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.
Shoveling
Mom is on the roof again.
Her broom cuts through
soft layers of new snow
sweeping the white wetness
close to its edge.
Bristles push powder
up into the blue sky
so it seems like it’s snowing
all over again, flakes come together,
fall apart, disappear
in different directions.
She is tending her own garden,
raking life's patterns
into the impermanence
of Now.
This is the time
for clearing things away,
for simplifying life.
Sort through the debris,
the heavy weight
of what no longer matters,
and find joy
in the emptying
of the day.
One of my fondest childhood memories is of my mother crawling out of my bedroom window to step onto the roof of our row house in Northeast Philly. At first, I was afraid for her, fearing that her strong bull-headed “ness” might lead to a slip and a fall and then where we would we all be without her? But I reasoned that panic away because she only ventured onto our individual porch roof and not the long-tarred canopy that covered our thirty homes.
In any season, her first task would always be to sweep the dirt away like any good Italian immigrant who wiped their front steps with bleach. But in winter, she scooped the clean white fluffs of snow, froze them into a ball and then hours later, added some flavored syrup to make homemade snow cones for us. What an ordinary miracle of delight.
This poem is a tribute to her and her fearlessness, her unique way of handling a problem, her determination to get a job done. It’s also a reminder for myself about impermanence, how things change, how they get swept away, and where I might find joy amidst any kind of debris or burden that crosses my path.
As we move through this new winter of our lives - where we might feel frozen and without a sense of hope - perhaps there are moments of joy left to discover in the melting away, the preparing for Spring, and the deep emptying of what no longer matters.
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.