Poems Goodbye Good Luck

Calverton Column: Riley doings, worms and farm planting advice

I’m not a golfer, but when I have the time I love to watch golf on television. How about The Players tournament Sunday and the sudden-death overtime? It was awesome! It almost makes me want to play golf.

Field Day is fast approaching at Riley Avenue Elementary School, dates and times as follows: Tuesday, May 24, grade 2, 9 a.m.-11 a.m., kindergarten, 1-3 p.m.; Wednesday, May 25, first grade, 9-11 a.m., third grade, 1-3 p.m.; Friday, May 27, fourth grade, 9-11 a.m. Good luck to all of you!

School will be closed on Memorial Day, Monday, May 30.

The next Riley Avenue Parents Association meeting will be Tuesday, June 7, at 7:15 p.m. in the library. I think this is the last one for the year, so try to attend.

Mrs. Vengilio, a fourth-grade teacher at Riley, held a Mothers’ Tea last week at the school. I was told there wasn’t a dry eye in the room. The moms wrote poems about their children and it was a touching time for everyone.

The Pulaski Street Band will be visiting the fourth-graders at Riley in the near future to talk about which instruments they might play next year at the school. On June 2 the fourth-graders will visit Pulaski for orientation for September.

I received some bad news: Mrs. Dorman is retiring from Riley in June. She will be greatly missed. A retirement party in her honor will be held Wednesday, June 22, from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Polish Hall. Tickets are $15 for adults; $6 for children ages 5-10. There will be finger food, pitchers of soda and water and a cash bar. For tickets send a check (made out to cash) to Dorman Party, P.O. Box 777, Aquebogue, NY 11931. Email Christine Santini at csantini@optonline.net for more information.

Congratulations to Lauren Kruger, who celebrated her birthday last week and also received her first Holy Communion. From your mom and dad, big sister, grandma and all your family and friends, we hope your days were really special.

Lets’ talk worms. Do you know why worms come out of the ground when it rains? No, they do not have a fear of drowning in their homes. They come out to find a boyfriend or girlfriend. Also, since they need to be kept moist to survive, they either need to surface when the ground is wet or at night when the ground is damper than it is in the heat of the day. Hence the name night crawlers.

The full moon of May has come and gone and according to the experts (us local farmers) it is now safe to plant everything. Of course there is an exception every now and then, but we are planting, so go for it.

Goodbye, April « Louisa Diodato

National Poetry Month has ended, and has left a trail of renewed self-discipline in its wake. This morning I got up according to my new (but well-instilled) routine–get up early (no later than 9), walk to kitchen, put on coffee, eat breakfast, take coffee to office and write a poem–and had already written today’s poem before I realized: it’s May 1st! National Poetry Month has ended!

April had me writing about horses for the first time in my life (I rode from elementary school through college), a few epithalamia for conjoined twins, and several poems about domesticity and aging.Thank you April, for having given me around twenty new drafts and eight pages of a to-be-continued personal essay on Good Friday.

The final draft of my MFA thesis is due to my adviser this week, and that means the end truly is near. Wish me luck!

Selected poems

The Spectator

Collected poems, 1930-83

The art of poetry, poems, parodies, interviews, essays, and other work

The collected poems of Rudyard Kipling