January 2024
Charles Rossiter
charliemrossiter@gmail.com
Bio Note: I am an NEA Fellowship recipient who continues to bask in the literary programing that comes to me via his good neighbor, Bennington College. I am most pleased with my recent inclusion in Wherever I'm At: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry.

Off-Season
The boardwalk is moist with ocean spray, silent with off-season absence. The ferris wheel is still. No one is throwing darts for kewpie dolls, no one in line at the hot dog stands no hot teen bodies in tiny swimsuits no scruffy guys in raggy sweats. It’s a pleasant kind of ghost town filled with memories. Nothing much to do now but sit and watch the gray-green waves, recall what was, be here now.

Reflecting on Robert Bly's
Silence in the Snowy Fields
I’ve read this book at least ten times or maybe twenty and I don’t always get what he says but his ease in the saying is always a comfort. His poems about wide open Midwest winter fields take me back. Lose ambition and see with clear eyes he says, approximately. Natural is best, we can build the ladder anyway we like. We choose our own angle of ascent. I too have wasted time driving around in a world bright with reflected moonlight, sounds of the village muffled by snow pack.
©2024 Charles Rossiter
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