Fitz’s Poetry, Essays, Ramblings & Reflections

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When the eyes rest on the soul… that’s Fitzy

Lenny Megliola

WEEI, Radio Boston

The stories in Bigelow’s Field are perfectly crafted to sway the reader with boundless emotion. Each word is meticulously placed, and each sentence forces the reader to feel what John Fitzsimmons felt. The writing is astounding!

~Margaret Skelly

Poet/Essayist

Musketquid

by John Fitzsimmons | Bigelow's Field

Joshua Sawyer

by John Fitzsimmons | Raccoon

Foreward

I penned this first small book of poems—interspersed with restless wanderings—while living alone for close to ten years in a small cabin in the woods of Carlisle, Massachusetts, near the shore of the Concord River. I published 100 copies of Raccoon (all I could afford) back in the early nineties and sold them pretty quickly, not due to merit, but mostly to friends kind enough to indulge my unkempt experiments with words. No doubt, the larger world of poetry has pretty much ignored my efforts—as I have their world, so I do deeply appreciate any of you who takes the time to share in this old and blessed time of mine—albeit in a new and more modern format.

Though the years have moved by quickly and happily, I still find myself reliving those days and nights in the cabin, dipping my pen in an old inkwell just to see what would happen.

This is what happened…

Thanks for reading,

Metamorphoses

by John Fitzsimmons | Three Rivers Anthology

Foreward

This small book of poems started with a promise to myself back in the spring of 2017 to simply and stubbornly make the time to write fifty poems before the sweep of fall took the time from me. As with most poets, I made more chips than I did firewood, but some bolts survived to stack and save for this wispy fire.

These are those poems. No doubt, it seems I stole the style and spirit of poetry from Emily Dickinson, for I am seldom without some influence guiding the shape of my words. Her garret window is my back porch, but our worlds are much the same: centered on family, friends and whatever vistas the head and heart may hold. It would be grace if even one of my poems holds the power of any one of her’s.

As I write this, the leaves are stripping away from the warm cloak of summer and these poems are now as bare and weathered as they will be.

And no longer my own, but yours.

The Next Time Around

I wonder what the years have really taught me about writing and music. I have gotten so used to preaching and teaching that I am a bit looped by the thought of writing—as in how I wrote before (or how I will claim I wrote) before settling into this somewhat...

The Late and Lazy Teacher

I guess this is a good thing. I showed up five minutes late for class, and my classroom was empty. I walked the hallways of the school and could not find any of them. I sheepishly asked the assistant headmaster if he "happened to see a class of wandering boys?"No, he...

How do I know

what I know? The sharp angles of this simple cottage perfected in every board sawn, shingle split and beam hewn into place goes together placed, splined, slid together, bound more by intuition than knowing.

How To Be Human

Mark Twain once wrote that it is good to be a good person, but it is better to tell people how to be good--"and a damn sight easier!" So much of my life is lived in response to the moment and not in a practiced and cultivated wisdom. I sat here this morning looking...

Guns, Me, and Rural America

Sometimes I start writing without knowing where I stand—unsure of even where I stand. I have to trust some innate wisdom or audacity will cull through the bullshit we are all heir to in what Hamlet laments is “this earthly coil” we are forced to face when we wake...

A Priori

How do I know what I know? The sharp angles of this simple cottage perfected in every board sawn, shingle split and beam hewn into place goes together placed, splined, slid together, bound more by intuition than knowing.

There is in an easiness

When I begin to think of myself. My girded shell squeezing Oysters in a jar; My oily viscera Jammed and joggled Into impossible places. My pancreas Is never where it should be; My esophagus cut cleanly Swirls in a diaspora. My tongue is a trapped In a tangle of...

In the unfolding chores

The day sometimes slip away from me, a huge pine half-bucked in the backyard, the kids old tree fort cut into slabs, a ton of coal waiting to be moved in a train of buckets to the bin. Sipping cold water on the back deck I hear Emma rustling for soccer cleats and...

Raccoon Welcome

Welcome

Grandma’s Words

In the beginning was the word... ~Genesis We do not live in Grandma’s world of words, and neither did grandma live in her grandma’s world of words and on and on and so on in a downwards devolution through untold millennia. From primal grunts, whistles and...

Creating a Digital Workflow in the Classroom

One Teacher’s Solution To Everything Years of teaching woodshop at my school has reinforced in me the utility of developing a workflow that works best for the project at hand using the tools and equipment already in the shop. The same can be said of my other life as...

A Hard Sell

As a teacher, I am tired of the word blog, probably because the word “blogging” is incredibly limiting and myopic, especially for someone whose teaching is centered around an online curriculum with blogs front and center on my academic table. I sat through a...

A New Hearth

It has been a long time since I wrote a simple old "this is what I am going to do today" post. So this is what I am going to do today: [and trust me, it will have nothing--absolutely nothing--to do with school work:)] Before the true winter settles in, I am going to...

What a Picture Tells

"Zou Ma Guan Hua" You can't ride a horse and smell the flowers ~Chinese Proverb Sometimes I love just browsing through old folders of pictures of my kids when they were just kids in every sense of the word. Just seeing the pictures is a visceral experience for me as I...

All You Need is Love

The day grew warm today, as did my mood. I did a couple of shows at my school’s diversity day. It was good to see girls there and the obvious racial differences. It was comforting to see a sea of color with a smattering of white instead of the other way around. My...

The Most Unoriginal Teacher

Yes, that's me. I am a fraudster, thief, and plagiarizer of the worst magnitude. I copy the very styles of classic poets; I steal from Noble Laureate novelists, and I copy words from every and any source I can. And even worse, I steal from myself. If you even dare to...

Why Trump Is Not Flipping Me Out

I wonder why Trump is not flipping me out? I wonder if there is some bigoted, ignorant and right-wing element that lurks inside this folk-singing, poem writing, neo-socialist shell of mine. Maybe it is not that hard for me to make the empathetic reach to feel at least...

To a teacher

This shift from fall to winterIs the cruelest month:Long days and nightsIn a blather of responsibility’s I hoist from a murky holeAnd sort and siftOn a messy desk. I pity my students who trembleMy red pen of vengeance;Who wait with fetid thoughtsFreighted by what they...

Evolution

The coyotes and fisher cats seem intent on striking some new deal with each other to toy with our fears in this gentleman's wilderness— patches of dense woods dotted with overgrown fields, riven and intersected by highways, powerlines and quiet, suburban...

Ring of Fire: The Power of Simplicity

In fifth grade my mother finally let me go to the Concord Music store and buy a "45" single. I bought Johnny Cash’s version of “Ring of Fire” written by his future wife June Carter and Merle Kilgore, a noted country songwriter of his day. There was no doubt in my...

Practicing What I Preach

It is not where you go. It is how you go. ~Fitz Is there any value in coming to the page this late at night after three hours of singing in a pub, just because I said I would? I expect you to go to the empty page and pry tired and stubborn thoughts and lay them on the...

Out of the Forge: March 30, 2017

Every Thursday Night at The Colonial Inn On the Green, in Concord, Massachusetts This is my first attempt at trying to record a night at the inn, so please forgive my engineering errors as a producer. I simply used the Bose Tonematch into Garageband and called it good...

Quit Your Whining

Anything worth succeeding in is worth failing in~Ben Franklin "Quit your whining and complaining" is probably a clause that can easily be translated into every language in every culture on earth, for, from what I know and have seen in the world, bitching about...

Dad

Moaning like a lost whale the thin ice bellowed behind us then cracked and rang as if spit from a whip. The sharp steel of my over-sized skates etched unspeakable joy into the slate-grey, reptilian skin of Walden Pond. Our mismatched hands gripped together in the...

The English Soldier

There is a soldier dressed in ancient English wool guarding the entrance to the inn. He is lucky for this cool night awaiting the pomp of the out of town wedding party. He is paid to be unmoved by the bride's stunning beauty or her train of lesser escorts. He will not...

The Threshing

I trace her charging through the cornfield shaking the timbers of the ready crop startling up the blackbirds, and surprisingly, a jay. It’s the jay who startles me— who with two quick pulls wrests itself from the transient green, screaming back from its familiar scrub...

Me & God

I am not done with God, nor God with me. I remain obsessed with the notion of the unmoved mover who set the pattern of creation into its initial motion. I stubbornly try to trace my existence back to some infinite beginning—so much so that I loathe the...

A Perfect Mirror

Do not mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself~BuddhaLast night you were so lucky. You didn't have to worry about your grumpy, tired teacher going through hours of journals ands doling out poor grades for what I am sure qualifies for good efforts...

Joshua Sawyer Podcast

The Mystery Within

EJ wanted a banana tree for Christmas so that early morning brought a plastic bag, a few meager roots and no directions. I bought some potting soil and a square cedar box EJ placed deliberately by a westward window. He gently splayed the roots, pressed the soil, and...

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