THE GOOD NEWS

by Joanne De Simone Reynolds

AI-generated image from Dreamstime.

for

billions:

 

white

bird

 

column 

of 

smoke:

 

America’s

leonine

antidote

 

to

vice

 

injustices 

 

+ dogedom 

 

Joanne De Simone Reynolds watches the progress of the nation and the world from the shoreline of the Atlantic Ocean. Some of her work can be viewed at http://theumbrellaarts.org/

BOTH DOORS ARE OPEN

by Joanne De Simone Reynolds

Will he be called back at last

Or granted a stay—

The ultimate ordinary Francis

Reassuring the faithful

Shepherding

The convert

As to ordo amoris

(Heart of the father)

(Mother to each and all)

(Delicate radiant essence)

Refers to Aquinas—

Love dilates the heart

 

What could be more

catholic than that?

Fit to write to the last letter

The ultimate ordinary Francis

Says in essence—

Advance the orders 

Of your heart

Reassuring the faithful

Reminding the convert

Of what it can mean

(A pasture)

To the lost the least . . . the last 

Joanne De Simone Reynolds has been an ekphrastic poetry participant in Art On The Trails at Beals Preserve in Southborough, Massachusetts for many years.She won first prize in poetry in 2022 and was poetry judge in 2023. Her series of sixteen ekphrastic poems for 2020 Art Ramble, in Concord, Ma, can be viewed online alongside images of the sculptures at theumbrellaarts.org.

NEXT MORNING TEXT TO A FRIEND

by Joanne De Simone Reynolds

Detail from “Morning Has Broken” (Oil and Acrylic on Canvas) by Brad Gray, 2017

I was despairing at 4 am—

 

I wrote the poem and sent it off . . .

 

I didn’t choose the illustration

 

Though I knew it was fitting a bit of a shock the bird a blue bird—something

 

Lifted—

 

My father didn’t serve in WWII

For freedom from dominance and division

For me to abandon the principle

 

The impulse—

 

That he passed away 22 years ago today on a Veterans Weekend is fitting—

 

What dawned in me this morning is what someone once called something like

 

Irregular reversal subversion—

 

What a morning like this one (not unlike the lines I wrote before these lines) calls forth or for

 

As if from a haunting (fathers poets birds)—

 

 

Joanne De Simone Reynolds is grateful to The New Verse News. This poem was written in response to her own poem published on the site on 11/9/2024. The words irregular, reversal, and subversion are taken from a letter William Carlos Williams wrote to Harriet Monroe, the editor of Poetry, in 1913.

THIS. MORNING.

by Joanne De Simone Reynolds

“Morning Has Broken” (Oil and Acrylic on Canvas) by Brad Gray, 2017

If the American voter couldn’t

If she or he couldn’t

Because she or he

 

What America is

What America has always been

What America will always be

 

The imperfect striving to become—

That was me once the choice the candidate

 

The beautiful young people mine and yours

The children and the grandchildren born and yet

For them

The arc of the moral universe bending toward—

 

I am old flat-out boomed bombed out

What I have done what I have left one

City one house the beds made-up like tombs

 

 

Joanne De Simone Reynolds would like to acknowledge her mentors, Nadia Colburn of Align your Story, Doug Holder of Ibbetson Street Press, and Tom Daly's writing workshops in the greater Boston area. Some of Joanne's recent work can be found at The Umbrella Arts 2020 Art Ramble. 

LEGEND OF WHITE BUFFALO CALF WOMAN

by Joanne De Simone Reynolds

Reported birth of rare white buffalo calf in Yellowstone park fulfills Lakota prophecy: “The birth of this calf is both a blessing and warning. We must do more,” said Chief Arvol Looking Horse, the spiritual leader of the Lakota, Dakota and the Nakota Oyate in South Dakota, and the 19th keeper of the sacred White Buffalo Calf Woman Pipe and Bundle… Lakota legend says about 2,000 years ago—when nothing was good, food was running out and bison were disappearing—White Buffalo Calf Woman appeared, presented a bowl pipe and a bundle to a tribal member, taught them how to pray and said that the pipe could be used to bring buffalo to the area for food. As she left, she turned into a white buffalo calf. “And some day when the times are hard again,” Looking Horse said in relating the legend, “I shall return and stand upon the earth as a white buffalo calf, black nose, black eyes, black hooves.” A similar white buffalo calf was born in Wisconsin in 1994 and was named Miracle, he said. —AP, June 14, 2024. More photos by Erin Braaten here at YouTube.

When a bison calf appears white-furred

On a patch of yellow stone prairie 

The People know it is mine   Me:

Dark-haired/Dark-eyed 

When first I came to them   Yes:

Miracle   Yes:

Sacred-birth leucism   Rarest

Of rare   Lakota-blessed prayer   Grass-

Rolled   And a pipe I left   Change

Among the geysers/Great

Change meaning What most excites

Returns   Like hunger   Just totally totally

Floored a woman says in a baseball cap:

White   Holding a camera: a long-range lens

 

 

Joanne De Simone Reynolds would like to acknowledge Nadia Colburn, of Align Your Story, and Tom Daley, both of Cambridge, Massachusetts, for their indispensable writing workshops; Doug Holder, of Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene, for his ongoing support; and Susan Richmond, poet and children's book author, who coaxed Ms Reynolds into Plein Air Poetry at Old Frog Pond in Harvard, Massachusetts, a collaboration of poets that lasted ten years and produced as many, beautiful, chapbooks. She is grateful to all.