On this aMayzing Mother’s day, as our show today celebrates the “here†in the hear and now, podcast at BarbaraMossberg.com, produced by Zappa Johns, slowing down and heating it up, with poetry “without which men die miserably every day†(Wm. Carlos Williams). Thank you for joining me . . . livestreamed Sunday noon-1 pm, podcast anytime it’s morning in your life, and you’re slowing down to make it last. Hearwith is a program summary, for you, Dear Listener:
To the music of Camelot, the Lusty Month of May, Moon River, I Turn to You, Baby, Baby, Can’t You Hear My Heart Beat, Carolina, and Skiddamarink, let’s begin with the ultimate May poem we quoted last week, we cannot hear it enough (from Robert Herrick, Corinna’s Going A-Maying),
Get up, get up for shame . . . 
Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see
the dew bespangling herb and tree . . . .  ’tis sin,
Nay, profanation, to keep in . . . 
Rise; and put on your foliage, and be seen
To come forth, like the spring-time, fresh and green . . . . Wash, dress, be brief in praying . . . Come, my Corinna, come . . . let’s go a-Maying.
. . . Come, let us go, while we are in our prime . . . We shall grow old apace, and die
Before we know our liberty.
Our life is short, and our days run
As fast away as does the sun . . . Then while time serves, and we are but decaying,
Come, my Corinna, come, let’s go a-Maying.
We’ll hear more tributes to May, including Herrick, Malory, Shakespeare, Mary Oliver, John Muir, Rumi, James Wright, Alicia Ostriker, Orpingalik, Wordsworth;  we’ll hear from philosopher pilot poet Charles Tripi including his poem on Lucretius; and I’ll share with you some reflections about being a poet mother (an oxymoron?) for which Thoreau is very helpful, sing some songs I wrote as a mother of my newborns, ten years apart, on their first day of life, and share some poems written about my life as mother and daughter, including If You Promise to Let Me Write This Down I Promise You an Ice Cream, and a poem written for my mother, and some popular songs that suggest our love for our children . . . .
Next week, I’ll report to you on my work to cover John Muir’s 1000 Mile Walk to the Gulf, in which I risk alligators and snakes and biting insects, for YOU, dear Listeners, and the night in the cemetary Muir lived at, the setting of John Berendt’s Midnight at the Garden of Good and Evil, the New York City MOTH poetry slam on Escape, and my efforts to see Hamilton for us ($600?!), and other poets on Broadway, and we’ll go from swamps to the urban scene of poetry that takes the stage. Thank you for rising UP with me for this morning.
© Barbara Mossberg 2016
