Anne Higgins at Ragged Edge

On August 5, at 6 p.m., Anne Higgins will read at the Ragged Edge in Gettysburg, followed by an open mic. She is a phenomenal writer who you do not want to miss!

Anne Higgins grew up in West Chester, Pennsylvania. She teaches English at Mount Saint Mary’s University in Emmitsburg Maryland. She is a member of the Daughters of Charity, and is a graduate of Saint Joseph College, Emmitsburg, the Johns Hopkins University, and the Washington Theological Union. She has had about ninety poems published, in Yankee, Commonweal, Spirituality and Health, the Melic Review, the Centrifugal Eye, and a variety of small magazines. She has given poetry readings at local bookstores and colleges, and was invited to give a reading at the Art and Soul Conference at Baylor University in February of 2001, and at the Calvin College Festival of Faith and Writing in 2002. Garrison Keillor has read two of her poems on his radio show “The Writers Almanac.”

She has published five books of poetry: At the Year’s Elbow, Mellen Poetry Press 2000, republished by Wipf and Stock in 2006; Scattered Showers in a Clear Sky, Plain View Press 2007, Pick It Up and Read, a chapbook from Finishing Line Press 2008,

How the Hand Behaves, a chapbook from Finishing Line 2009, and Digging for God, from Wipf and Stock in 2010. A sixth book, Reconnaissance, is due out from Pecan Grove Press in the late fall of this year.

Poets' Corner Writing Group

I recently had the pleasure of visiting the Poets' Corner at Cross Keys Village, the Brethren Home Community. What a fabulous group, brimming with poems and smiles! Here is some of their work. If I missed any of you, please send me some poems! :)

I have a dainty doggie Daisy
so I cannot be lazy
she sits with leash to walk
she looks like she could talk
take me out or I'll bark like crazy

By: Marion Conboy



Yippee! Summer is here!

Amusement parks, people enjoying the rides
Roller coasters and even water slides
Picnics in the park fried chicken yum-yum
Potato salad, watermelon and lemonade.
With picnics even the ants enjoy some
Oh! so many memories of fun for me

By: Ruby Parr



Lost Forever!

I've lost it, I've lost it. I didn't think I would!
It happened so quickly I didn't know I should
Have insured this gift, so many years I've had.
It gave me lots of happiness and now I am so sad.
It's gone forever, that I have been often told.
My memory's gone, now that I've grown old!

By: Ruth Beard



After Beethoven's 6th

There for a moment you breathe of fresh air,
As red and yellow flowers bend to and fro in the wind,
But in nature all is not peaceful and tranquil,
His music repeated several times and then the
Original rhythm with its slow agitation as
If a distant storm is gathering to engulf the man
The fury of the storm does not last long for as the
Sun returns to the sky, and the clouds dissipate.
The storm is over and the air has a new freshness.
Again the flowers do their dance, birds sing again.

By: Mark Lehman



Unwritten Songs

There are times when my soul sings
Words of praise, words of love,
Words of the greatest wisdom;
But I don't get them put on paper.

Unwritten words, lost forever;
Such sheer brilliance,
Such world understanding;
And I was too busy.

Real life interfered;
Those precious thoughts
Were fleeting long before
I could take pen to hand.

By: Nancy H. Smit




February 2nd

On a Pennsylvania hill
There's a rodent they call Phil.
He'll look outside
And will decide
What winter weather will.

By: Ivan Mechtly




"Fall is in the air"

Leaves, corn husks, fodder
They all go sailing by,
Propelled by forceful winds
Who can tell us why?

They swirl around corners
Going so many ways
How, then, do they end up
On our front porch day after days?

By: Evelyn Mechtly



A Hospital Symphony

There is a nightly symphony in a hospital
With call buttons sounding, phones ringing,
Voices calling, doors changing
Not "Eine Kleine Nachmusik"
But loud, disturbing sounds
Of humanity helping humanity
And we thank God for the clamor.

By: Ruella Funner




Betty Boop, Mom, and Me

Betty Boop used spit curls.
Mom and I did not.
We all wore stockings
And I wore jeans too.
Mom and Betty did not.
Mom and I wore glasses.
Betty Boop did not.
None of us had beauty marks.
Betty had a little voice.
Mom and I did not.

By: Ethlyn Bonnie Lehman



Good Advice

"Now that you're eighty
act like a lady.
Sit up straight and please
don't wiggle--
for goodness sake,
don't even giggle."

That's what you said
when I was three.
Please, mother, let me be me.

By: Betty May

Featured Reading at Lancaster Barnes & Noble

On Wednesday, July 27th, at 7:30 p.m., I will give a poetry reading, followed by an open mic at the Lancaster Barnes & Noble. If you can make it, I look forward to seeing you there! Bring poems to read during the open mic if you'd like to. Thanks to Le Hinton for the invitation to read!

Barnes & Noble
Red Rose Commons
1700 H Fruitville Pike, Lancaster, PA 17601

Poetry Critique in Hanover

On Monday, July 18, at 7:30 p.m. the Hanover Poets will meet to discuss poems. Please bring yourself and a poem to share, with copies. Or just bring yourself. We meet in the cafe at Giant on the north side of town, off Eisenhower Drive. I hope to see you there! :)

Summer Poetry Initiative

As we enjoy the summer weather and get outside, we experience many new sensory details around us. This month I published poems by poet Anne Higgins. In her poem, "Cherry Tomatoes," she reveals a sensory experience of sitting in a garden and eating cherry tomatoes. Any sensory experience, no matter how simple it seems, can move us to want to write about it. My challenge to you throughout the month of July is to post a poem a week here on my blog. You can also email me your poems, and I can post them on here myself. (bradyke@gmail.com)

Next time you sense something amazing in your summer activities or travels, take some notes and share your experience with us!

I'm looking forward to reading all the new poems of the season! :)

June Column

First published in The Evening Sun


I had never walked through a flower garden of poems until reading local poet Anne Higgins' work. She grows her poems, much like she grows flowers or tends the cherry tomatoes. She roots them in the earth of her experience and provides only the necessary supplements: water, sunshine, good intentions. Such fragrant bouquets of poems bloom from the simplicity of her images and ideas that her readers, as Ted Kooser writes in "Lilacs," "want to stand / among them, breathing."

In the following poem, Higgins encourages the reader to "pay attention to the ordinary details of life and how much delight resides in them." She places her finger on the pulse of these everyday objects to show how much life they exude, how much joy we can find in the present moment.

Tribute Poem


Praise for late sleeping day,
waking up without alarm,
for corkscrews,
corkscrew call of
yellowing lustful goldfinches,
butter,
opposable thumbs,
lusciously plush perfume
of viburnum
blooming in the woods
just now
just now.


Everyone can easily access Higgins' images, as they are rooted in our everyday experience. Though the poem reads as a meditation, it is grounded in the concrete. For example, my favorite line in this poem is "butter." By placing this on a line by itself, Higgins encourages us to experience butter in all of its sensory appeal: the rich taste, the greasy feel, and the morning scent of it. She rejoices in butter and encourages the reader to do the same.

In the last two lines, "just now / just now," Higgins asks the reader to focus on the present moment. Though life moves quickly around us like a whirlwind, taking a second to be conscious of our senses can fill us with joy and clarity.

Higgins calls the next poem her "ecstatic garden poem." The garden plays a major role in Higgins' body of work, and she credits gardens with much of her inspiration. "Cherry Tomatoes" was written during a retreat at the Carmelite Monastery in Baltimore. Garrison Keeler read this poem last August on "The Writer's Almanac" for NPR.

Cherry Tomatoes


Suddenly it is August again, so hot,
breathless heat.
I sit on the ground
in the garden of Carmel,
picking ripe cherry tomatoes
and eating them.
They are so ripe that the skin is split,
so warm and sweet
from the attentions of the sun,
the juice bursts in my mouth,
an ecstatic taste,
and I feel that I am in the mouth of summer,
sloshing in the saliva of August.
Hummingbirds halo me there,
in the great green silence,
and my own bursting heart
splits me with life.


"Cherry Tomatoes" shows us the power of immediate sensory realities. The simple things we sense in a moment can speak volumes about philosophical concepts. Even sitting in a garden eating cherry tomatoes can well our spirits with joy!

Anne Higgins is a member of the Daughters of Charity and teaches English at Mount Saint Mary's. She participates actively in the poetry community by reading and publishing her work. On top of her five books and about ninety poems published in journals, Pecan Grove Press will publish Higgins' next collection, "Reconnaissance," in the fall.

Higgins encourages aspiring writers to keep a journal. Though some years she fills numerous journals and other times it takes her years to fill one, journal writing helps keep track of ideas and makes writing more of a habit.

From time to time, Higgins will also participate in an online initiative to write thirty poems in thirty days. Inspired by this initiative, I have decided to start my own during the month of July. I challenge each of you to write a poem a week and to post it on my blog: http://poetlaureatehanover.blogspot.com. See the website for more details. Let's pay attention to the brilliant sensory experience of summer and record it in poetry!

May Column

First published in The Evening Sun

Last Sunday I had the honor of reading a poem at "No Greater Love," a memorial for the tenth anniversary of 9/11, held at South Western High School. To say the experience was moving is an understatement. The music, speakers, and presence of everyday heroes made for an incredible event.

I would like to give special thanks to Scott Fredericks for organizing the event and for including poetry, and Reverend Klaus Molzahn for imagining the idea for the program. As Molzahn said to me last Sunday, imagination is a powerful tool. I would also like to thank all the everyday heroes who serve our community and make it a better, safer place to live.

The following poem, which I read last Sunday, explores the role of a first-responder through an extended metaphor. I draw from a personal experience, of corralling horses that had gotten out in the middle of the night, to describe a first-responder's work and impulses. In the title, "Corralling Horses in the Dark," horses stand in for any of the obstacles one must overcome when trying to help others. It is amazing how often, as humans, we will "scrape our faces on the concrete of our own fears" in order to lend a hand.

Corralling Horses in the Dark


Something shuffling in the walls woke me
the cats staring at me, then the window.
What seemed at first a scuffle or a tapping
became familiar: horseshoes clapping macadam.
I thought of the storm, the gate, the large trucks
rumbling down a country road
at 5 a.m. with headlights blaring
and roused the house with ropes over my shoulder.
I became a concentrated version of myself,
a clear-headed, speed-heightened first responder
waking others, announcing my plan.
It was still dark as I chased hoofprints
in pajamas and muckboots,
imagining legs caught in barbed wire,
or worse, a horse frozen in a truck's headlights.

When one horse made a run for it
I dove for the gate,
legs covered in mud.
I imagined, instead, pants covered in ash,
the lives of our first-responders
whose boots tread other pavements:
firefighters, police, paramedics, military,
and the everyday heroes who respond
simply because another needs help.
Then, the gate became a face
and I imagined corralling my urgency
into one sprint,
one hand reaching,
one bicep flexing,
one body emerging
from the place of our haunting.
I imagined the repetition
of body after body,
my own limbs robotic.

First response stiffens each vein,
energizes each doubt that has sunk
to the pit of our stomachs.
Our instinct for triage is to know
if the face can remember its name,
feel its toes,
tell you where to find the wound,
where to find the others.

For the taste of freedom
horses will knock down fences,
and we will follow to save them,
even scrape our faces on the concrete
of our own fears
to know they are safe,
that they will heal.