ORDER OF PERFORMANCE
Written by performed by Lisa Ann Reilich (unless noted otherwise)
Music arranged and performed by Gary Bushee
Images from Moo’s Corner at Walter’s Beach Nature Sanctuary and taken by Lisa Ann Reilich unless otherwise noted.
FARMER’S MEDITATION (for Sirey) — May 2021
MY TIDAL CORNER — November 2021
WHERE THE CHERRY FALLS — January 2022
DUSTIN — February 2024
HOMING SIGNAL — September 2024
AND THE LONE LITTLE ROSE SMILES — October 2024
NOT TWO — January 2025
WELCOME HOME (for Mellie) — January 2025
LEMON SQUARES (for Maiah) — March 2025
A TIME TO SOW — April 2025
MY LITTLE FARM — April 2025
THE CLOUDS IN OUR EYES — September 2025
THIS TOO SHALL PASS — November 2025
********
FARMER’S MEDITATION
(for Sirey)
6 am, Sun is rising.
In repetition, meditation.
Goats gaze on, amplifying
6 am, Sun rising.
Farmer rises, now aprising
predictably, the situation’s
6 am, sun-rising
repetition: meditation.
Lisa Ann Reilich
May 2021
******
MY TIDAL CORNER
~ after “My California” by Lee Herrick
Here, a string of dancing solar dragonflies keeps the mudflat shoreline lit.
The Blue Jay and Squirrels talk about scattered seed,
falling spruce cones, and the gravity of the coming frost.
A group of four juncos at a makeshift
table in the decaying russet leaves discuss
the quality of light in December versus June.
Here, in my corner, the waves remember the Welder from Detroit
—- whose strong visions still mar and reflect off the bank’s rockweed covered stones.
And planted orchard trees in partial blossom, cherry, apple, more. Here in my Corner
we sing out glistening periwinkles from their smooth glossy shells with such accuracy
you’ld know we’d done this before. In dusk, the lapping waves
tire of themselves and begin to draw to sea, quieting by this time of day.
In fall, we hope for less of light and more of warmth.
In my Corner, you can watch the sun go down,
like in your daydreams, on the backs of the solid firs and naked poplars,
timeless centuries, one with the bounty of plenty and shadow,
needles piercing night, and the other brushing with tentacles haunting
and the promise of yesterday and tomorrow
Here in my corner even the mushroom and orange fungi are free
arriving spontaneously twenty-four hours a day and
always packed into the woodchip paths and margins.
The rooted perennials eat well, the homeless eat the sky.
Here, in my corner, everywhere is eternity,
everywhere is always, everywhere is gone,
everywhere is a glimpse of what may be. Less confederacy.
No death in the present,
Better nourishment for the souls.
In my corner, free breath and free return.
free coming, free going.
Free songs from seabirds and poets, those
wandering bodies of light.
Lisa Ann Reilich
November 2021
******
WHERE THE CHERRY FALLS
~ after “I Come From A Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen” by Kari Gunter-Seymour
https://poets.org/poem/i-come-place-so-deep-inside-america-it-cant-be-seen
My daughter tells me her nose is not as cute
and perfect as mine – rounded, curved, turned
just so. She muses where noses come from and why
her lot was not to inherit mine.
I tell her when I was her age I dreamed of a nose
that was straight, dreamed harder of the day I would
find money to change my features, straighten my nose
the way my parents had tried to straighten my teeth,
but were thwarted when I not-so-accidentally threw
my retainer out along with the remains of my school lunch
resting uneasily on the throwup-pink hard plastic cafeteria tray,
both glad to be freed from the hostile surface.
And I remember the name for my nose from childhood,
the nose my 15-year-old daughter so admires now:
Cherry-picker Nose.
Which at the time sounded to me awfully close to
Booger-picker
and I could never quite shake the association,
although I did often wander through the cherry orchards
of my Upstate New York Lake Ontario backdrop
and wonder –
If a cherry fell,
what would it take
to look up just so
and catch it
on the tip of my nose?
Lisa Ann Reilich
January 2022
********
DUSTIN
It’s winter. I’m pouring warm water
from a blue plastic 5-gallon bucket
brought by sled down the frozen February
drive into Dustin‘s little white-enameled
metal bathtub. It’s just above freezing,
steam rises as I pour. I spy Dustin soiled,
unkempt nearby. Deftly scooping him up,
pinning his wings to quiet his instinctive
struggling, I carry him. The elder Pekin
duck is more crippled each day. Winter
has not gone gently for him this year.
Dustin can barely walk lately, he hobbles
more than waddles. In my arms he resists
and then, as I release, he spreads his wings
wide as the clouded sky, landing
with a plunk in his bath.
My mood is heavy today, a cast-iron skillet
crashing through the ice and sinking solidly
into the murky bottom kind of heavy. I’m in
the muck with the hibernating carps, pressure
of tears not dropped, steam not rising, tugging
at my chest. I’m wondering if the water will be
too warm and then, in moments, the crystal clear
bath turns as murky as my mood. But Dustin’s
whitening feathers and ecstasy in motion makes
twin mood and dirtied water not matter.
There’s something about watching this once spry
duck, just moments ago so old, in his winter bath bliss
radiating joy that has me smiling. I’m witnessing
a farmyard miracle. The crippled duck looks brand
new. He looks whole, where before he was broken.
An old duck turns young again for a few minutes
of sheer splish-splash flashing bliss in the frozen
February sun. Wings spread and flap, neck cranes
down with arching grace. Even semi-blind, his bill
finds the water. And up again he preens and cleans
and dances again, and again. With each of his ecstatic
movements my smile grows. Heavy grows
light, lifting my frying pan mood right up out
of this murky dark and chilling ice.
And there’s something about knowing that his days
are numbered, that for him today might be the last,
that makes his joy, his bliss, so much more catching.
More contagious than the cold.
And if that’s all my life amounts to, carrying
Dustin over to a warm winter bath for a few
moments of joy in his otherwise debilitating
elder duck life, well, maybe that’s enough.
Maybe that’s enough.
Lisa Ann Reilich
February 2024
********
HOMING SIGNAL
Outside my window, the lone Guinea hen sounds
harshly — without end — her homing signal, her beacon
of distress. Last night her mate was gone,
a fantastic cacophony of strangulated flight
I did not witness, but was jolted from sleep to mourn,
the echoes of loss marked in time by the deep rumble
of barking from the guardians — too late
and a fenceline away.
Now she sounds her distress endlessly while trapped
in a way she could easily be free from if her efforts
to get out led her over — rather than through —
the fence she paces, back and forth, wearing the grass
down with each pass.
The wayward bird pair refused to return come sunset.
Now with sunrise the remaining flock calls,
safe in their pen thirty paces away — “We are here!
We are here! We are here! We are here!”
They seem to be in a childish game of “Marco! Polo!”
yet the stakes are so much higher —
survival.
I read the Guinea fowl mate for life, and to be honest,
I don’t know if the two that stayed out late to take in
the cool wind and the waking shimmering stars were cocks
or a mated pair. But it is sadder to imagine this farmyard
tragedy has left our fenceline hen without her mate, so
I fix my mind on that and weave that into the movie
I am making in my mind.
And aren’t we like this in a way — so limited by our myopic
perspective we stare endlessly pacing the fences before us?
We sacrifice our life for small moments of unfettered joy — except,
when we cry out our homing signal, is there any one to answer
and guide us home? Is the wilderness we have wandered into
so deep there is no one left to bring us to safety? No one
who remembers we were once theirs? Or perhaps we all
have so lost our way, we don’t remember we are lost, we
no longer recognize the other’s distressed call?
I will rescue the lone Guinea hen from her imaginary bonds,
return her to the flock — she will not recognize me as the one
who saves her from the fox, from herself. In truth, she is wise.
Who is the Farmer, who the Fox, depends only on the day.
She will only feel relief to be away from the fence, the farmer, the Fox,
the danger. To be one with her preordained flock inside a new fence,
there is safety —
Perhaps a slow awareness that something is missing,
someone is missing, descends. Her partner is somewhere
beyond that fence still perhaps? Assuredly, ironically
she is right. She will call. She will call and listen.
Again she calls. Again she listens.
The answer will be only the stillness
in the wind.
Lisa Ann Reilich
September 2024
******
AND THE LONE LITTLE ROSE SMILES
Salty ripple sea waves wash across
“Elephantie”, “Auntie Stone” — and the jagged
ledges no human yet has named — until
they are submerged, hidden and held in
water green blue and yellow-green
rockweed hands.
Here on this high mossy bank, insects I don’t yet
know the names of are making sounds that say
“Summer” — while the wind caresses the downy
hair on my forearms, the hollows of my worn
cheeks, the knots buried in my aching shoulders,
easing away last week’s cares, next year’s
worries with the warming kisses of right now.
One lone and little red rose waves bravely
in the breeze. Next to me, she smiles at
the sea below — and at me — her face
open, friendly — expectant
of ensuing play.
I sit on this weathered welcome worn bench
of wood and iron — Your girlish laughter, rising
deep from our shared years together, reaches my ears.
Glad memories play out before me of younger youngster
you, your found driftwood staff held powerfully firm in hand —
Queen of the Stones, Fairy of the Sea!
And I catch myself wondering if in these sparkling
ripples blanketing the shoreline of now if there is even
one particle within them that once caressed and held you or….
maybe — in a way I can’t fathom —
caresses and holds you still?
Then, I have to laugh — just a little — at the me
who looks for you outside myself in this familiar
yet strange sea below and beyond me, with
such questions, such imaginings
and wandering wonder …
For if it is true that these waves, lapping this year’s
heather before me, that held you in the time of then,
hold you still … why, then my little Fairy Queen,
the same is true of my own salty ocean within —
with its rhythmic ebb and flow, dark unnamed shores,
hidden caverns of my womb, pads of my fingers
once soft, now calloused with age and labor, filaments
of my hazel eyes which beheld the oceans of your deep
brown ones while you drank deeply from my breast — I
wiping your troubled brow clean til you laughed
with the wind and the moon, dangling your feet
from the silvery stars of our sing-song dreams.
Yes, nothing is lost, my Child!
At least at last I know —
Nothing is lost
that is
loved.
Oh, you — Fairy Queen of these Ocean
Stones, these Sparkling Waves — you are
forever held in all you — we — ever touched,
held in all that ever touched,
beheld and — Yes —
all that has loved,
still
loves
you.
The open-faced little rose nods and nods. She
smiles upon us all — playing and swaying
free in the harmonies, the melody,
the discord and concordance
of time’s entwining winds.
I, beholding the little lone rose, smile
and nod, too.
Lisa Ann Reilich
October 2024
******
NOT TWO
The trees are not two, nor
are they quite three;
The birds are not two and
so they fly free!
The mushrooms — not two,
nor you, nor me:
If only we knew THIS, we
could truly breathe —
In….
Out…
Not even as One, but
something like “We”,
So let us more than “be” —
Let us rest, and …
“Inter-be”.
Lisa Ann Reilich
January 2025
******
WELCOME HOME
(for Mellie)
The sun gleams and shatters
on the chop of the waves as
this ferry takes me home to you
through the stiff deep cold cutting,
rolling and rocking like a childhood
once mine, alive now only in my mind —
always tied to one another by water,
always heartbeats away and across
the water, my love, no loss is possible
when we are one with the water’s deep
embrace, now home, never without
the love that remains.
Lisa Ann Reilich
January 2025
*******
LEMON SQUARES (for Maiah)
It took me five whole years to eat lemon
squares again, to allow them to be made
in this kitchen which once held you and all
your edible love. Between puckering tongue
and ceiling of my mouth, tart sweet sunshiney
yellow holds the telling taste of your one-corner-
higher-than-the-other-smile, your sea glass heart,
your Puck-like mischievous eyes.
And also, now, the crushing sadness of your presence
gone — yet here — the emptiness of the kitchen
tiles — how they miss your weight holding them
down — how they struggle now not to fly loose into
the sink — the absence of your footfalls on our waiting
stairs — how they echo still with your toddler to teen
pitter patter out of time — the disappearance of your
Marlboro Blacks mixed with vanilla perfume — swirling
still whenever incense smoke drifts
heavy in the house air.
Now I taste it all — coming through my mouth, across
my tastebuds, sliding down, into my rock-weighted
fist-tight chest, through my stinging clouded, yet still
parched eyes —
the taste of how you alone could keep
my night sky from falling armed only
with lemons, eggs, sugar and a whisk
in our little orange enameled pot.
The taste of heartbreak. So delicious.
Like the stubborn taste, touch,
scent of this salty sea that lives
deep inside, now breaching —
They taste just like you.
Lisa Ann Reilich
March 2025
********
A TIME TO SOW
On Halloween, we planted brown bulbs
in dark chocolate soil tinged with marine clay
by the steel-gray icy sea. Pining for you while
we dug, the last russet and red maple leaves
drifted with ease to our knees, falling, lying
gently on the browning surrounding sod.
On discarded packaging, colorful portraits of promise
sang their story in vibrant yellows, pinks, reds. We
could almost feel the color swimming, squirming inside
the hard brown lumps held in our hands, compact bundles
of magic, mystery, suspense. We buried them with a blanket —
Earth sprinkled with your ashes — as if wee children
putting their newly lost tooth under a satin pillow, wonder
and faith glinting in their eyes, knowing, believing
the Tooth Fairy would surely come.
Now it is late April. From those deep dark holes filled
with hope, covered with faith months before, cheerful
colored glee is waving, nodding, giggling joyfully.
The sprites and fairies have kept their promise.
And I will keep mine. I promise to keep planting
the so-called dead, promise to keep faith they will
return each Spring after their Winter slumber. I stand
tall in my granite watchtower rising from ancient ledge — I
will be first to witness your return, wrapping me gently
in fog coming in on lapping waves, fog rising as tall
as — taller than —me from this salted sea.
Until then, each Halloween — I promise you — I will plant
brown bulbs, hold them warmly, firmly in my earth-stained, calloused
hands — before tucking them in with a goodnight kiss — keeping
faith your vibrant colors will warm me, wake me
up again come Spring.
Lisa Ann Reilich
April 2025
******
MY LITTLE FARM
~ after “My California” by Lee Herrick
Here, a pink backed light keeps the drive lit, while
the Guinea Hens talk about the treasures in manure,
left-over grain, and the wariness of the fox. A group of four
goats at a ground-leveltable in the pasture discuss
the quality of fir boughs in December versus July.
Here, on my little farm, the gravel drives remember tires
and hooves whose pitter patter still bank off spruces
and maples on either side, and apple trees in partial bloom.
Here, on my little farm, we fish out live kids
from the wombs of does with such accuracy
you’ld know we’d done this before. In the horse paddock,
the equines tire of themselves and begin
to roll from boredom five times a day.
On my little farm, we hope for less of drought and more of rain.
On my farm, you can watch the sun come up in the east
and then go down, like on your farm on the edge
of the woodline, the edge of the sea, laced with the bounty
of seaweed and salt air, green crabs, and elusive lobsters,
wandering deer and mourning dove calls.
Here, on my farm, clean air and water are free,
the Farmstand is open twenty four hours a day and
always stocked, the ground and woods have no nails in them,
the wildlife eat well, the wandering lost eat free apples and berries
washed down with fresh milk.
Here, on my little farm, everywhere is friendly,
everywhere is expansive, everywhere is inclusive,
everywhere a safe haven. Less confusion and despair;
no prison in the land, and no lines in the sand
better nourishment and comfort for our family.
On my farm, free laughter and free ease.
Free spirits, free minds. Free songs from the Blue
Jays and Ravens, those winged bearers of light.
Lisa Ann Reilich
April 2025
******
THE CLOUDS IN OUR EYES
I sit by the Sea so she can cry for me.
Her mist-laden fingers caress the parched
corners of my eyes — plying — softening these
outer edges of my frozen stubborn shores, her
homecoming sticky with salt, sticky —
like late-night Midway cotton-candy fingers
— and just as sweet, pervasive, persistent —
sweet/salty stickiness doing for me what I
cannot
do
for myself.
Her incoming clouds, resting, reflect —
— refract in pools now swimming, now
gathering, now spilling, softness blurring,
warming my cool — now flushed — cheeks,
loosening, thawing, melting my intractable
scarred depths through which I bear witness
to this, oh, so heavy — so deeply, deeply loved
Mother of a World.
I come to the Sea so she might cry for me.
I sit with the Sea, and she cries with me.
I rest by the Sea — I hold (let go) and —
I’m held.
Lisa Ann Reilich
September 2025
*********
THIS TOO SHALL PASS
~ by Lisa Ann Reilich
This ache in my chest — smooth rounded boulder crushing
my sternum — grinding it to white bone meal before
my wondering gaze, preventing even breath;
This salt in my eyes, stuck and stinging in unseen
nooks and crevices, never falling, burning slow instead;
This six-year molar — bottom-left with silver amalgam
filling — that has been breaking, failing in my mouth for
close to 50 years — that I can’t bring myself to give up to
extraction, preferring it as it is — ragged and ripe — rather
than disappeared from, or further altered, in my jaw;
This spine that straightens more slowly and with more
stiffness each progressive early morning, requiring me
to be gentle, rest flat longer, so it can tenderly nurse me,
ready me for each new ponderous day;
These knees that seem to want to bend backward
rather than forward, creaking at the hinges, buckling
just when I need them to carry me forward most;
You and your dimpled crooked smile, your puckish
twinkling light animating dark chocolate eyes one could
backfloat in endlessly — pools that have refracted more
pain than I ever imagined possible for you or them to bare;
My Mother, my Fathers, my Aunts, Uncles, Cousins — my
Babes — along with this stoically sad solitary alabaster rhinoceros,
splashing aimlessly in zoo puddles for our amusement, and
the not-so-cuddly Panda next to her behind bars;
This sturdy farmhouse my hands built — my refuge, shelter and jail,
along with this land I dutifully tend, caress — and sometimes curse,
home/land that will inevitably be swallowed by well-intentioned
oblivious summer folk — or the sea — or both, one quickly after
the other, if God indeed still persists;
These endearing goats I’ve birthed, of mucous wiped clean, each
named with fresh joy as they take their first breaths — simultaneously
by me enslaved, my beloved indentured servants who feed
my disappearing body, just as I feed theirs, day
after twin forsaken/blessèd day.
It will all pass.
Just so.
Just now, our Great Pyrenees, Moonshadow, just a puppy herself —
our Guardian in training — from the pitch-black maple and fir
forest-swallowed driveway edge sounds her faithful, sharp and
rumbling, insistent instinctive alarm:
“It is passing! It is passing! Just now! There it goes!”
So near the wild edge of it all, and yet —
so simultaneously trapped, betwixt,
between —
so seemingly far.
It’ll pass, all, yes. I know.
But for tonight,
let it stay —
Let it all linger fully, traced in cool damp Earth by my still nimble
fingertips — scent of moldering rusted leaves and pine pitch
in my nostrils, taste of wood smoke under my tongue, the feel
of you, embraced deeply, in my waiting welcoming arms.
Let me wrap myself in all
their indescribable collective unifying heaviness on this chill
pre-winter night, lending me temporary comfort — a weighted
patchwork denim cloak soaked in nourishing marrow. May it
give me strength for that day yet to come.
It will all indeed pass. I know. Yet, please —
just for this night —
Let it all hold me, suspend me in this woven hammock
of liminal space and time, sway me
gently in soft tattered blues away
from that certain breeze to come —
and stay. Let it —
Stay.
Lisa Ann Reilich
November 2025
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