My new poetry book has been published!!

 

Thank you to Jason Ryberg at Spartan Press for producing such a beautiful book.

It is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and your local bookstore and also from me, of course.

The cover artwork is by Martha Vogel.

PRAISE FOR EVERYTHING IS RISING

“Everything is Rising by Diane Vogel Ferri, is an autobiographical exploration revealing many truths of life. These poems are songs of pain, love, and recovery that portray what women have faced during their lifetime. Diane explored the many definitions of beauty, love, and relationships, uncovering life’s complexity. She presented the reader in Everything is Rising with a perspective born of endurance and buoyed by hope that’s destined to inspire.” 

Steve Thomas

Author of Strength of Flowers

 

"Poetry and fiction are first cousins. When I read good poetry, it's like meeting kin after a long separation; bonds forged in youth reveal themselves to be as warm and strong as ever. Diane Vogel Ferri's poetry is a family reunion of the heart."

Daniel Bell

Author of Adrift and Dead in River Valley

“Diane Vogel Ferri’s beautifully crafted poems balance age with youth, regret with hope, clarity with confusion and power with powerlessness. Her poems look forward and upward at a time when so many are stalled in their isolated present. Best of all, Diane’s shares her vision through poems that can look directly into the face of what troubles us, without losing sight of goodness and beauty.”

Gail Bellamy, author of Cleveland Christmas Memories and Cleveland Food Memories

"The poems in "Everything is Rising" are vivid in imagery and deep in emotion and nostalgia.  Diane takes you to places that you may not want to go, but you are a better person by having been there.

Barbara Marie Minney, author of If There's No Heaven.

“Memory is the mother of all wisdom” according to Aeschylus. Such sagacity stirs in Everything Is Rising. Using what the poet calls “the fossil of my voice,” she distills the past’s influence, waking us to a world where “blood tastes like creation.” Let these pages carry you with a pulse that “has never beat gently” and on “into morning light.”

Laura Grace Weldon

2019 Ohio Poet of the Year

Under My Mask

 Under My Mask

there is no lipstick 

on my pale thinning lips

under my mask

no celebration of birthdays

or summer

we are bleached out

beached out like whales

who have lost their way

there is no deep breath

into my aging lungs

under my mask

no fireworks 

or tricks or treats

we are as weary 

as a mother of babes

and there is no rest for the weary

there is no singing

from my silent throat

under my mask

no community of praise

or writing on the calendar

for a future together

Poem for November 3, 2020

If tomorrow comes

and we, who love the world,

whose vested interests are in the stranger,

in liberty and justice for all,

we stakeholders who yearn for decency, 

empathy, even propriety—

if tomorrow comes and we are soul-crushed

it won’t be because we are the losers,

it will be for another human who has lost a choice,

a job, a loved one, a physician, a civil right, a home,

it will be for the mother who fled from danger

and the imprisoned child who did no wrong,

it will be for the flooded homes and incinerated towns.

If we, the stakeholders in this game of chance

are given a harrowing verdict, we will carry on 

because God brought another baby here today, 

because people will still teach, heal, and donate,

people will still protest, hope, and pray, because 

time will pass and the world will keep turning 

and evolving, because restoration is possible,

and our love for humanity and creation

can never be voted out.

Of an Aesthete

Of an Aesthete

For love of the Cleveland Museum of Art

What the museum is not—

crowding, touching, breathing sometimes,

just free easy looking,

distancing and whispering.

But my back won’t concur 

and there is nowhere to sit now,

no place to contemplate

the overwhelming proof

of God on every wall, every

gallery a devotional to creation.

The Christ Child sleeps alone in heavenly peace

on a bed of marble, obeying the rules,

his illustrated life surrounds him,

from angelic innocence to piercing agony.

What would we know otherwise

if not this promise of preservation

in this stone pantheon, light swelling

through the open-sky atrium, so near, so eternal.

 

Blossom

My last post was April 14th––over two months ago––and nothing much has changed with the pandemic. It is still raging and cases are rising again in America as people refuse to believe science, experts, and advice to wear masks to protect other citizens. There has also been racial unrest and protests of every kind.
So this poem is about a very small, innocent pleasure I am missing this summer among all the tragedy and needless suffering. In northeast Ohio we have a large outdoor concert venue called Blossom Music Center. Every famous band and musician has been there over its 50+ years, but it is also the summer home of the world famous Cleveland Orchestra. I sang in the Blossom Festival Chorus behind that orchestra for over fifteen years.

Blossom

What I will miss the most

is the grass checkered with blankets,

the light dimming with each movement,

crystalline sounds, the bows slivering

the stage into tiny shards of aural wonder

until they disperse into the night.

Then the moment of silence before the 

eruption of the crowd, like thunder 

under the shelter of wood and sky.

How my eyes will fill from the beauty,

how I will recall all the years on that stage,

one cog in a triumphant musical chorus.

I will even miss the long and slow walk 

back to the car among thousands of others,

pulling our coolers of wine and cheese,

blissful and sated under a tiara of stars.

PANDEMIC poem published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer

Life Sentence

It’s a holy war

with nothing sacred 

but a crucifixion of females

by those who claim that

they love freedom

and a flag.

They can smell the blood,

but not their own stink.

Thank you for reminding us

that life is sacred

while you embrace your gun

and weep fake tears.

A fifteen year-old

with an already ruined life

can’t fight back,

can’t make you care about

the child, the one 

you won’t adopt,

or feed, or raise,

or love.

Breaking Babies

I believe I wrote this a year ago....and nothing has changed except more damaged human beings.

You are breaking them

those children in cages

with their aluminum foil blankets 

their obscene days, damaged psyches 

broken for campaign promises

evangelical leaders preach the Bad News

a deluded Jesus would not 

let the children come to Him

they are under the same stars

lights of the future, those crying orphans

turn away, amuse yourselves

with the scandal-of-the-day, the blatant lies

but they will always be with you 

somewhere in your brain your soul

God is watching 

waiting for your Pro-Life response

their brown eyes see all know all

in a cruel imprisonment of

irreversible memories irretrievable childhoods, 

mothers with no children

fathers with no family

voters atwitter with relief

brown children will not sully the country 

with their abilities

talents

human

being

A poem from my new book: Bonfire

Reading from The Volume of Our Incongruity at Loganberry Books in Shaker Heights, Ohio.
This poem was chosen for National Poetry Month for the Cuyahoga County Public Library poem of the day forthcoming this April.  It's about my grown-up children:

Bonfire

I see them together:

the connective tissues, the shared blood,

a counterpoint in firelight—and 

something primal and holy in me turns.

Orange-yellow waves move over their glossy faces

and rotate like pinwheels in their eyes.

Her perfect tight-teeth smile and luminous hair.

His shoulders wide and strong, his great-grandfather’s silhouette.

White sparks sprinkle upward between us.

My diaphragm expands and my ribs crack in this invisible triangle.

I am stretched like early-morning yoga,

depth perception altered in this stasis.

Leaves flutter in the heat, tree frogs sing, dogs chase

each other in and out of deep shadows. His voice,

her laughter brings stillness to my maternal island

and resurrection to what time cannot take from my soul.

by Diane Vogel Ferri

from The Volume of Our Incongruity

Finishing Line Press  2018

We Walk Through Italy

We Walk Through Italy

by Diane Vogel Ferri

On Roman blocks and bricks older than conception

we walk roads of infinity stone, of an empire adept 

at every human need and invention, we walk through

the glory of light-filled domes, basilicas where

pure unencumbered art gushes in 

a cataclysm of the muses in full bloom,

on walls, ceilings, floors, mosaic, marble,

Mary and her baby crucified.

We traverse walking bridges in the city of water streets;

barnacles and mold climb the drowned foundations

in some kind of warped beauty, in our gondola we watch

floating buses and taxis move people through the narrow canals.

St. Peter’s is the spiritual sky, the solemn truth where

our murmurings become muted in Mary’s sorrow.

Pompous sculptures surround us and swell our dreams in 

a reunion of the old world and the new.

We see the white ecstasy of David in the present distance,

it pins our eyes wide open and static in our circular view.

The sacred Sistine Chapel slows our breathing

in the required silence, arms are at a sudden rest.

We ride along the winding coast of a turquoise Naples Bay,

buildings precariously stacked like toy blocks,

rock mountains and little green hills, a volcano at rest,

millennial fortress towers stand on guard.

When the crowds of picture takers and posers suffocate us

we look up, look up to ancient structures still proud,

into a singular previously unknown world 

and we are reborn, we are redeemed.

Give Thanks

Give Thanks 

When you take a breath, your lungs filling,

your heart pulsing with your life 

give thanks

for the daily unending gift.

When you gaze upward at the untouchable sky

give thanks

for it is infinite and awesome 

beyond human understanding.

When you look into the eyes of someone you love

and see those eyes looking back at you

give thanks

for only a loving God could create and sustain that love.

When you sit at a table with an abundance 

of food for your taking

give thanks

for you are among the privileged on this Earth.

When you look up from your day, your life,

your fears and sorrows

give thanks

and remember God.

The Summer of Cicadas and One Lonely Wren

There is the whistling tinnitus like a not-so-distant siren,

the bulging red eyes, the crunchy wings under our feet, 

dogs snap and snack, I duck and dodge 

their aimless flight on my daily walk.

They are ugly and stupid as they wander through the air

until smacking into something solid

upon discovering it is not a lover they move on

finding refuge on a mailbox or a telephone pole.

A lonely male wren sings every moment of daylight

somehow confined to the hemlock tree near my window

his loud tenacious call is incongruent with his tiny bird-body

always prepared for his lady, he wakes me each morning at 5:15.

Owls and coyotes in the dark 

birds and bugs in the light

in the jungle of my suburban wooded backyard

everyone just wants to get laid.

Waiting

Waiting

I am waiting for a Seals and Crofts reunion,

waiting for those days of decision to reverse,

waiting to feel like the adult I thought I saw in my elders,

the sense of consolation for a life well-lived.

I am waiting to see dignity in the mirror, not a fallen face,

waiting for my children to be all I am not,

searching for an understanding in them I did not possess,

waiting to find myself in all the reinventions and good intentions.

I am pondering what I didn’t do when I was being good,

what I slammed doors on without ever peeking outside,

wondering where all the prayers went,

and measuring my worth by my lack of change.

I am strip-mining now for a whole soul.

I am in love with my abstruse dreams.

The confounded past wakes me at night,

and the day is all too peaceful and resolved.

My Mother

For Martha Jane Vogel 

July 28, 1929- January 19, 2016

My Mother’s Art

She does not compromise what she alone sees.

The generosity of her hands on the canvas or the piano,

the counterpoint of her brushstrokes and her voice,

the walls become a pastiche or hold a rhapsody.

Moving through eras of little expectancy, rising up

out of her service, when her world turned to face 

the sun she did not rebel but floated forward

and now beauty exists where there had been voids.

We are juxtaposed in the choir lofts for decades

and still there are songs we haven’t sung.

When her fingers were on the piano keys for me

my small voice strained to equal the passion,

the music eternally suspended in me.

What my mother can do always has a future

without a murmur of leaving it behind.

So I understand what I can become, what I must become

for the infinity of mothers and daughters

for her mother, for my daughter.

A Good Eye

I have been like the little bird

with one good eye.

As I moved to the feeder 

to refill the seeds

she didn’t see me.

So I poked her purplish wing

once, twice.

She hopped about to face me

with her one good eye

then flew away.

Even with two good eyes

I have only seen half

of what can be seen.

But year by year

my callow vision improves,

like veils being lifted away

one by one or

like a foreign language

that sounds like nonsense

until you learn it, speak it

understand its beauty.

Dad

February 20, 2015 would have been my Dad's 92nd birthday. 
This birthday will have no pain or suffering.


DAD

I want to touch your hands again.
I memorized the shape of every finger;
the ones that held, fixed, carried, loved.

The hands I clutched on your last walk on this earth
after sixty years of steps
across the living room and back.

Then for two days we circled, spoke in your ear,
held those hands, wept, questioned,
and we were one - covered in your final gift.

You know the glory now, Dad,
the reward for always choosing love -
and we are bereft here

on the surface of this incendiary planet
to wait
and wonder.

Cleveland

I see Cleveland as a time not yet come,
a book we haven’t read, the tenacious hope 
of next year tangled in its bridges and highways,
beaming off the silvery water of a Great Lake.

A place where Christmas memories and food memories
are built into our bones, where you can step into a diamond
and hear an orchestra, or on any given day view a Rembrandt,
a Van Gogh, or hear poetry in a courtyard.

I believe in the Native Americans who named 
our crooked river, the Traffic Guardians 
welcoming you across the great divide of east and west,
into multicultural streets and towns.

In the jowls and crags of tumultuous industry
I no longer see smoke and filth - its former fame.
I see a place where Grandpa delivered ice, and
Dad played catch with a Cleveland Indian on the streets of the Heights.

God’s good creation surrounds and envelops us
in the glorious greenery of the Emerald Necklace
that we wear so well, with the fearless changing 
of the seasons flowing in our lifeblood.

by Diane Vogel Ferri

Grief

The Grief

is a straightjacket:

no time limits,

encumbered,

the futile struggle to be set free

awakens you with phantom voices,

burning images,

hovers, even when

others think it should be gone,

removes the things you loved,

hides them from your eyes,

crawls through the imprisoned body

with waves of lethargic pain.

No conscious control,

just a disaster of tears pushing out

of your ruined face, a craving for comfort

when the comforting time is past.

Grateful Apologist

Everything I need surrounds me
like a protective shell.
The sun drops on my day as I awaken,
and stays with relentless patience.

God is in your eyes and I can see
him every time I look at you.
My head has eternal music without my ears,
and love is inextricably knit around my heart.

A visceral peace arrives at unexpected moments,
one that can only be found in the human soul.
The world, fraught with danger,
has passed over this house

leaving beauty outside every window,
as if God has lost control of His grace,
and let it move in its own tangents
with glorious abandon.

In Memory of my Dad

For Donald Vogel
1923-2014


Daddy's Girl

You will never again trust
as you did

when Daddy was twice your size
his arms the greatest you knew.

They could straighten your baton
or chop down a tree in the front yard,

he won every game
and you were his best partner.

Driving in the Fourth of July storm
your dread of thunder and lightning

abated with Daddy's hands
on the wheel.

Fearless, you traveled the country
with the deepest knowledge

that Daddy
would bring you safely home.

He never told you he'd give his life
for you, you were born knowing.

You never felt doubt until the day
he held your hands and then let them go.