A Spring of Roses

Weekly Work

What you find below may or may not be a completed work. It might be a poem or story I'm still working on, something that I feel is completed (or at least as good as it's going to get), or just an idea I want to explore. It may even be older work you've seen before that I want to revisit.

I hope you'll enjoy exploring my little site. Note that there may be links scattered within some work, so click away when you find them. I've linked many poetic terms to a Glossary of Terms as well. (The glossary will open in a separate window.) Any and all suggestions always welcome! Just click this link to my email when you see it:

Email: Tom Loper

Updated on 3/3/24

On a walk last year, I passed what used to be called the Talley Garden. Lynn knew the history of the Talley family and their 19^th century house and farm. I'm sure she told me the story over the years, but my memory has grown fallow and unproductive. Like all farms around here, invasive suburban houses have sprouted in the once-productive fields. I remember the garden clearly. I watched as construction equipment swallowed and spat out what remained of the perennials, preparing the ground for the three houses that now infest what was once Mr. Talley's love. But behind the three houses, hidden in a stand of random trees, is Mr. Talley's barn. I paused when I realized what the grey wooden structure was. It's hard to see as you pass by in your car. I'm not sure how long I stood looking.

It's taken much longer than planned, but a poem has finally grown.

Updated on 12/1/23

For my last reading at Words Matter Bookstore in Pitman, NJ, I did my newest poem, Habit. I picked up plenty of things arriving at this point in my life, but never the smoking habit. As my shadow grows longer behind me, I'm looking back at the past, not so much at the shorter dead end ahead. This memory of my dad smoking brought back happy thoughts, like the way he'd joke, "People complain about how hard it is to quit smoking. That's nonsense; I've done it hundreds of times!" As I get older, I've developed a habit of thinking about consequences.

Updated on 4/30/23

There's something new in the Nonfiction section called Rosie The Cat. I wish it was in the Fiction section.

Updated on 4/13/23

Two summers after Lynn died in April 2020, I wrote a piece I’ve never shared about something she told me during our last vacation in what she called “Undisclosed Location”—Avalon. I wrote the following when I returned to the tiny house we’d rented for at least two decades. It was probably a mistake; the writing and the returning sent me into a darkness I’d never known. But the day after I wrote this, my niece and her husband visited for the afternoon with their two precious children, and that produced a guiding light and a poem called Simon Says. And now I can share what has been hidden away.

I recently found a file on Lynn’s old laptop confirming things I’d learned and prompting me to share this now. I’ve included Lynn’s file just as I found it and placed it at the end of this disturbing piece called The Story of Margaret Elizabeth.

Updated on 3/30/23

There's been another school shooting, this time in Nashville. How can I stay silent? I've written a very short story, a satire called Blades of Grass. Please read the description, either before or after reading the story, found on the Fiction page.

Updated on 1/06/23

I wrote this poem two years ago tommorrow. It's an acrostic blank verse.

Updated on 11/11/22

Just a quick note to let you know The Jeopardy! Experience has been freed from its PDF prison and is dancing free in 10 separate, easily accessed chapters. Don't foget, you can now watch all three of Lynn's episodes from 1992! (Just don't tell ABC, 'k?)

Updated on 11/9/22

It has taken a long time, but I've finally uploaded Lynn's three appearances on Jeopardy!. The videos are very low quality; they were first recorded on a VCR the nights the episodes initially aired, then transferred years later to a CD.

Lynn, Lynn's family, and I gathered at her mom's house each night to watch the shows. I depended on the VCR's timed recording feature to capture the episodes, but as you'll see in the second episode, the timing wasn't precise.

I want to thank my friend Ran for converting these videos into a format I could use on my website. We've known each other since grade school. Because of Ran's help, you'll now be able to watch all three episodes of Lynn on Jeopardy!.

If you haven't read "The Jeopardy! Experience," I recommend reading the first (short) five chapters before watching the first two episodes, then reading chapters 7 & 8 before watching the last episode. Lynn's life—I guess everyone's life—is about things seen and unseen; my goal is to offer a glimpse of Lynn.

Another goal is to write each chapter in HTML and get it out of the current bulky PDF format. I call that housekeeping, which means that if my house is any indication, it may take some time.

If you get lost following the links above, you can find "The Jeopardy! Experience" and the links to Lynn's videos in the Nonfiction section of the Home page. Please enjoy watching. Click the email link—let me know what you think.

Updated on 9/11/22

In memoriam: Karen

I also have an essay I wrote about the trip Lynn and I took to the World Trade Center just three weeks before 9/11. It's called Dark Shadows. It can be found in the Nonfiction section.

Updated on 6/15/22

Just in case you didn't notice (look left), A Spring of Roses is available on Amazon. I've signed and numbered the first fifty copies. I still have some available; email me for availability. (They're the same price as the paperback.) I haven't figured out how to sign the Kindle version yet, and the darn scratch and sniff cover doesn't seem to work with the Kindle edition either. 🙂

Updated on 5/21/22

My goodness: it's dusty in here! I should at least run the vacuum.

I've been busy, but not with writing. I've been trying to put together a chapbook of poems. If I ever participate in more open mics, I thought it would be nice to have something professional-looking to show people. Maybe they'd even want to buy it. It's at the printer now and should be available for purchase by mid-June. Keep watching the fries. I mean pies. Skies! Well, you know The Thing I'm trying to say:

Watch this space.

Updated on 4/4/22

This is the start of a longer journey. It begins when I was small. I'm taller now. I want this poem to describe a journey. I don't know where it will lead yet. Like a surprising number of my other poems, it tentatively circles around religious images. The hall is a reference to C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity:

Hands also play a significant role in my poems lately: guiding hands, helping hands, a tiny, fragile, loving hand, a sister's reassuring hand on my shoulder, Lynn's hand reaching for mine.

I'm writing these days to explore. This poem will be a journey.

Updated on 3/3/22

But, as Steve Allen used to say, "with all seriousness aside," I had an amazing time. It was a helpful learning experience, so helpful that I'll participate again, should the opportunity arise. "Watch this space."

I want to express my deepest thanks to my family for their loving support. I love you all so much; having you there meant the world to me. Also, Keryl, Katie, and the krew at Words Matter made sure everything ran smoothly. Thank you all for opening up your store to [insert bias here] a needed gathering for lovers of words. It's true, they got it right: Words Matter.

Updated on 2/23/22

I'll be attending a poetry open mic night at Words Matter Bookstore in Pitman, NJ., on Tuesday, March 1, 2022, from 7:00 pm to 8:00 pm. It's a free event/spectacle. I'll be reading some of my poems for the first time in public, like, in front of people, not just Rose the Cat! I'm shooting for spectacular but I'm so nervous that I think it might be a spectacle.

Anyway, please stop by if you can. Words Matter is a beautiful little main street bookstore in a quaint little main street town. Click the image to the left for more information.

Updated on 1/30/22

Been out riding the range, so I haven't updated for awhile. I did complete "The Poet Lariat," which can be found in the Various Forms section. It's what I'm calling modern blank verse. Traditionally, blank verse eschews all forms of lowly rhyme. The recently added "Togethr We Must Stand and Start Anew" is traditional blank verse; "The Poet Lariat" is not, but it's stil in iambic pentameter with no set rhyming scheme. It's way shorter too, so take a peek.

If you're stuck inside and looking for a longer piece to read while waiting for football, or if you just want to read a longer traditional blank verse, please check out "Togethr We Must Stand and Start Anew."

Updated on 1/8/22

I 've added a blank verse poem to commemorate President Biden's speech on the January 6^th insurrection that he made on Thursday, January 6^th, 2022, in Statuary Hall at the Capitol. It's called "To Make This Go Away," and it can be found in the Various Forms section on your left.

Updated on 1/6/22

This is a screen shot from a Facebook post that I found hilarious. Poetry is all about words, and these words just roped me in. (Pun intended, of course.) But then, something dangerous happened: I started to think. I thought about the phrase “poet lariat.” A rope of words? On which end of the lariat is the poet? Who or what is being lassoed, and by whom? There are so many fun and interesting possibilities that come to mind, and it inspired the following untitled fragment of what I hope will one day be herded into a whole poem. Naturally, it’s in iambic pentameter. (Edits will appear as strike-outs.)

Updated on 12/22/21

Just Before the Fall

I'm not sure if this is fully cooked or not. Lynn is in the first stanza, her garden in the second, and Eden in the third. I couldn't fully remember the Adam and Eve story, so I decided to re-read Milton's Paradise Lost. That may have been a mistake (I'm guessing it's not a best seller these days), because from line eight on there are many references to Book 9 of Milton's epic. I especially like Milton's phrase 'spring of roses.' (By 'spring' he means plentiful growth, something some of Lynn's roses do just before the fall.) Other words that allude to the Eden story are tempts, mist, right and wrong, eve, demise, and severed.

Satan sneaks into Eden by taking the form of a black mist, then takes possession of a sleeping snake. Adam and Eve have separated ('lest harm befall thee severed from me') so they can get more work done. Satan finds Eve alone, tempts her to eat the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (right and wrong), and the rest is, well—history.

Everything in my poem is just before the fall, when there's joy and innocence and growth.

Updated on 12/2/21

Three weeks ago, I mentioned how stray thoughts often take time to develop into a poem or story. I was thinking of fall and the time just before a/the fall/Fall. (See update made on 11/12 below.) It’s been a few weeks now, and I thought I’d let you peek at my process of building a sonnet.

The phrase “just before the fall” is what I want to build on. Since three things came to mind, I’m using a stanza for each subject, then a final stanza to tie the three different but similar things together. An English sonnet seems like a natural vessel.

I’ve put Lynn in the first stanza, just before a fall. When we should have been doing things around the house, we somehow always found more “important” things to do around the garden. During Lynn’s many hospital stays, the staff would write the patient’s goals on a whiteboard in the room. Lynn’s was always “Work in the garden.” That was her simple goal: get me well enough to work in my garden. The hospital is just after a fall; the joy is just before a fall. The fall—Lynn’s unseen fate—always shattered the joy.

The second stanza will be just before autumn when the light is subtly changing, and the leaves are just starting to swirl. The roses always have an almost manic spurt of growth in late summer, just before the fall, as if they can sense the changes about to come. They seem to rejoice in the cooler evening temperatures. Of course, a garden can neither sense nor rejoice; that’s the gardeners anthropomorphizing. This is as far as I’ve gotten. Things might change, like not using passive voice, or using a different rhyme.

The third stanza’s still forming and will be about the oldest garden just before The Fall.

Updated on 11/25/21

I ’ve posted a couple of blank verse pieces in the Various Forms section, so I thought I’d better describe what blank verse is. Blank verse poems are unrhymed poems written in iambic pentameter. See? That was easy! Okay—maybe I should go over iambic pentameter, too. You may have heard this term before; it has to do with what’s called a poem’s meter. Even though poetic meter can get complicated, I don’t think it needs to be from the reader’s point of view. Most of the time, a poem’s meter goes unnoticed (unless it’s poorly done), so it’s not that important for you as the reader to learn all the intricate details of meter in poetry to enjoy a poem.

So head over to the Various Forms section to find out about iambic pentameter. And when you’re reading my two (attempted) examples of blank verse, remember (to paraphrase Nick), "Just let the words…flow…over you."

Updated on 11/21/21

I 've added more images, stories, and links to the Rye section of An English Diary. The new images are at the bottom. Each one will open to a larger image that includes a longer description of the scene. As wonderful as Rye was/is, our visit to Lincoln (no, NOT Nebraska!) was even more amazing. It may be a little while to finish up that part of our adventure, though. But winter is coming, so the garden will be asleep and I'll have more time to spend on this web site.

Updated on 11/20/21

I found my grandmother's antique beehive clock in the basement last month. It was lying on its side and hiding behind a stack of books on a shelf. I worked on it for weeks, cleaning and blindly tweaking the unfathomable movement. But now it works. The loud tick-tock of the pendulum at first distracted me. It seemed almost manic—too insistent. Now it's soothing. The world's been turning without me until now. The Beehive Clock

Updated on 11/12/21

I like to do crossword puzzles. I’m not very good at them, but I’m very persistent, and I do use a pen. Puzzles that are hard, like the Sunday New York Times, will keep me busy for days. It always surprises me when I come back to a puzzle that I’ve nearly given up on and suddenly find I know the answer to clues that seemed impossible days earlier. I think it’s the way our brains work. Data that manage to get through the firewall of our senses and find their way into our minds sometimes just pull up a chair and relax for a while. Without knowing it, some of those crossword puzzle clues sit for days, probably sipping vodka martinis, until one day a clue will stand up, stretch, and tap on the inside of my head. “Hey! Let me out!” (I should mention that this method doesn’t work for clues about opera or popular culture. I’m illiterate in both.)

One of the things I enjoy about crossword puzzles is how the clues often involve how a word can have many different meanings. For example, a four-letter word for “Pop star.” Both pop and star have several meanings: father, soda, a sound, to burst; celebrity, celestial body, to headline, to mark with a star. My first thought is to write “Coke,” but it could easily be a current entertainer. The answer is “nova:” a star that goes pop. This thought had to sit and collect itself for a day. When it suddenly tapped on my brain, I thought, “Well, of course!”

Ideas for poems and stories sometimes work this way with me, too. Rarely is an idea fully conceived from the start, where it’s just a matter of getting thoughts on paper—well, screen. Most often, I’ll begin to follow what I think is the obvious path only to find myself lost in a tangle of meanings. When that happens, I’m learning that it’s best to jot down some thoughts and let them relax for a few days. For example:

It’s Fall. My wedding anniversary is coming up, so I’m thinking of Lynn, Lynn who often fell. I’ve also been talking with my cousin, a builder of churches, in all its meaning: a carpenter-theologian. Fall has a religious meaning. I see a connection between the three concepts of the word fall, but it’s still vague, still forming:

The poetic form is a sonnet: three stanzas, one for each idea, and a couplet for the union of the three. The key phrase is “just before the fall”—before the season, before a fall, before The Fall.

I’ll let this relax in my head for a while and we’ll see what develops. Maybe I’ll post snippets of lines as they come to me. Maybe I’ll go do a crossword puzzle.