Sample Poems by Martha Deborah Hall

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Last Year and the Year Before

What I did today, where I drove to, what I listened to, learned from, teared up over, where lights grew bright in my life, and what I also did last year and in the years 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, and 2008 was to go to Kate Gleason?s writing sessions at the Peterborough Library on Thursday mornings. Writing makes my life complete. I cling to it along with you, you, and you. And, gratefully, you all seem to cling back with-to me.

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February 18, 2018 Openings and Closings Due to Weather

Destiny Christian Church? Closed.
Riverstone Church? Closed.
Bethel Christian Church? Closed.
Deerfield Bible Church? Closed.
United Church of Winchester? Closed.
Church of the Redeemer? Closed.
Grace Covenant Church? Closed.
Peterborough Unitarian Church? Closed.
House of Prayer Mission? Closed.
Kate Gleason's Writing from Your Inner Voice
Workshop? Open.

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My Writing Nuns

Julie, Kate, Ruslyn, Wendy, Kit, Linda, Deborah, Susan and Nell are my sister disciples in my literature writing group. Kate Gleason is our Goddess. Each week they imbue my spirit with their psalms?their writing. They bring their theological thought from their lives to my chapel. They connect me, enable me to soldier on, and be a part of life?s hymns. They guide me back in tune to their commandments, which lead me like the helpfulness and comfort of excellent sermons. They are my writing nuns in life; the verses in my sanctuaries. I bow and kneel to them at life's altars. They are my salvations. Hopefully, we will all give each other eternal life through our creations, assurances that there is resurrection in our fresh winds.

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Closed Margins

Mary Tyler Moore once stated: ?You are often doomed to repeat your errors.? Not me. I stole a candy bar from a local drug store once and also took a twenty-dollar bill from my mother?s wallet at another time. Been there. Done that. Have been over and done with stealing for over 70 years. There has not been any inappropriate behavior in this field since.

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To the Right Side of the Tracks

An old Oprah Winfrey show suggested that every day we write down five things for which we?re grateful. A friend and I promised each other last Sunday we?d each start a list. It's Wednesday. So far, nothing from me. I?ve been too busy, not ungrateful. But this morning I wrote of my gratitude and eternal thanks to someone I knew sixty years ago. We were both nine years old. She lived down the hill from me in a small house near a railroad crossing. Although red lights blinked in her living room as trains came and went in life, she never shut the blinds on me. Resilience prevailed in her essence. In my gangs, my hordes, my teams, my life crowds, she remains, in memory, my best friend, even though I haven't had the honor of seeing her in over seventy years. She was clairvoyant and astute as she defended me from the vindictiveness, cruelty, and meanness of others in our class after my mother committed suicide. She dragged me from my life's bog, from the cage I felt I was in, taught me to sweep their cruelty away from my interior. By stripping stained wallpaper that covered my clear surface, she freed me from the suffocating, debilitating bullying of others. She was light at the end of my long, dark hallway, my blazing chandelier. As a friend who remains in my thoughts after decades, I dedicate this acknowledgement and thanks, Sandy Beimler, to you.