Tag: Jane Edna Mohler

Fences Take by Jane Edna Mohler

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Fences Take

Here the land’s been torn
then sewn into a quilt of plump

lawns and tight fences—
corrals for spaniels and retrievers.

Yesterday a doe and fawn crossed
the road into our yard, confined

by neighbors’ fences on three sides.
What the doe jumped, entrapped

the fawn. She raced
back and forth for hours, panting.

We had to stop watching.

Today the morning chill is cut
by a shimmer of rank heat rising

from the one spot where the grass
is tall and grows freely.

*

Jane Edna Mohler is the 2020 Bucks County Poet Laureate (Pennsylvania). Recent publications include MacQueen’s Quinterly, New Verse News, and Verse Virtual. Her collection, Broken Umbrellas was published by Kelsay (2019). She is Poetry Editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. www.janeednamohler.com

Three Poems by Jane Edna Mohler

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Rare Beasts

The surface is broken
by my boat,
the hard heads
of turtles, fish stretching
their limits,
and dead branches
that have nothing left to defend.
Then a snake.
I understand
those better-safe-
than-sorry turtles leaping
from their logs; curious carp
that briefly visit our dimension.
But this snake,
this nonchalant
swimmer with such composure
decides that I’m
of no concern.
Yet my heart pounds,
as when holding my breath
for scans of my organs,
or listening for what to expect
while counting backwards.
So when do I get
that devil-may-care spirit,
the glassy eyes
of that scarce species that never worries?
Maybe that snake’s heart
beat a little too fast
when he saw me coming.
And why do I hope that’s true?
Our kind
is always crashing
in the calm between two thorned
shores: the threat
we feel or the threat we are.
I raised my paddle high.

*

Ornithology Lessons

I.

My yard ripples
with blue jays, a throng
of little tyrannosaurs

screeching and shuffling
seed. Before consulting
Peterson’s, I offered

apple and peach parings.
All spurned. Now I know
those jays want berries.

Is it a trivial thing to learn
what pleases
another?

II.

Whenever Mother deemed
some effort worthless,
she’d wave an arm and say,

That’s for the birds.
With no propensity for parenting,
cowbirds leave their eggs

to the care of others. Yet
how those fledglings
strut, it’s all

sweet feed
and what’s right
now.

* 

She’s Always Hungry

Winter arrives with the blank
face of a runway model, languid

and sheer as the chiffon scarf
that drifts across her shoulders.

Bored by the heat of living,
she abhors the goo and mess.

Old German named her
the time of water.

She makes my lake crack
and groan. That crisp

look she gives, so alluring
you’ll ignore the chilly

clues of flat infatuation.
You don’t stand a chance.

An empty retreat that never serves
meals; she wants us to learn

the difference between hunger
and greed. Praise the rare blue sky,

the weak brushstrokes of charcoal
trees, but don’t fall for those sharp

bones that grin from under
her waxen skin. Prepare

a bed of crocuses, anxious
to spring from her grave.

* 

Jane Edna Mohler is the 2020 Bucks County Poet Laureate (Pennsylvania). Recent publications include MacQueen’s Quinterly, New Verse News, and Verse Virtual. Her collection, Broken Umbrellas was published by Kelsay (2019). She is Poetry Editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. www.janeednamohler.com

A Stone’s Story by Jane Edna Mohler

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A Stone’s Story

I was a hunk
of rock you could barely
lift without grunting.

Remember that hot beam glaring
from my core? I shivered
a fever you’d give your right hand

to feel. That white degree.
I pulsed through the earth’s sharp
shell, or did I plunge

from a wrathful sky?
No matter.
It’s the story that counts.

I was all you’d expect
from a god, not the dull stone
you think you see.

That wasn’t me, folded
into the warm row of a tilled field,
the comfort of worms as neighbors.

Not me, spending decades mired
in mud, scored by the blade
of a brainless plow.

*

Jane Edna Mohler is a Bucks County Poet Laureate Emerita (PA), 2016 Winner of Main Street Voices (PA), and second place winner in the 2023 Crossroads Contest (MD). Latest publications include Gargoyle, Gyroscope, One Art, River Heron Review, and Sheila-Na-Gig. Her collection, Broken Umbrellas, was published by Kelsay Books. Jane is Poetry Editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. See www.janeednamohler.com for more information.

ONE ART’s Top 25 Most-Read Poets of 2023

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~ ONE ART’s Top 25 Most-Read Poets of 2023 ~

1. Abby E. Murray
2. Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
3. Betsy Mars
4. Donna Hilbert
5. Linda Laderman
6. Alison Luterman
7. Julie Weiss
8. Robbi Nester
9. Roseanne Freed
10. Karen Paul Holmes
11. Heather Swan
12. Timothy Green
13. James Diaz
14. Jane Edna Mohler
15. John Amen
16. Barbara Crooker
17. Jim Daniels
18. Susan Vespoli
19. Sean Kelbley
20. Susan Zimmerman
21. Kip Knott
22. Jennifer Garfield
23. Margaret Dornaus
24. Paula J. Lambert
25. Gail Thomas

ONE ART’s Top 10 Most-Read Poets of September 2023

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~ ONE ART’s Top 10 Most-Read Poets of September 2023 ~

  1. Jane Edna Mohler – Feast
  2. Valerie Bacharach – Betrayal
  3. Julie Weiss – Dream in Which I Stop to Say Goodbye
  4. Jessica Goodfellow – Milk
  5. Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer – Three Poems
  6. Dan Butler – Four Poems
  7. Matthew Murrey – Kindergarten
  8. Tammy Greenwood – Evacuation
  9. Robbie Gamble – To Anna, On Her Retirement
  10. Zeina Azzam – Losing a Homeland

Feast by Jane Edna Mohler

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Feast

I love the fat of summer, flabby
green weeks when weeds lap

over the vague rims of back
roads, just as batter overtakes

a griddle. Poplar leaves wave
wide as cows’ tongues slurping

syrup-thick air. Here, summer spits
when it talks, gulps cold milk

and wipes a hand across its mouth.
I want to stuff myself full

with warm fields, hills tender
and round as yeast rolls bathed

in butter. Oh to scoop the ooze
of June’s soft eggs, consume

this season, lick its juices, chew
salty bacon days.

*

Jane Edna Mohler is a Bucks County Poet Laureate Emeritus (Pennsylvania). She won second place in the 2023 Crossroads Contest. Recent publications include Gargoyle, River Heron Review, and New Verse News. Her collection Broken Umbrellas was published by Kelsay. She is the Poetry Editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. www.janeednamohler.com

Two Poems by Jane Edna Mohler

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Dad Had Levels

Some say death is the great equalizer.
Sam Colt claimed it was his forty-five
caliber Peacemaker. Dad had tools.

Dirt crumb by dirt crumb, he labored,
his heavy oak level grading a perfect
slant beside our home.

Even then its wood was serious,
dark as barn plank.
Dad liked to make things line up.

Now his Sears Torpedo Level gleams,
its small bubble still directing
perfection from inside an amber tube.

I keep his cement trowel too, blackened
steel, the worn handle smoked with time.
Dad wanted everything smooth.

These tools rest beside red pens and my pica
rule from a typesetting job, where daily
I made nearly invisible adjustments to type.

*

Forbidden Colors

The pool luxury
of cerulean
skies, buttercup
full-belly gold

both light dispersed, segregated
by wavelengths.

We used to file colors
in separate
folders, as if one gender
owned them.

And so much talk
of color
fractures like ice
when we speak
of skin.

Physicists define forbidden
as a state that won’t
conform.

They labor,
that we might perceive
red-green
or blue-yellow.

Those forbidden colors exist,
but their differences
align
in perfect opposition.

They leave a void
for want of our better vision.

*

Jane Edna Mohler is the 2020 Bucks County Poet Laureate. She was the 2016 winner of Main Street Voices. Recent publications include Gargoyle, River Heron Review, and Quartet. Her book, Broken Umbrellas, (Kelsay) is available on Amazon or from the author. She is the Poetry Editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal.

Mortal Lessons by Jane Edna Mohler

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Mortal Lessons

Back in the garden, I coo
for everyone in my best mother

voice. I’m sorry you all must grow
here. The best light is tight

up to the road where exhaust
and honking would stunt

lesser beings.
You are brave

while rodents gnaw
your reedy wood, run

roughshod over your home.
Scent of blood,

the tin musk of tomato limbs.
Here salvation smells

like a delivery room
in a war zone.

Caterpillars creep
up your legs

even as parasites drain
their green jelly.

Garden, you fight
despite my neglect

and the laws that force
one life to steal for another.

*

Jane Edna Mohler is a Bucks County Poet Laureate Emeritus (Pennsylvania) and a two-time Pushcart nominee. Kelsay Books published her collection Broken Umbrellas (2019.) Recent publications include Gargoyle, American Journal of Poetry, and Quartet. Jane is Co-Editor of Poetry for the Schuylkill Valley Journal. She has been on faculty of the Bay to Ocean and Caesura conferences for multiple years.