

The Best of Poetry Hickory Reading Series (Main Street Rag) 2011

Reach of Song, Georgia Poetry Society, 2012

National Poetry Month - Celebrating Poet Joan Ellen Gage.

It's National Poetry Month. My goal this year is to celebrate southern and Appalachian poets. I called for poems that celebrate life itself, poems that especially honor human life and the human spirit.  

Today, Here Above the Frost Line, we celebrate poet Joan Ellen Gage. She lives part of her year in Florida and the rest in the mountains of Western North Carolina. She has two collections:  Water Running Downhill and Embracing Your Inner Cheerleader.

BY DESIGN

by Joan Ellen Gage

What is a breast?

It is, by design, in its simplest form

A source of nourishment

A literal “fountain of youth”

A breast is an ornament

Of the flesh, ascetically varied,

Rounded, pillowed, or arched

An achingly beautiful sculpture of nature

A breast is a haven

For comforting small humans

Or sheltering family and friends

With arms and bodies enfolded tightly, as in prayer

A breast can also give or receive

Pleasure, with our partners

As active participants

In the mating dance of life

A breast is the epitome of the heart

Of womankind, as with our breasts

We nurture, comfort, and love.

That is why we hold them so dear

Through breast cancer, women may

Lose these deeply personal pieces

Of their flesh, that share so much

And give succor to life

But, we must remember that

Women are the origin of strength

In this world, and with or

Without breasts, we are the same!

We will still nurture

We will still comfort

And we will still love

We will do this, by design

from Water Running Downhill

For Tina and all of her sisters

The Invader Within

by Joan Ellen Gage

Was the cause environmental,

Or was it family genetics?

How did this happen?

Perhaps, it was just karma

Bringing me this dark, unwanted gift

This cancer

The alien DNA

Hidden in the structure

Of the genome

Its time bomb releasing

Microscopic invaders burrowing

Into tissue, my tissue

Facing myself in the mirror,

Today, chopping long dark hair

Shorter, and shorter still

Wondering who is this stranger

Who stares back

Stone-faced and resolute?

I begin this deeply personal

Uphill battle, or is it downhill?

Warrior stance—I am ready

“Let’s do this!” to my husband

We travel silently to chemo

Unspoken words blowing through

Our minds like autumn leaves

He holds my hand as we begin

IV dripping, we watch morning TV

Oblivious to the screen, thoughts

Still flowing, overflowing, synchronized

With the IV releasing the drug/poison

I will it to find the interloper

“Seek out the alien intruder, now!”

Many weeks have passed, now

Time has slowed to a turtle’s pace

I have sat in that recliner

Many hours, with needle piercing my flesh,

Chemo flowing, a soft cap covering the baby fuzz

Where my hair used to be

I turn my mind inward, pray and give thanks

Liquid ninja’s course through my veins

“Finish it”, I pray, “amen”.

from Embracing your Inner Cheerleader

For Sheryl and all her sisters

More about the author - click on her site.

http://www.joanellengage.com/

Comments and words of encouragement that celebrate poetry

during this special time of year will be appreciated. Below.

National Poetry Month April 2013

"...My heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the golden daffodils." -William Wordsworth

The Daffodils by William Wordsworth I wandered lonely as a cloud    That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd,    A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine    And twinkle on the Milky Way, They stretched in never-ending line    Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced, but they    Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A Poet could not but be gay,    In such a jocund company: I gazed--and gazed--but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie    In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye    Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.

a note from Nancy Simpson -- I was assigned to learn this poem from memory for recitation in elementary school. I did commit it to memory, but I did not have full understanding of "daffodil" because I lived in Miami, Florida where there were no daffodils, only hibiscus and bougainvillea. When I moved to the mountains of western N.C. in the sixties, I saw the hill of golden daffodils and you could not shut me up from saying Wordsworth's poem over and over again. Photos here are mine. I grew the flowers and I took the pictures.

Keith Flynn will read at City Lights Book Store

Asheville poet Keith Flynn will read from his new collection of poetry, Colony Collapse Disorder, on Friday, April 5th at 6:30 p.m. at City Lights Bookstore.  Flynn is the author of six books, including five collections of poetry.  From 1984-1999 he was the lyricist and lead singer for the nationally acclaimed rock band, The Crystal Zoo.  He is currently touring with a supporting combo The Holy Men, whose album, Live at the Diana Wortham Theatre, was released in 2011.  His poetry has been featured in numerous journals and he has twice been named the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for NC.  Flynn is the founder and managing editor of the Asheville Poetry Review which began publishing in 1994.  For more information or to reserve any of his books please call City Lights Bookstore at 828-586-9499.

Celebrating National Poetry Month APRIL 2013

I am wishing you and yours a happy National Poetry Month.My main goal for the month of April  is to celebrate your poetry and mine.

Send your poems honoring  life itself and the human spirit. There will be daily posts on this site chosen from the poems submitted. Please send already published poems and give credit
to the magazine or press who first published your poem. 

Visit often and please  tell your friends and family to visit. There is still misunderstanding about poetry by some Americans. None the less, we have National Poetry Month, and we have a brief chance to celebrate. 

For me, poetry reflects the human condition. Practicing poetry offers me and other poets an opportunity  to learn how to live in this world and sometimes even the opportunity to learn how to die.  Here is my poem, "April Rain" which was chosen by Kathryn Stripling Byer for inclusion in the anthology, LIGHTS IN THE MOUNTAINS (2003). It was also featured on 
YOUR DAILY POEM during April 2012.

APRIL RAIN by Nancy Simpson

In memory of my father who loved to sit on a covered deck and watch rain, I sit sheltered and sip coffee on my covered deck high on Cherry Mountain. Near treetops I sing louder than the downpour that falls inches from me. "You like my new house?" I trill above the spill of raindrops. Mr. Whiskers asleep on my feet under the wicker seat, wakes. He thinks my song is for him. I look deep into gray mist, eye to eye with thin green leaves of a thousand trees and sing welcome to white blossoms on dogwood trees no one planted. I am singing. I am singing to my father who loved to sit close to rain. This poem first appeared in Lights in the Mountains: Stories, Essays and Poems by Writers Living In and Inspired by the Southern Appalachian Mountains (Winding Path Publishing, 2003). Used on YOUR DAIY POEM with the author’s permission.

http://www.yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp?poem_id=696
Your Daily Poem comments by readers 

April 2013, The Beginning of National Gardening Month

Today National Gardening month Begins.  April 1, 2013

                              
Forsythia, aka "Yellow Bells" in my neighborhood

Spring is late, it seems. My flowers want to show themselves but dare not because of relentless winter. Truth is-- spring has arrived. Twenty forsytia bushes along with the last of the daffodils bloom today in my yard. It's time to plan and to plant.

Whether you grow flowers or food, it's time to give a head's up. Here in the southern Appalachian Mountains where I live,(western North Carolina) Spring has not arrived in it's glory but one leaf and sprout at a time.   

I'm off gardening restriction finally. It is slow and steady for me, but I am working 30 minutes to one hour each day. 

Check out GARDENING WHERE YOU ARE

http://www.bhg.com/gardening/gardening-by-region/gardening-where-you-are/?psrc=bhgregiongardeningapp_mbo