‘Unforeseen Good Fortune’s Heirs Are We’ and Other Poetry by Pat Brisson

Unforeseen Good Fortune’s Heirs Are We

There’s little of the Plague that we can find
to celebrate except for this small gem –
when those who died left property behind
it often changed their family’s lives for them.

Their station rose, by education freed
from toiling years in poverty and strife.
When guided by desire and not need,
young Geoffrey Chaucer chose a writer’s life

and gave us both the practice and the art
of iambs grouped by five upon a line,
as natural as breath, as real as heart –
humankind’s expression made divine.

Just Say No to Plastic Water Bottles

Want a drink?
There’s the sink:
grab a bottle, fill it up;
get a glass or use a cup.
Nix the plastic; try the tap.
Avoid the water-buying trap.

Save resources; money, too
(good for earth and good for you).
Bottled water? Before you drink
here’s a fact to make you think:
bottles with a single use
qualify as earth abuse.

Remembering Frost on a Rued Day

The way that poem came back to me –
with crow and snow on hemlock tree,
reminds me how the poet’s art
can soothe the spirit, calm the heart.

Jersey Sweet Corn

My sympathy to those of you
not living in or passing through
the Garden State at summer’s end –
you don’t know what you’re missing, Friend.

Our corn deserves its reputation
as best of any in the nation –
milky kernels, sugar sweet –
a buttered, salted wholesome treat.

Imagine summer on your tongue –
those happy times when you were young
and days were never-ending bliss –
Jersey Sweet Corn tastes like this.

Pat Brisson is an author of twenty-three books for children.  The Summer My Father Was Ten (Boyds Mills Press, illustrated by Andrea Shine) won the Christopher Award in 1998; Benny’s Pennies (Delacorte Press, illustrated by Bob Barner) has been in print for twenty-one years; her most recent book, Before We Eat: from farm to table, was published in 2014 by Tilbury House.  She and her husband have four grown sons; they live in Phillipsburg, NJ.

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