April Lindner's Blog

Going With the GRAIN

Thanks a million to Grain: The Journal of Eclectic Writing for including my poem, "First Egg," in their newest issue. Here's the poem: 
First Egg
Ghostly in the coop's half-light,pale and almost phosphorescent green,perched upright in aspen shavings.The pullet who laid it already bathing in dust or scratching up ants.
To gather its small wholeness feelslike a theft but also a tenderness,close as I'll ever get to sharinga daughter's first time--handing offthick pads, hot water bottle, the ache
of knowing this will bethe new regime, tidal rhythmof ripening and release, her very selfswept along and shackled to a purpose. 
And here's Artemesia (aka Meemee) who inspired it. She's no longer with us, but I'll always remember her, and the thrill of checking the nesting box and finding that very first egg.

Marching into April

Peep season!

Thanks to Passager Books and the Burning Bright podcast for featuring a poem of mine this week. Being included in this spring podcast due to my spring-y first name more than makes up for all the years of people telling me I was the cruellest month. 

Click on through to hear the podcast: 

A Poem For When Standing Still is Hard

Travel

The railroad track is miles away, 
And the day is loud with voices speaking, 
Yet there isn’t a train goes by all day 
But I hear its whistle shrieking.

All night there isn’t a train goes by, 
Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming, 
But I see its cinders red on the sky, 
And hear its engine steaming.

My heart is warm with friends I make, 
And better friends I’ll not be knowing; 
Yet there isn’t a train I wouldn’t take, 
No matter where it’s going.

                                                            Edna St. Vincent Millay

 

The Grace of the World

Photo by Elijah St. Amant
As much of the world hunkers in lockdown, waiting out the coronavirus pandemic, I find my life has grown quieter and the small things--a garter snake in the iris patch, three turkey vultures poised on a neighbor's roof--have the power to sooth.  That's why this poem seems perfect for this moment in history:


The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief.  I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting in their light.  For a time
I rest in the grace of the world and am free.  


--Wendell Berry

Journey with Me

On the Pulaski Skyway

Thanks to Sharon Foley whose podcast, Journey Daily with a Compelling Poem, currently features a poem of mine, "The Trip to Brooklyn Misremembered as a Roller Coaster Ride."  

Free the Mice!

 

Thanks to Bearings Online, for publishing this poem about trying--and sometimes failing--to be kind to the mammals who only want to share our homes and our crumbs.

Freeing the MiceOr maybe it’s the same one over and over,
tempted by a peanut butter smear,
sharp onyx eyes and rough dun coat
I keep releasing each morning
like the sun rolling home.How now, brown mouse?I carry my mus musculus
farther off each day
across parkways and creeks.
Skittery feet scrabble, try to brake,
the world gone liquid,
swirling on all sides.I offer tall grass,
gnarled roots for cover,
but unlike his earlier incarnations
mouse du jour won’t budge.
I’ve heard their eyes are weak,
yet this one seems to study me,
unfazed. Does he preferthe devil he knows—my fleshy hands and human smell—
or is he just stone dumb? I tip the trap
until he slides, and when
his feet touch earth he pauses,
whiskers questioning the chilly air,
just before he scurries offtoward the peril of an open field.

Where I've Been (When I Wasn't Here)

Miles It's been a while since I've blogged here.  A looooong while.   While I wasn't here, I've been moving, writing, and teaching.  I've also been fostering dogs.  One was Moka, a labby girl who went on to find a perfect forever home.  The second, Miles, a foxy little chihuahua corgi mix (we think) wound up squiggling his way into our hearts.  We wound up adopting him...so now he's a part of our pack.  He's what they call a foster failure--or maybe we're the failures.  At any rate, now that we've got three, our fostering days are over for the forseeable future

Miles came from Little Dog Lifeboat.  And Moka came up north from Southern Comfort Animal Rescue, which has adoption events every three weeks.  In fact, there's still time to catch the wagging tail end of this weekends rescue, at Rosedale Mills in Pennington, New Jersey.  Both rescues do amazing work finding homes for deserving dogs.  

Ladybug Season!

March of the Ladybugs
One at a time, they’re good luck charms,
quaint as a cartoon greeting-card,
neat dome like a candy button.At daybreak one circumnavigates
the water glass. His glossy shell
cracks to sprout wax-paper wings.As the window brightens, more collect
in its skim of condensation.
They cluster on the ceiling,red and random as measles.
Every so often one is moved
to buzz in sudden spiralsand clatter onto a lampshade,
or bungle into my hair. Their ranks swell,
an army of redcoats. Once doctorsmashed them to cure toothaches;
farmers entreated Our Lady
to send in scarlet swarms–rosary beads spilling from the sky.
Harvest in, they’d clear the fields
and burn the vines. By afternoonmy multitude has flown.
One straggler still scouts for water,
wandering the wasteland of my desk.Thanks to Bearings Online for publishing this poem!  

Under Construction

This summer, it seems my whole life is under construction. We've been living in limbo while the house we're hoping to buy in our beloved Lambertville has been taking shape.  



I've been doing a lot of driving back and forth to the house to watch it grow into the next phase of its already quite long life. The process has been exciting and sometimes fraught.  

Surprised by asbestos
Then there's my usual summer preoccupation: writing.  With several novels underway at once, I've been trying to figure out where to take my writing next.  I've been researching and drafting what I suspect will turn out to be a Middle Grade novel and rethinking a YA novel that didn't quite cohere. I've also been turning back to my first love, poetry, putting together the first manuscript of poems in a really long time.


Surprised by dogwood
Most of all, I've been grappling with what kind of writer I want to become.  How should I spend the next part of my writing life?  It's been a restless and uncertain couple of months trying to answer that question, and I'm still not sure. 


It helps to have a blueprint!But the good news is that the hard work and expertise of team of builders has brought our future house a long way. 



And I'm hoping that with time and a little tearing down and rebuilding of my own, I'll figure out my own next phase.


Surprised by a midsummer flower whose name we don't yet know

No Place Like Rome

Trevi FountainLove, Lucy comes out in paperback today, and I thought I'd commemorate Lucy's paperback birthday with a celebration of the Eternal City, where she travels with her summer love Jesse.  
Here are some of my favorite spots in Rome, including the "greatest hits" I've set out to find, street map in hand.  Here's Piazza Spagna in the evening:
Stormy skies

And the Spanish Steps themselves, gorgeous even when under construction:




Of course there's the stunning Pantheon:  


And all the wonders of Vatican City:

And then there are the beauties I've stumbled upon by sheer accident, like St. John Lateran:


Not to mention the city's smaller but no less noteworthy wonders:

The world's best macchiato

Wishing you were in Italy?  (You're not alone!)  Please check out Love, Lucy and Far From Over , Jesse's side of the story.