April 2017
A former copywriter who found her true calling writing deathless advertising jingles for AM radio, I am also the former Poet Laureate of Wisconsin (2009 - 2010), and the author of six poetry collections. The most recent of these, titled Step on a Crack, is just out from White Violet Press (Kelsay Books.). My work has appeared in many anthologies and journals, including Poetry, Able Muse, Light Poetry Journal, Mezzo Cammin, and Measure, and I also served for five years as a regular poetry columnist for The Writer magazine. I currently live in Madison, Wisconsin with my poet-husband Dave Scheler and an aging cat, where I continue to write, teach, and hobnob with some extraordinary poets who also call Wisconsin home.
Family Picnic
Life hasn’t been easy for Betsy since she turned
thirteen—just look at her, the sniffy way
she sits all by herself, wincing with scorn
at her noisy cousins lining up to play
a pick-up softball game before the day
runs out. Childish, she mutters from the chair
in which she lounges, tossing back her hair.
But now, two uncles and a favorite aunt
are filling in at right field and third base;
Betsy’s breathing quickens, but she can’t
stop buffing her nails, sucking in her face,
keeping her careful distance—just in case
we take her for that splendid child Betsy,
who left us only very recently.
Originally published in Wisconsin Poets Calendar, 2013
The Geniuses Among Us
They take us by surprise, these tall perennials
that jut like hollyhocks above the canopy
of all the rest of us—bright testimonials
to the scale of human possibility.
They come to bloom for every generation,
blazing with extraordinary notions
from the taproots of imagination--
dazzling us with incandescent visions.
And soon, the things we never thought would happen
start to happen: the solid fences
of reality begin to soften,
crumbling into fables and romances--
and we turn away from where we've been
to a new place, where light is pouring in.
Originally published in Verse Daily, 5/08/04
River II by Ellsworth Kelly: Accidental Reflections
On the lower sheet, the left-most image was printed upside down. River II preserves this accidental reflection.
—Ellsworth Kelly, American artist (1923-2015)
An accident, was it? Reflections often are
precisely that: little glints of clarity
in a wash of ruffled chaos—like a star
winking and sputtering unimpressively
behind the curtain of competing light
that we call ambient. And this is how
you realized a way to recreate
the chronicles of rivers: upside down,
purling backward, puckering a skein
of water with your brushes, showing where
a wrinkle on the surface might explain
the rocks below. But only here and there--
reflecting, in your enigmatic way,
what rivers might or might not have to say.
Originally published in Able Muse, Winter 2014
On the lower sheet, the left-most image was printed upside down. River II preserves this accidental reflection.
—Ellsworth Kelly, American artist (1923-2015)
An accident, was it? Reflections often are
precisely that: little glints of clarity
in a wash of ruffled chaos—like a star
winking and sputtering unimpressively
behind the curtain of competing light
that we call ambient. And this is how
you realized a way to recreate
the chronicles of rivers: upside down,
purling backward, puckering a skein
of water with your brushes, showing where
a wrinkle on the surface might explain
the rocks below. But only here and there--
reflecting, in your enigmatic way,
what rivers might or might not have to say.
Originally published in Able Muse, Winter 2014
©2017 Marilyn L. Taylor
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -FF