Fireside Poems

A poem for Halloween in which the Salem witches return to Boston to run the trolley cars.

Hiawatha's childhood, from his infancy to his rite of passage to manhood

A reading in honor of Indigenous People's Day. The construction of an Ojibwa birch-bark canoe, showing both the traditional materials and methods handed down through generations and the relationship of the craftsman and his culture to the natural world. The superb functionality and beauty of the canoe.

A poem on bird migration and on the care God takes for our well being.

A sonnet on autumn and the mystic splendor of the moonlight.

A poem melancholia, the mental illness we might call massive fourth-stage clinical depression. The love, pain, bewilderment, and frustration of the family and friends of afflicted person.

A poem on Florence Nightingale

War and the natural world. 9/11 and the need for nature and poetry. Medieval and early modern European warfare

An excerpt from Evangeline, Longfellow's story of separated lovers. This passage is set in the Atchafalaya Basin, still the home of the Cajuns.

The growth of the soul seen in the shell of the chambered nautilus.