I-89 FROM VERMONT TO CANADA IN WINTER

by Tricia Knoll

The Canadian border is less than an hour north.
Our countries have history. Good neighbors, 
borrow and offer. Fight side by side. 
I get my power through Hydro-Quebec.
Canadians come to shop, ski, hike
icefish, and mountain bike. I drive north
for museums and botanical gardens. Maple sap
runs both ways. Sugar shacks boil
here and there. I love the maple leaf flag 
as much as the blue and yellow of Ukraine. 
We share shock and a blood moon.
So close now
 
to winter’s big thaw. My eyes downcast. 
As if every winter pothole 
might eat me, vomit me out. 
Black slush banks the highway, 
a salt road gleams white. 
Once fleeing to Canada seemed
like an escape-hatch. Love
your neighbor. Don’t beggar them.
Will Canadians forgive? 
The border is less than an hour away.
We are so very close. 

Tricia Knoll lives in Vermont near the Canadian border. Her 2024 collection Wild Apples documents her downsizing and move seven years ago from Oregon to Vermont. The taste of maple is sweet; the anger of neighbors is not.

LOSING THE LAND

by Barbara Parchim

In 1964, a Vermont farmer burned himself and his farm, rather than surrender his land. Photo: Romaine Tenney on his farm. Credit: Weathersfield Historical Society via The New York Times, May 27, 2021

eminent domain:

the Jack-in-the-box surprise

when you discover

what you thought was yours

never was

 

no matter the 64 years

born and raised on this fertile soil

working the farm, living off the grid

with some draft horses

a herd of dairy cows and a couple of dogs—

the only life you’ve known

 

what remains to be done

when they come to pile

your belongings out in the dusty road?

loose the horses and cows to the field

torch the barns

then return to the house,

send the dogs outside,

nail the doors shut and set it afire

 

eminent domain:

when men sitting at a boardroom table

decide what will become of a man’s life—

take away home and livelihood

in a gesture as simple

as signing a document

and then wonder why

the final chapter ends

with a gun and a pile of bones

in the cellar of a burnt-out house

 

a hill country farm

lies buried beneath the interstate—

the maple that bore witness 57 years ago,

cut down this week as a hazard tree,

a memorial made from the wood

may be erected in this spot,

where parking lot

meets what was once called home

 

Barbara Parchim lives on a small farm in southwest Oregon. She enjoys gardening and wilderness hiking and volunteered for several years at a wildlife rehabilitation facility caring for raptors and wolves. Her poems have appeared (or are forthcoming) in Ariel Chart, Jefferson Journal, Isacoustic, Turtle Island Quarterly, Windfall, Allegro Poetry, Trouvaille Review, Front Porch Review, and others.   Her first book has been selected by Flowstone Press to appear in 2021.

AFTER THE BAD NEWS

by Laura Rodley

Image source: Loulou Downtown

I asked the angels
for something to help
carry me through the day
since I don’t yet have visible wings
and soon in front of my eyes
water flowed underneath ice
encasing a maple branch
like sap only external,
building up like a wave
then surging through
in the one eight inch space
between bark and hard clear ice
flowing to the crotch of the branch
and underneath the lumped ice there
reaching the end of the branch, dripping once,
the wave surging, cresting, flowing
down the maple’s thin arm, drip
and again, no end
to this bounty.


Laura Rodley’s New Verse News poem “Resurrection” appears in The Pushcart Prlze XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses (2013 edition). She was nominated twice before for the Prize as well as for Best of the Net. Her chapbook Rappelling Blue Light, a Mass Book Award nominee,  won honorable mention for the New England Poetry Society Jean Pedrick Award. Her second chapbook Your Left Front Wheel is Coming Loose was also nominated for a Mass Book Award and a L.L.Winship/Penn New England Award. Both were published by Finishing Line Press.  Co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, she teaches creative writing and works as contributing writer and photographer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette.  She edited As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology, Volume I and Volume II.

SAP'S RUNNING

by Laura Rodley

http://www.earthhour.org

The hearts of trees are sleeping,
But the sun’s warmth wakes them up
A fever from root to bud
A raging that froths the ground
Boiling bubbles, time to start
Tapping, collect their tears
Drink them as boiled sugar
Syrup for hot pancakes, sausage links.


Laura Rodley’s New Verse News poem “Resurrection” has won a Pushcart Prize and appears in The Pushcart Prlze XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses (2013 edition). She was nominated twice before for the Prize as well as for Best of the Net. Her chapbook Rappelling Blue Light, a Mass Book Award nominee,  won honorable mention for the New England Poetry Society Jean Pedrick Award. Her second chapbook Your Left Front Wheel is Coming Loose was also nominated for a Mass Book Award and a L.L.Winship/Penn New England Award. Both were published by Finishing Line Press.  Co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, she teaches creative writing and works as contributing writer and photographer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette.  She edited As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology, Volume I and Volume II.