Midsummer

 

I sit on a second-floor-porch
rocking chair with a book open in my lap.
Earlier I saw the dawn break
through a cloudy sky, and watched the sun rise.
Now I pull my consciousness
into the lettered world.
I set this day aside for the luxury of reading.
My awareness telescopes
between small and large plains
of being: words and birds.
My eyes follow the birds
flying back and forth from
the castle turret to the tree top
straight ahead of me. I pick
up their songs, a dialogue
I do not recognize.  Back to the book
where lines of type unroll and English words
lean forward into phrases and discoveries. 
This is a language I know well.
And this is the ideal midsummer,
When protests and letter writing
can be set aside for words and birds,
for flowers and feathered friends.

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright

© 2026 Susan L. Chast 

Midsummer at the Jersey Shore

 

I've been gone so long, I try to rush, but can’t.

My calves play “push and pull” with sand-soft ground

while soles thicken against each grain’s sharp sides.

The ocean wants me, too, enough to salt

my arms before I reach her moistened edge—

I smell and taste her as I lick an itch,

both hands too full of leisure things to scratch.

Already I breathe with the billowing

skirts of ocean twirling along the shore.

And I haven’t yet felt her cold and wet

between my toes, haven’t yet dared her catch

me, suck the ground beneath and swallow me.

At the edge, Ocean’s playing catch with Earth,

tossing both live and dead beings, mixing

them up with plastic and sea glass and foam.

I place my bags above the high tide line

and bow to both Ocean and Earth, then mark space

with blanket and books and water bottle.

Ocean and Earth and Sky intersect where

I stand—between, among, and inside them—

lining up bottle caps and sparkling stones.

This midsummer meeting needs no fire or drums.

Its mystery predates evil: To stay

in relationship no matter what comes.

Posted for the open link today at What's Going On?

          

          Written 7 June 2017 for my prompt (an eon ago) at Poets United.

My blog poems are rough drafts.   

Please respect my copyright. 

© 2017 Susan L. Chast, revised 2026

Honoring chairs

 

The chair I’m sitting on
to reach this keyboard is
tall enough to help me stand and
short enough to take off shoes and socks
and put them on again.
It has wheels to roll into positions
necessary for each task,
and even for sitting at the kitchen table
next to the plain wooden kitchen chair.
It nods to the kitchen chair
and to the shorter armchair
in burgundy upholstery
that sits by the window.
“Ah,” it ruminates, “I’m definitely superior
to stationary chairs who don’t have
my metal infrastructure.”
I laugh at it, and let it think so.
It’s comfortable enough for writing,
but not for reading or for eating.
Each chair carries its own stories.
It takes more than one sitting place
to make a home.

 

For Sherry's prompt "Ordinary Things" at What's Going On?  

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright

© 2026 Susan L. Chast 

Juggling truths

 

 

 

source

When presidents can
juggle truth with
impunity, we lose
touch with reality.
We hear strategic
lies.  Witness lies
about what happens
in wars we engage.
Witness more lies of
omission, such as
Trump’s decree that
we must remove
displays of slavery
and other shameful
deeds from federal
parks, a decision
the courts now uphold.
History disappears.
 
How can children learn
To evaluate truths?
How can they learn
enough of the past
not to repeat it?
Now they learn that the
measure of genius
is getting away
with illegal things.
Instead, let’s teach them
to listen to elders
as well as classroom
lessons, to question
public displays.  Let’s
teach children radical
juggling of received
words, images, and
story for seeds of
truth they can plant in
future generations.

 

For my prompt "Re-writing History" at What's Going On? 

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright

© 2026 Susan L. Chast 

Inner well of peace

 

 

I used to access an inner well of peace,
but it has been blocked.  Lately, not even
silent Quaker worship can take me there.
I worry that I won’t drink from the well
again, and, if not, the turbulence of
time will win another victim who is
on the edge of her rope, trying to swing
into the healing nectar of quiet. 
 
But let me conjure the place for you and for me:

A pathway appears in a pine forest,

leading to a clearing with a few large

boulders from an ancient pre-Biblical ice

age.  Green grass surrounds them rising

through the pine needles and stone.  A few

mushrooms and moss hug tree root

and ground.  In the hush, under bright sun,

water wells up amid stone.  A stream trickles

down a slight slope.  This is the sacred place

where, still or moving, the body fills with peace

and the heart is open to drink from the well. 

 
Here is the place of rest and restoration
I long for.  This poem takes me there, where 
I fill with the healing nectar of peace and
quiet.   Sun, rock, trees, and water still
my restlessness and silence worrying.
Let me sit here, mid-poem, and rest awhile.

 

For Sumana's prompt "A sanctuary within" at What's Going On? 

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright

© 2026 Susan L. Chast 

Stepping Stones

 

source

They are almost all gone now, the books that
were my stepping stones into feminist  
thought and practice.  In my last downsizing
I let go of books I’ve internalized.
I cannot quote chapter and verse,
but books were the openings I needed,
row by row, from The Feminist Mystique and
Sister Outsider through surprising novels
way back when I was tiptoeing into feminism.
 
Books introduced me to pioneers who
made it clear that the personal is political,
that breaking isolation can be the first
step to empowerment, that there
is no universal capital W women,
but instead a complexity of race
and class and gender. Books carried me
into lands my upbringing didn’t prepare
me for, but with which my heart resonated. 
 
I’m still on those stepping stones, though
books now are more often than not
paperless eBooks and on-line poetry.  
Stepping is still the image even as I slow
down.  Openings still occur, and no closing
is in sight.  When I tire of reading, learning,
and experiencing, I will be ready for hospice,
but by then, my own books or poems may be
stepping stones and openings for others.

For Mary's prompt "Openings and Closings" at What's Going On? 

The Feminist Mystique by Betty Friedan, 1963

Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde, 1984

Surprising stories and novels like The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gillman (1892) and The Awakening by Kate Chopin (1899).

 

My blog poems are rough drafts.

Please respect my copyright

© 2026 Susan L. Chast