Earlier this year, poet Richard Blanco issued a challenge to Boston Public Radio listeners: Write an acrostic poem about your town, and share it with us. Many listeners did, capturing snapshots of their neighborhoods — depicting everything from the changing of the seasons to gentrification to climate change.
Blanco, the nation's fifth inaugural poet and author of the new book "How To Love A Country," shared his favorite entries Monday.
CONCORD by Bruce Morgan
Curious
Or befuddled,
Not sure which,
Come the motley tourists by gasoline to the bridge.
Originally they may have been lit up in history class, but
Rare is the traveler without hunger or the need to pee.
Ducks float by, impervious to everything.
SANDWICH by Evan Lehrer
Shingles of vinyl upon a historic home
Are a farce says the Town, regardless of color or tone
Nothing but cedar or clapboard decrees the Commission.
Does material palette truly matter in pursuit of their mission?
When history and architecture are so much more,
Is something lost at history's core?
Choose the material that is sure to ensure
Historic preservation is more attainable than before.
REHOBETH by Nancy McCarthy
Right to farm community, ignore the rocks big as your barn.
Eden east of Providence.
Hives of honey and howling coyotes.
Owls' oration fills the dusk.
Black ponds of bog iron.
Oak and cedar lurching in swamps.
Thick with brambles.
Habitat for the endangered. Hold on to this.
East Greenwich #1 by Elise Beland, 11 years old
All
Seas
Turn
Greatly,
Rapidly
Even
Elegantly.
North,
West,
In each direction water singing a
Crashing, rhythmic
Hymn.
SOUTHIE, by Paula Murphy
So I left you because how else could I breathe?
Once your awful spell undid me, should I marry a fireman, policeman, Indian Chief, child’s play? As Ballet was my thing.
Under different skies I was reborn, bloodied but new.
The world looked and felt different, open, opening me to what was possible.
How did I survive this Irish ghetto, the taunts, the stone throwing, and the awful? You wanted me to be you.
I still speak your language, your tongue wraps around mine.
Every day I remember but do not look back. Only dream of such a past.
AYER by Jacqueline Unch
Army base closes, and
Yuppies appear --
Exurban sophisticates
Raising craft beers.
Unnamed Season,
Bethel, Maine
Birches still shy of their still bare branches. The brook about to break its frozen silence.
Every hosta’s chartreuse soul sleeping unleavened in the ebony heft of earth.
Tendrils touched by the sun, wait tentatively to take to their walls.
How hollow yet holy the world seems, holding itself still within itself—
even the evergreens won’t whisper into the ears of this elusive season—
like a secret, nameless lover I long to meet and bloom into love.
—Richard Blanco