Poetry & Writings

Supposedly they toil not,
yet each spring they must force their way
through sodden earth
and winter's corrupt tangle,
all for nights of chill uncertainty.

Nor, supposedly, do they spin,
though to see one open full to the sun
in recognition of its allotted afternoon
is to see Lot's wife hesitate in flight
and spin around, the flames

reflected golden in her skin,
her garments splayed outward in the wind.

© 1998 Jean LeBlanc
– first published in The Kerf, May 1998

If you were just pretending to be tame
to lure the lot of us into your swamp,
to send another handful of destruction's envoys
to a watery grave

you'd have had us cold.
We even stood at water's edge,
ignoring all dangers, to watch you overhead.
How little we know.

How little we imagine,
susceptible, as we are, to moments
of sheer delight –
so seldom do such moments cross our paths –

sanguine moments
when we allow ourselves to forget
that seas have been incarnadined
for sights less real, more fleeting, than ours of you.

© 1998 Jean LeBlanc
– first published in Barkeater: The Adirondack Review, Summer 1998

Our fourth-grade teacher
transported our minds
from wintry Massachusetts
to a wondrous place called Mexico:

A man, plowing his field one afternoon,
noticed a little puff of smoke
coming out of the ground. The next day
there was a mountain in his back yard.

Our imaginations embraced her hyperbole.
We all ran home, sat in front of windows
overlooking trim back yards,
and waited.

© 1997 Jean LeBlanc
– first published in Bellowing Ark, November/December 1997

Forget apples.
Eden's forbidden tree was hung
with ripe peaches, downy skin
almost as soft as Eve's,
flesh dripping with juice, drops of which
would have gathered in the corners
of her willing lips, run down her chin,
dripped onto a nipple –
how could she not tell Adam?
How could he not taste?

© 2008 Jean LeBlanc
– first published in The Final Lilt of Songs, the 2008 poetry anthology of the South Mountain-Watchung Poets, Inc.

Forgive me, little bird. I was like you,
roasted on a spit for a fat king's meal.
That's what made me crave you: my marriage bed,
Henry, his gamey leg, so many smells
I closed my eyes and thought of birds aloft.
Now I must have you, must strip tender flesh
from bone after delicate bone, hoping
every wing I tear at with my small teeth
will lift me, every breast I crack open
will reveal, there, where your heart used to be,
my answer: that yes, a son will be born
alive, healthy, no flaws to draw all eyes
to my sins, and that I will live to see
the pious, sober, slender king he'll be.

© 2008 Jean LeBlanc
– first published in The Final Lilt of Songs, the 2008 poetry anthology of the South Mountain-Watchung Poets, Inc.

Just a little molecular alchemy, and poof:
you are a frog. This isn't some fairy tale,
or maybe it is, maybe the fairy tales
were right all along. So there you are,
squatting in the reeds, no princess in sight.
It's March in New England. You really feel
the cold; it slows you down. Half in, half out
of the water, a coat of slime for protection.
Gone is that tremendous frontal lobe
once swimming with half-remembered poems.
Gone is the memory of that August
you drove cross-country, the night in Utah
you camped in an orchard near the Fremont River.
Around midnight, you woke to the sounds of mule deer
munching apricots. In the hours before dawn,
even though you were warm, content, and unafraid,
a line from Yeats kept running through your head:
But is there any comfort to be found?
It's as if you knew some day
you'd turn into a frog, and everything else
would turn into a snake, or heron, or snapper,
or a kid with quick reflexes.
But for a few genetic twists,
you'd be that kid instead, unafraid of death
especially when it fits in your pocket.

© 2008 Jean LeBlanc
– first published in The Final Lilt of Songs, the 2008 poetry anthology of the South Mountain-Watchung Poets, Inc.

—for Harold

I'm not convinced you believed in heaven,
but the woman who buried you says you did,
so I'll address this to you there, and not
the other place, because any god you believed in
must welcome sinners. Are you happy?
Is your pain gone, heart and back and lungs
like you're eighteen again? Addictions vanished,
no more need for booze, marlboros, heroin?
I hope heaven is like your life
before Vietnam, prison, motorcycle crash,
before your daughter died
and you learned about it in the paper.
Before your favorite lake drained itself,
taking with it a hillside stripped of trees.
Can you fish in heaven? Year 'round, no license,
all day, adrift in a small boat, never too hot,
no threat of rain, bass eager to bite,
trout flinging themselves at your feet
until you tell them, hey, guys, it's no fun
without some challenge, and like a miracle
they're back in the water, just out of casting range,
except for the one who nibbles at the bait.
Not that I considered you a sinner, by the way.
The worst things you did, you did to yourself.
You didn't seem to believe your friends loved you,
didn't know what emptiness your death would make.
We woke up to find, goddamn, another lake gone dry.

© 2005 Jean LeBlanc
– first published in Main Channel Voices, Summer 2005

From this camera angle, the pitcher is
backlit by the low sun setting over
the left field wall. The camera zooms in
to capture his expression as he
looks in for the sign. He straightens up. Before
he goes into his wind-up he spits
through his teeth, a perfect loogie,
compact mucus core with just enough moisture
to make the whole thing gleam, a miniature
Milky Way of spittle. This galaxy
of droplets sparkles, swirls in the sunlight
in slow motion, slowly dissipates
around the pitcher's boyish face and halo
of blond hair. Angels dancing on a pin
are not more lovely than this moment.
I wish I could do that in my job, spit
as I prepare to hurl poetry
at my students. Here's the wind-up, the pitch:
"Yeats!" the umpire cries. I see what's needed next:
"Frost!" The crowd goes wild. And here's my moment,
when even the most hostile kid in back,
the one who asks why Comp. II is required
for criminal justice, even he's impressed
as a ninety-mile-an-hour Wordsworth
comes straight toward his head, and for an instant
he doesn't know what hit him, a sonnet
has knocked him on his ass. And I savor
that flash of anger in his eyes, knowing
I made him think, at least once. If only
teachers could spit, Emily Dickinson
hidden in the webbing of our gloves,
Whitman keeping us loose between innings.

© 2007 Jean LeBlanc
– first published in The Community College Moment, Spring 2007

Three hundred miles from home
a friend gives me a foxglove plant,
nearly as tall as I am, in full bloom.
Each silent bell mouths a little oh?
to my pretense of thanks.
It becomes a thing I must leave behind,
a burden of beauty. It becomes
impossible to forget, turning my thoughts
soft summer purple with regret,
making my heart race with guilt
as only foxglove can. Some nights now,
in mid-winter, I imagine, as I try to sleep,
a red fox come sniffing at the dead plant,
the abandoned stalk long dry,
the clump of earth frozen around useless roots,
the plastic bowl, a trace of human scent
which makes the fox crouch low,
take one last look around, and bound away,
leaving paw prints in the new snow
and taking with her the least-understood of gifts:
nothing.

© 1998 Jean LeBlanc
– first published in Barkeater: The Adirondack Review, summer 1998

To be honest, gravestones tell us nothing.
Here in the mountains of Vermont we can read
the south-facing side of the Smith family marker
and learn that Perley, son of D.W. and Ella,
was killed on July 4, 1894, by the explosion of a cannon.
We cannot know if he awoke that morning
with a sense of dread, if he shrugged it off as nerves
over his part in the festivities .
Will I fire the cannon off too soon?
Will I flinch at the sound?
Or was it on a dare that this sixteen-year-old boy
stood close enough to feel the boom take hold of his heart -
Should I cover my ears, or is that sissy?
On the same face of the same stone we can read that
Perley's brother Winfield, at age 19,
had died in January that same year
beneath an overturning load of lumber.
A winter loss, a summer loss - was each felt the same
by Ella, who lived another thirty-six winters,
or D.W., who lived another five July Fourths beyond her?
Their dates are carved in the west side of the stone,
a stone cooled by the morning shade of maples,
the afternoon shade of cedars.
That is all we can ever know.

© 1999 Jean LeBlanc
– first published in the Journal of New Jersey Poets, spring 1999

at a dandelion seed,
parachute of vegetable silk
meant to catch the wind and ascend,

float to new worlds, new fields,
mingle with other dandelions, and let fly
a new generation of seeds.

Always the wind
is a willing partner in this affair,
as if flower and weather each knew

the other's desires.
But this is about you
looking closely,

close enough to count
the translucent eyelashes
that crown each seed,

close enough that your breath
sweeps a seed away
on its journey,

or perhaps so close that, when you exhale,
the seed stays where it is, and you
are carried to that other world.

© 2004 Jean LeBlanc
– first published in the Kerf, May 2004

and she was at its center. She knew
because she saw the ring of it,
horizon to unbroken horizon,
with every airborne inhalation.

The trampoline pung-punged
its backyard assent to her vision,
confirmed their alliance
(which of course placed it, too,

at the center of things)
and assisted her surveillance.
They were in North Dakota,
the whole world was North Dakota

and she could see it all -
with a good mid-jump twist
she could see it all in one breath -
take it in, flat as it was,

and jump again, and breathe,
and spin. Then jump straight up
and let the world below
revolve for her.

© 1995 Jean LeBlanc
– originally published in the Lullwater Review, fall/winter 1995