This week's poet is Melissa Fey. Melissa is a an officer on the Friends of the Limberlost board. She has worked for Smith Brothers Furniture for over 40 years and is active in the community. The poems are inspired from the Ceylon Covered Bridge and Rainbow Bottom. 


History and the Covered Bridge

Built of large wooden beams
             Harvested from mature trees.
The River ran under it
             Although the purpose was for others to cross over it.
Abandoned as a source of transportation
             Now used to capture memories.
Once used to span the River
             Now its graffiti spans time.
An new kind of history it preserves
              As young people record their written words.

Exp: "we'll be young for the rest of our life"
                                       Caroline, Mandy, and Christine


Haiku

A magical world
Selfie inside Sycamore
Outside life goes on

Hiking the Bottom
Our presence detected
Jays and Squirrels protest
We continue undeterred

Leaves from Trees

Leaves, leaves big and small,
falling from trees short and tall.
Falling, suspended in space,
not being in their natural place.
Their colors of green, red and gold,
trees preparing for Winter's cold.
Littering the forest floor,
protecting the tree no more.
This year's season in the past,
their abundant life didn't last. 

Jeanne E. Akins is our featured poet this week. She lives in Geneva with her
husband Charles and is a tour guide at the Limberlost Cabin.  



Where did Gene's River Go?

River gone!
Where did it go?
Someone moved it long ago.
No fishing here.
No boats.
No bridges.
No skinny-dipping.
No rolled-up breeches.
Earth alone now makes a bed
For this river's sod-filled head.

Gene is gone!
Where did she go?
With her river long ago.
Yet she lives.
With books
With words.
With photographs
With stories told
And though the land is rearranged,
Gene kept her river never changed. 

Cover Our Losses

Make the bridge twice over
Look back and forth through time
Once a bridge with purpose
Now it bridges grime
Once it was important
Serving as a way
Now it serves scribbled words
"Sweet Nothings" on display
Standing on this covered bridge
Sadness covers me
Left alone it would be gone
Except its memory
The sense of loss by renovation
Is suddenly profound
Love isn't always better
The second time around



​My Haiku Hike

Bright sunlight;
Peeking, piercing revelations
In my eyes

Silhouetted trees above:
Branches raised to frighten me
I am small

Snapping twigs:
Happy cracking, popping sounds
​made by forest feet

Enjoy the poetry created by Laura Schwartz at Shari Wagner's poetry workshop on October 12 2019: "Writing Poems at Ceylon Covered Bridge and Rainbow Bottom" 

Laura is the head librarian in Geneva for the Adams Public Library System and is active in the community.  

Cathedral

Before entering the woods alone along
resolved riverbed, I hid my bicycle behind
the creek's ridge. Softened under worm

moon, braced for nettle's greetings, I hopped over
the cracked clay mud, cottonwoods enveloping canopy.
In the shade I would walk those hours alone, eating

flower heads, drinking from stems, chewing roots,
whispering my poems. Now together under hunter's
moon, this arc, this sanctuary still silences me.


Bottomland

My shadow passes 
easily through the days as
curious clearweed,

beneath hunter's moon,
this giant gray sycamore,
or sanctuary.

Where cacophony
of the crickets, birds and frogs
become our prayers.


Sanctuary

The open mouth

of a giant sycamore swallowed
us whole, on our bellies we slid
inside its sanctuary to explore each

other, our breath as quiet prayers
inside the silent weeping walls
of this dark bottomland cathedral.

Phosphorescent life alights against 
wood's porous lined decay. Our quiet
communion an intimate sight in this

cavernous emptiness, enveloped
in warmth looking up into the trunk's 
two mysteries that we embrace

as one of our own.





 

Photos were taken October 12 2019 at Rainbow Bottom along the Wabash River.