Poetry of the Lake Sunapee Region

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A HOUSE BEGINS

We start with a house, without a pretense

Small plot  of land, a white picket fence 

A garden green, with flowered yard

What more to want, it's not too hard

Sloped roof, to accommodate the snow

Many large rooms, wide windows to show

Cuisine well equipped, lots of food there

Well stocked wine cellar, flavors to spare

An abode well designed, as noted above

Warm family presence, filled with love

What we have now, is a comfortable home

Accompanied of course, by this lovely poem 

W. D Tighe, New London, NH

A STEP BACK IN TIME

The gray shingled house has long stood untouched—

The home of my childhood in a time when play was innocent—

Full of imagination—make-believe in the fantasy world of small friends.

Teddy bear and my magic skin doll came for tea at a child’s table

Set with colorful tin dishes and tiny spoons.

Eager ears listened to my reading of the nursery rhymes

Pictured on the linoleum covered floor.

I wonder—if I were to visit the old house today—

Would the walls remember me?

Florence Wiltshire Millett – New London 

HOUSING

In a tree

down from tree,

Savanna ground.

Animal skins

caves, dens

Neandersapians

mammoth skins,

mammoth bones

covered by skins.

Sticks, thatch, mud

round houses, long houses

tepees, wickiups, sod

on the range.

Hovels, huts, shacks

log, wattle and daub.

Bricks, lumber, steel

cape, saltbox, federal

ranch, Mc mansion

retirement, funeral

casket, cemetery

under the ground,

under a tree.

Robert Manchester, Concord NH

IT BEGINS WITH A HOUSE

You long for a home to call your own

a place to be you when you’re all alone.

Share with someone or two or three 

filled with expression, a place to be.

Cook a meal and read what you want

rest or invite a friend to walk.

Watch out a window to see a finch nesting

gaze at the moon while it is cresting.

Wake at night and stare at the stars

crawl back to the warmth and lay under cover.

A place to come home to every day.

It begins with a house and becomes a home.

Mary Blohm, Newbury NH

TOO MUCH STUFF

It starts with the house

and then a garage

tools for the upkeep

and of course, the yard.

Lawn chairs and coolers

awaiting the summer

no matter what you get rid of

there’s still too much clutter.

How did it happen

with all this stuff?

The answer, of course,

you bought a house.

Mary Blohm, Newbury NH

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

Late in the Depression we camped in Vermont.

Touring northern highways Dad saw a house so sad.

House and shed, (camp, studio, vacation fun font).

We did get in, though spear-headed by Dad. 

He was cautiously allowing only short forays inside,

Worried about rotten joists helped by leaky roof.

Outside the trim was in place, paint-less beside.

Deeds, ownership, history, taxes, necessary proof.

Went to town and inquired (Dad a newspaper man).

Title held by bank, price reduced, Dad much aglow.

Who would do a house inspection? Charlie can.

Mother pointed out the remoteness and said NO!

Dan H. Allen, New London NH

IT BEGINS WITH A HOUSE

Where our representatives meet

Unprotected from lies 

That are repeated, retweeted, repeated, retweeted

Echo fear 

Take shape as a creed

Dedicated to a false ideal

Fuel an armed mob

Incited to murder

Storm, plunder and loot the people’s house.

Officer Eugene Goodman stood alone 

as the door to the capitol was breached and the mob 

spilled into the corridor.

He poked and provoked the leader of the mob to follow as he 

Ran in direction away from the open Senate door.

Provided the minute needed to secure the chamber.

Looked back and ran further with the mob in pursuit.

A black man, pursed by a mob, whose selfless response

Saved those elected to Congress from violence and gave fellow

Citizens hope that some will stand and face off hate.

Kathleen Skinner Shulman, New London NH

SOMEWHERE IN THESE REINCARNATE DECIBELS OF LIGHT…

Somewhere, in these reincarnate decibels of light,

Your dark-life-haunting is always a house….

This house, you never view from the outside; it

Is constant from its innards and beckons your bones.

Empty rooms, hallways, stair-flights—cellar-to-attic,

Attic-to-cellar, this house you fear the most, where

Every turn you tip-toe, you know you are not alone….

Amber Rose Crowtree, Grafton, NH

IT BEGINS WITH A HOUSE

A simple cape built in 1929 by Yankee carpenters

Who stripped boards from the foundation pour 

To sheathe the roof which stands tight

On a snowy hillside 

Sheltered from the north wind by pines

A view west toward the mountain

A caution light blinking at the intersection

A tidy Olmstead garden tended by volunteers

Visible from the front yard.

A town so unlike any I have known

An old root cellar held gray shelves of mason jars,

Lids, wooden boxes, metal pans and work gloves.

Until, a possum found its way in smiling 

As it hung on the old beam 

Prompting a tear down and new cement floor.

A fuse box with stacks of copper pennies on the lid.

Roof rake, snow shovels, snow scoops and rubber galoshes

End to end, two cars could now be stored 

Out of the snow and wind

These twenty years in a quiet house have changed 

Me and shaken me out of busyness.

Aware of the chattering and warble of birds,

Chipmunks scurrying along the stone wall.

Sunsets from my window.

A bell to mark the hour .

I long now for quiet spaces.

Simple choices.

Less.

Kathleen Skinner Shulman, New London NH

MINTY

Every great dream begins with a dreamer.

 -Harriet Tubman-

Begin with a house on a wealthy planation,

in Maryland, then zoom in on the slave quarters.

Here my life began as Araminta Harriet Ross

the daughter of slaves. Cruelly treated, whipped 

and struck in the head causing seizures during

the remainder of my life, I imagined my episodes 

as spiritual visions that promised me a better life.

My parents called me Minty and part of me

will always be that little girl who saw her sisters 

sold and taken away yet I watched my mother,

Harriet, fight to keep my brother on the planation.

She became my idol and I asked to be called Harriet 

when I married a free Black man, John Tubman,

never expecting my name in history books.

I became a liberator of my people, guiding them

to safety, never thinking of myself as a hero

only doing what my visions portended.

Even becoming a spy for the Union forces

my main objective was freedom for my people.

My life’s journey gave me over ninety fulfilling 

years and I died a free woman in New York 

content that my life’s mission was accomplished.

Dianalee Velie, Newbury NH

THE BONES OF THE HOUSE

The house bore everything within its bones:

murmurs at night, birth cries, prayers breathed

for strength, against despair, and for drought’s end,

for fruitful harvest, and for births—

so many births,

so many silent prayers, beside still graves. 

The house heard crow calls at first light

the lowing of the cows, the horses’ neighs

the stirrings in the house, the men still yawning

as they carried the fresh water and the feed

out to the barn, the women, coaxing back

the slumbering woodfire in the iron stove, 

measuring out the flour for the biscuits, cracking 

rafts of eggs, retrieving bacon rashers 

from the smokehouse, slicing through the slabs 

of last night’s pie before they cleaned it all away, 

before the dinner bell at noon, before 

the men returned, laconic, ravenous, 

sunburnt and glistening with sweat

to stoke their bodies for long labor with their horses 

in the fields until the sundown, milking time.

Then grace, leftovers supper by lamplight, 

the Bible readings, early bed, exhausted sleep.

The house held visions in its bones:

young children bursting from the wide front door,

streaming through long pastures to the one-room school, 

the teacher keeping order and instilling 

righteousness and awe with lessons 

of our patriots’ valor, and of wonders far away.

The house observed the trimming of lamp wicks, 

the tinkers come to mend the broken pots,

the grinders come to hone the tools, the seamstress 

come to cut and sew the year’s new clothes for Sunday best, 

with last year’s clothes now set for every day.

The Bones of the House-2-

The house knew everything: that chipmunks bred 

their young beneath the porch and cats their kittens 

in the barn. Through tall windows, it observed 

the buggies go to fetch the mail and store-bought goods,

to carry family to the country church—

knew of the endless hours spent in pews, transfixed before 

pre-destination, before blame—Alone, it knew 

the well was poisoned, saw the typhoid’s toil, 

and bore the grief pent in its bones. 

It saw the buggies come and go: 

knew of the parlor visits, churchyard graves.

Until at last, past shoulders squared,

defying pestilence and drought—past 

brave veneer of pride, past shame, 

past secrets stored away—

the house’s bones grew old, its rooms bereft

except for mice who claimed the larder’s crumbs

as one by one, the family left, transplanted to the town—

the livestock sold, barns empty but for feral cats,

the fields gone fallow, loosened shutters 

clamoring against night winds that set 

the house’s bones to shivering, to hollow ache.

In the quiet at the end, the squatters came

then fled to their next fate-- 

Behind them, untamed wildfire left 

spent ashes of the house’s bones 

that slowly drifted through bare fields, 

beyond crow calls--to vanish in the rising light.

Joan T. Doran, New London, NH