The boat is afloat!

Edna St. Vincent Millay - Life Magazine photo, March 1941

Already the last day of August!  It's been a fruitful summer so far -- eleven poems! I'm afraid I've left the wonderful boat in dry dock for a while, but I've been busy writing and revising.

"Heartburn", my parody of Millay's sonnet, "Time does not bring relief; you all have lied" is now online at the British quarterly humorous poetry site, Lighten Up Online.

Just mailed in two sonnets to the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award competition.

If you click on the blue link for the 2010 winner, you'll see my new Wikipedia page!  Thanks, Alex, for the entry.

I've also submitted some work to The Hudson Review, Sewanee Review, The Dark Horse, The Raintown Review, The Lyric, Comstock Review, and to the Helen Schiable Shakespearean and Spenserian Sonnet Contest. Wish me luck!

My poem, "Intervals", will soon appear in Measure and also in the anthology (available for pre-order) Forgetting Home: Poems about Alzheimer's.

My humorous sonnet, "On the Folly of Persuasion" has been accepted for publication in an upcoming issue of Light.

I finally got new glasses -- I was resorting to the magnifying glass for small print!

"High from the earth . . ."

Bernard F. Chandler, Sr. with daughters Cathy and Debby

On this sad day, the one-year anniversary of my father's death (thirteen months after my mother's passing), I am reminded of something Emily Dickinson wrote in a letter to her friend, Mrs. Samuel E. Mack, in 1844:

"The Dyings have been too deep for me, and before I could raise my heart from one, another has come."

Below is an uplifting poem by Emily Dickinson, about fathers, faith, hope and love, despite life's difficulties.


High from the earth I heard a bird;
He trod upon the trees
As he esteemed them trifles,
And then he spied a breeze,
And situated softly
Upon a pile of wind
Which in a perturbation
Nature had left behind.
A joyous-going fellow
I gathered from his talk,
Which both of benediction
And badinage partook,
Without apparent burden,
I learned, in leafy wood
He was the faithful father
Of a dependent brood;
And this untoward transport
His remedy for care,—
A contrast to our respites.
How different we are!


-- Poem #1723 (Emily Dickinson)


Missing you, Daddy.  ♥ Cathy