July 2016
Joan Mazza
joan.mazza@gmail.com
joan.mazza@gmail.com
I started writing poetry in 1998 after writing mostly fiction and non-fiction. Poetry has been a daily practice since 2011, and a lifeline and tranquilizer during a long recovery when I had a serious accident and crushed the top of my tibia. My work has been published in a variety of literary magazines, but the writing process offers the most satisfaction. In addition to poetry, I do fabric and paper art deep in the woods of central Virginia. www.JoanMazza.com
Filamentous Algae
Uninvited, you arrived in late spring. I spied
you from my office window, weaving mats
on the pond’s surface with your long hair.
How did you happen to stop here this year
and never before?
The lotus were limping into the light,
slow recovery after two years of struggle
back to life after a browning disease.
Bull frogs and crickets come and go;
wood ducks’ and herons’ likes vacillate.
Now you step up to make your claim.
Are you strangling or offering oxygen
to the catfish and blue gill below?
Do you promise new habitat for frog species
I can’t yet name? Shelter for their eggs?
I want to know. Are you here for health
and balance? Or to invade, insisting
on a redesign? Others have come this way
with praise, before they tell me
everything I do is wrong.
-published in Tapestry, issue #26, December, 2014
Farmhouse on a Hill
You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them and the only thought
which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there.
—Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Missing person, kidnapped child? Which one died?
Town folks read the skimpy facts and worry.
What secrets do these lovely, green hills hide?
Beyond the shapely trees, a county’s pride,
this place holds stories. Easy to bury
a missing person, kidnapped child. Who died?
Cold-eyed man who takes his latest young bride
to live and die in this old house. Don’t query
what dark secrets these rolling, green hills hide.
Wide porch, red barn, a charming paradise. Surprise!
when a question spills an outraged fury
caused by one missing person. Kidnapped? Died
here? From what you guess, there’s infanticide,
abuse, neglect, incest. This land’s eerie
with foul secrets that rolling hills can hide.
Far from town and laws, no one hears your cries.
You slipped. They claim you drowned to any jury.
Missing person, kidnapped child? Which one died?
Oh, what secrets these lovely, green hills hide.
-First published in Journal of Kentucky Studies, fall 2013
Uninvited, you arrived in late spring. I spied
you from my office window, weaving mats
on the pond’s surface with your long hair.
How did you happen to stop here this year
and never before?
The lotus were limping into the light,
slow recovery after two years of struggle
back to life after a browning disease.
Bull frogs and crickets come and go;
wood ducks’ and herons’ likes vacillate.
Now you step up to make your claim.
Are you strangling or offering oxygen
to the catfish and blue gill below?
Do you promise new habitat for frog species
I can’t yet name? Shelter for their eggs?
I want to know. Are you here for health
and balance? Or to invade, insisting
on a redesign? Others have come this way
with praise, before they tell me
everything I do is wrong.
-published in Tapestry, issue #26, December, 2014
Farmhouse on a Hill
You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them and the only thought
which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there.
—Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Missing person, kidnapped child? Which one died?
Town folks read the skimpy facts and worry.
What secrets do these lovely, green hills hide?
Beyond the shapely trees, a county’s pride,
this place holds stories. Easy to bury
a missing person, kidnapped child. Who died?
Cold-eyed man who takes his latest young bride
to live and die in this old house. Don’t query
what dark secrets these rolling, green hills hide.
Wide porch, red barn, a charming paradise. Surprise!
when a question spills an outraged fury
caused by one missing person. Kidnapped? Died
here? From what you guess, there’s infanticide,
abuse, neglect, incest. This land’s eerie
with foul secrets that rolling hills can hide.
Far from town and laws, no one hears your cries.
You slipped. They claim you drowned to any jury.
Missing person, kidnapped child? Which one died?
Oh, what secrets these lovely, green hills hide.
-First published in Journal of Kentucky Studies, fall 2013
©2016 Joan Mazza