A Need to Fill - Poems by Glenn P. Garamella 76 pages, 6 x 9 perfect bound $15 + $3 shipping - total $18, Canada $20, 2 books $33 includes shipping, Canada $35. 3 or more books, or outside US and Canada, please email for shipping costs: mankh(a)allbook-books.com
to BUY this book
LISTEN to the “Get Lit With Literature” 14-minute interview with Glenn reading 3 poems
~ for sample poems and about the author, scroll ~
“What a treasure of insight, reflection and revelation Glenn Garamella’s poetry is. I have been keeping his book on my nightstand and flip through it every night to read one or two poems. Incredibly, each one selected speaks to my mood or the moment. Thanks for placing it in my hands!” ~ Gen Shore
(cover art: Doug Reina) *
We’ve Been Taught
We’ve been taught to place one foot in front of the other, that’s how you make the day happen.
I prefer to stop and wait and let the world come to me
not chase after the dream that got away or walk in wider circles after my tail.
Much better to plant myself like a tree, wait for the wind to rise up and fill my branches with birdsong.
* * * *
A Need to Fill
Something inside me calls to fill in that empty space at the front of the yard, a single voice traveling the length of the body in need of a conversation with the outside world.
The thought to add color where there is little, transplant daylilies and let them sing, dig out a shovel full of earth, move the bulbs and roots a stone’s-throw away.
By summer, bright orange and yellow flames appearing where before only a dry dirt patch.
* * * *
Thoreau’s Cabin
Only the granite markers remain, the cabin wasn’t built to last, worn down like the nubs of pencils he sold in his father’s wood shop.
Stones would have lasted longer and given the walls a solid history, but two plus years was all he needed in the hollow cheek of the clearing.
Surrounded by pine and hickory he became a poet of the bearded woods. Unafraid to lose his reflection in the water allowing the forest to become his school.
Such courage to live alone with nature, to keep the company of your thoughts and live without the syrup of conversation, to steer away from the approach of footsteps.
He left the Pond a greater man, able to hear deep within himself, a voice connecting the earth, far beyond the canopy of the stars.
note: Though often idealized as a solitary man living in the woods near Walden Pond, Thoreau also traveled with and was schooled by members of the Penobscot Nation. The Thoreau-Wabanaki Trail in Maine honors those travels and interchanges.
* * * *
In Half-Light
In half-light you saw the trees unwilling to give up their necklace of burnished leaves.
Deep December and below freezing winter couldn’t keep a stronghold on this stand of short maples,
the wind would have to work hard to unscrew them from their branches.
Hard to say goodbye the leaves, the leaving turning away from a handful of hard facts pointing in the face.
While reading in a dry, stuffy room I try not to notice my brittle skin is chipping like stone buddhas in the backyard.
Thinking of frozen roots, I feel the blood slow in my arms and the sky about to fall asleep.
The lyric branches of the trees rise in salutation toward the last rays of the sun.
Suddenly leaves flutter turning their small bodies into handfuls of pure gold.
* * * *
When Trees Feed the Field
1 The honey spun by a host of bees at the back of the apple orchard.
Groves planted more than seventy-five years ago by a family with roots in Spain.
Not farmers but they raised their family on a farm; children grew up with livestock.
Skin brown as wheat toast, lined like tree bark with soil deep beneath their fingernails they peopled the land.
I learned you don’t water apple trees, they drink rain.
The bees feast upon apple blossoms drawing nectar along hair-thin antennae, making honey in their six-sided honeycombs.
This honey tastes of apples because that’s where the bees had their meals, every drop is medicine against common ills.
Concentrating, I can smell the apples in the air-apple wind traveling in every direction. The orchard comes home with me in the car.
The scent lingering for hours or even days, powerful like the salty beach or the sound of dropping luggage on the floor after a long vacation.
2 We go places that change us whether near or far, getting into our pores, our DNA.
Step back and remember the promise you made so long ago, before you were born, standing over your seedling of a life.
Remember the wish to stand by that tree and watch the long arms spread wider than the sky.
Think of your smile, the boughs filled with fruit, and know this was an answer to a prayer made in your bone and blood.
Apples now fall, feeding the earth and bees take flight, the afternoon bowing into sunset.
Rest, restore your soul to travel in younger fields.
* * * *
About the Author
(photo by Matthew Garamella)
Raised in Douglaston, NY. Attended Queens College, BA in Philosophy; MA in Counseling Psychology from New York University. Spent his career developing and coordinating Employee Assistance Programs for employees of the city of New York. Lifelong meditator, student of Eastern Religion and Spirituality. Married to Ann, lives in Huntington, NY. Son Matthew, an environmentalist and musician, lives in Boston, MA.
© 2021 Glenn P. Garamella and Doug Reina.
|