Poem of the Week By Erine Leigh
Biography:
Erine Leigh served as poet laureate of Portsmouth, NH 2015 to 2017, leading the community of mostly school children to appreciate their own reactions to social conditions, past and current, within a confident and authentic poetic self-expression. Erine grew up in a literary family, where many of her relatives were also poets. She writes a poem a day for the past 12 years.
Backstory:
Poem was a rumination on the changes in my life and the changes on the world stage, in symmetry more than in contrast.
No grapes grew upon the lush and creeping vine,
No apples flourished, plump-formed upon spreading limbs.
The mountain laurel hardened its own ovoid buds; for the fairest iris, I waited in vain.
It was more than my set-back body while pain and numbness prevailed.
It was more than my flagging stores,
More than my attempts to work as before that failed.
It was a brooding sense throughout the year that evil, like worms that sever roots, poisoned the soil.
Rivals of just ideologies stalked the very air waves, and no one knew how to resist or what to say.
The animals sensed it as they stopped in their tracks and stared,
Then whirl’d to scatter to a safer place.
Women were gathered like cattle, bribed, menially contained for later use.
Their psyches crushed and packaged, persuaded away from their worth.
While men pretended to dislike an outcome, yet padded their pockets with ill-gotten gain.
Look who has the reins of our nation in their grasping hands,
Look what fools we breed when greed is the template for our every action.
Even the poets desire to be on stage, to be more than needed and heard,
But also lauded and praised.
Yet without the grapes and apples, without the pollenating bees, what chances without beauty and flowers, herbs for taste and trees for shade, mushrooms for messaging and a deep seated reverent perception for natures ways?
We shall see sterility cover our country and in the years to come a defiant inner revolution. Tend to the best in your selves and waste not your strength punching at pillows. It’s a thing of the moment to stay kind, the moments counting us down to our piths, through our rinds. Find your peeps, your loves within reach, makers rise!
I will be in the land of dense fog and high tides, a generative nest to chase ideas and crack open the last egg of my life; come seek me there and we will walk beneath eagles, watch for a whales breech, take note of the preservation of species that interact in harmony, instead of ours which harms-many.
We may eat simply and respond to elemental forces, wind and water, not the voices of a news report, filling us with images of violence.
We will instead focus on participation in moonrise and the lifting, setting, and colorful variations of celestial lights.
The fruits of our labors appreciated, peace held within our minds
And within cooperative communities, we’ll adapt to challenging times.
© 2025 Erine Leigh
This is more than a poem. It is a portrait.
Here is a revolutionary artist calling out to expose injustice, to inspire proper response, to see in all things the interwoven delicacy of justice, the beauty of life on earth, and the brutality of the nature of humanity. There is a certain peace in the realization that we are aware of what occurs in the world. It provides the opportunity to be active in the outcome. It is our responsibility to step into the struggle with strength, courage, compassion, and understanding. On this page, Erine brings this and more into clarity.