The Mad Poet of the Year blog posts share the poetry of a long-time Mad Poet. This year-long appointment provides readers with a deep dive of the writer’s work and thoughts on poetry. We are thrilled to have Lisa DeVuono serve as the Mad Poet of the Year for 2024.
Take A Stand
Last season’s dried hydrangea puff
came out of hiding from the snow-covered flower bed
tumbleweeded down Betsy Lane
past the ice mound blocking our mailboxes and driveways
landing right next to Harry, the neighbor’s new foster dog
who had decided to pick that moment
to lie down in the middle of the street and take a stand.
What could we all do but put down our shovels
laugh at this simple snapshot
a young dog and an old flower side-by-side
both waiting for Spring to melt Winter away.
This poem is quite simple and speaks to the wonder and comedy of a moment. It came to me several years ago, it may have been before the pandemic.
I was outside shoveling the snow, like so many of our neighbors, and I saw this dried hydrangea puff sputtering and tumbling down our lawn. At first I was confused, questioning its presence out here in the dead of winter under all this snow. Then I was amazed at its stamina which was much more than my own on that day. My neighbor was trying to walk his foster dog Harry down the snowy street but Harry wasn’t having it and decided to lay down in the middle of the icy road.
Within minutes, the puff ended its rolling journey at Harry’s side. I took a mental snapshot of the odd pair, this young pup and this dried up hydrangea flower, and wrote a poem about it that same day.
The print “Ghost Dog” was one that I had already completed several years before. When I looked at it again, I saw both the fluffiness of the hydrangea and the shadow of a dog both emerging at once.
Life brings us beautiful and odd reminders to pause and to notice the connections around us, no matter how ordinary, obvious or blessedly unexpected.
Lisa DeVuono is the 2024 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County. She was one of the founders of It Ain’t Pretty, a women’s writing collective that performed locally. She produced multi-media shows incorporating song, music, poetry, and dance, including Rumi in Song at the Sedgwick Theater; and Whole Heart Home, and Breaking Open Breaking Free, part of the IceHouse Tonight series in Bethlehem.
She led creativity and poetry workshops and has worked with teens in recovery and cancer patients. She wrote a peer-based curriculum Poetry as a Tool for Recovery: An Easy-to-Use Guide in Eight Sessions for facilitators working with persons living with mental health challenges.
In addition to the full-length manuscript This Time Roots, Next Time Wings, her poetry has appeared in the Mad Poets Review, Paterson Literary Review and the anthology Grit Gravity & Grace: New Poems about Medicine and Healthcare. She is the author of the chapbook Poems from the Playground of Risk published by Pudding House Press and was the recipient of an honorable mention in Passaic County Community College’s annual Allen Ginsberg Contest.
Recently retired, she has worked as an administrator, librarian, and lay chaplain.