Featured Poet: Patricia Frisella, Farmington, NH

President of the Poetry Society of New Hampshire , a non-profit membership organization dedicated to promoting poetry.Edited the anthology, The Other Side of Sorrow: Poets Speak Out About Conflict, War and Peace (Poetry Society of New Hampshire, 2006), which won the 2007 bronze prize from the Independent Book Awards, IPPY. Board member of the non-profit artesprit which has created large scale public art installations in collaborations between visual artists and poets. Work is forthcoming in collaboration with Aldo Tambellini, Tontongi, Askia Touré and others. She lives in a small town on a tree farm with her husband and a menagerie of creatures great and small. She can be found on Face Book, Twitter and the web at www.patriciafrisella.com

I had been asked to work on a self portrait for the above mentioned artesprit, and had just read an interview of the fabulous artist, Lucia Neare. The interviewer mentioned that Ms Neare had presented her with an acorn. I had also recently visited a favorite spot and tree in my wood lot all described in my poem. Anyone who has seen the movie Willow knows that acorns are magic! If you know your Shakespeare you may catch the phrase borrowed from As You Like It. 

Lady of the Acorns

Up on the drumlin deep in the wood
I walk beyond the bosky thickets 
the mossy swamps, the  trees of doors
to gaze at the crown of the forest king.

The massive monarch mossed with age
spreads wide his arms to call all trees 
to an ancient entmoot. Acorns will hail
down to cover the ground. It will be a mast year.

The green benison will riffle life in the forest
a feast this year, a famine next, gentle waves
that set rude, red squirrels stuffing their cheeks
their tails aflutter waving goodbye to summer. 

I hear the small stream trickle beyond the oak
scramble down the steep sided drumlin
stuff my pockets with acorns, twigs and leaves
the makings of magic harvest dolls

When all the world sleeps beneath snow
deep in the forest the tall oak watches
his long shadow bridging the frozen stream
bridging my dreams of Spring. Noonday sun

Will warm the sap beneath his bark
festoon his branches with dangling catkins
powder the earth with yellow pollen
and all the world will wake.