It’s All
Ahead:
Poems 2000 - 2002
By Esther Buffler
Phineas,
Portsmouth, 2003
Poets are often depicted as shrinking violets, souls enclosed almost painfully inside their own introspective worlds. Not so Esther Buffler. Even into her 90s Esther was still onstage, still swinging, still writing verse.
She will be remembered as the first of Portsmouth’s poet laureates, a post created in many ways, in order to tie the city to her free flowing coattails. She is remembered for her floppy hats, her five books of poems, her warbling theatrical performances and her unquenchable love of life.
She died in August of 2002 at the age of 93. But in the dawning years of the 21st century she had continued to write. Susan Kress Hamilton, a close friend of Esther’s, has collected her last 23 poems into a gentle paperback tribute entitled "It’s All Ahead." Susan and business partner Bill Hamilton have published the paperback through their company Phineas. New Hampshire poet laureate Marie Harris composed the Foreword.
"Before Ess died," Susan says, "we had been talking about doing a book. This collection of poems talks about illness and death in a very articulate way. I was getting them as she wrote them. The last poem in the book is the poem she wrote the day she died."
Susan sees great hope in these verses. Publishing them, she writes in
the book, was part of her grieving process. Now she sees their value for
hospice patients who can learn, through example, how Esther faced her last
difficult years with dignity, self discovery, humor and even joy.
Esther, of course, could never really die. Her "life force" was much too powerful. The local poets she mothered and cajoled during her 25 years in her adopted town of Portsmouth form the core of the city’s poetry renaissance. Last summer 100 of Esther’s favorite hats were auctioned at the Rockingham Hotel where Esther had lived. "Hats Off to Esther" raised funds in cooperation with the Greater Piscataqua Community Foundation. The money goes toward poetry programs in the local schools.
Following are two selections from the book,
including Esther’s final poem "Chill It", handwritten on her last day and
printed in its original draft form. -- JDR
This volume of Esther Buffler’s work is
available at Phineas on Penhallow Street, at Riverrun Books in Commercial
Alley and at Tulips on Market Street.
READ ALSO: The
Unflappable Esther Buffler
POEMS BY Esther Buffler
From It's All Ahead (2003)
THIS MORNING
By Esther
Buffler
out the window flip flap flutter wild excitement
among
oak pine BIRDS talk talk talk
sounds like harpsichord
nothing
else matters
cars every color snake down the lanes slivering
but E’s heart zings with the birds feathers
close to the bone
home care Freda pulls as on
in agony yell-spell from bath grabbed
saved
fantastic Bird Spirit swoops surround
feathers up the old
one
fly her to the great earth trees and seas of
the
Northeast
OLD HAT
By Esther
Buffler
Years ago in working theater,
New York City, I rode the
subway.
Amng the ads overhead, an Emily
Dickinson poem; the push,
jerk, smell,
squeal of track, tired faces all glided
away.....that
small poem stayed
peering downa t me........
I love hats.
LIGHT
By Esther Buffler
flickers across the
plain
night late
Novermber
snow fog drizzle
ice
New England
body crisis subsides
feel it
through
like the cry of the feline
in full understanding
knowing
shat's ahead
whether whiter
frenzy of
energy
need weave words
pot in the
geraniums
CHILL IT
By Esther Buffler
the pill colony
open eyes to the way it is
huge tray
tiny cups
of carefully chosen pills
a trough of hope for waiting mouths
caught
in emotional load.
the rains stopped
sun breathtaking!
scratched my initials on
favorite tree
never ending stories of when and where
bits of realty
spill out.
life slips away
Grammy – earth woman
she took my hand and died.
From It's All
Ahead
Poems by Esther Buffler copyright © 2003 by
Phineas. Used by permission. Photograph of Esther by J. Dennis Robinson,
SeacoastNH.com.
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