Sample Poems by MaryEllen Letarte

---

War and Lunch

Lean words spread like soft cheese
and ground ham on rye.

In short gasps we laugh, the sound saves
this black May day. We are not versed for war.

Guns doffed by young and old kill
old and young. No one knows the facts.

We are not told. Kin kills kin,
some live with pork and beans.

War is sold as the way for peace.
Do we know where peace is?

We meet for lunch, head to head
strife we mix with bread, with beer.

John plays the mouth harp, we hear him
-- from the hills, from the lake,

the soup grows cold.

---

Old Women are the Best Travelers

Old women move from country to country,
like tireless trams they crawl up hills, traverse
the lakes and greet each other passing by.

On the move, they keep on moving,
without a thought to hold them back
they move to rap and rat-a-tat-tat.

Old women wish old men would stay
in their own countries and play their games
without sending their children to war.

---

Begin Again

She writes to fill the air with poems,
doesn't slow her pen when words
jump off the page or verses shake.

Her rolling syncopated shake
flings commas & adverbs from her poems.
Nouns tap, verbs hum. Shaker-like words

endure. We feel the chorus of words
surround us with a blissful shake,
forever changing us and our poems.

When words shake into poems we begin again.

---

The Hunger and the Gatherers

From the corner of my eye
through my picture window
a cardinal flies by
then a blue jay, jay-jays,
a chick-a-de, de-dees.
A turkey opens his beak like a shovel,
scoops seed down his gullet.
I rap on the window.
Tom turkey flaps
trots into the woods.

My father would have shot
that turkey dead,
then cleaned and cooked
the meat for turkey soup
after giving me a feather
for my collection.