The Beet Poets of Wayne, Maine are friends and neighbors David Moreau, Jay Franzel and Stan Davis. Jay and Dave will be reading their poetry, followed by Stan performing a story accompanied with music (autoharp and various guitars), ending with Dave and Jay again performing poetry accompanied by Stan playing bass and sharing vocal refrains and chanting. Adventure of the spirit is guaranteed!
The evening's performance will be recorded live onto a CD, The Beet Poets Live at the Harlow Gallery.
About the artists
Jay Franzel writes thoughtful poems that often reflect the mystery of the natural world, but he also writes about coffee, Franz Kafka and the bridges of New York City, where he grew up. He has worked with at-risk students for more than twenty years and currently teaches in Winthrop.
Stan Davis is a musician, singer and storyteller. He recently retired as a family therapist and school counselor and continues to speak all over the world about bullying prevention. Stan is a proud member of Hurry Down Sunshine, a folk/blues duo that performs frequently in the area.
David Moreau works in Lewiston with adults with developmental disabilities. His book You Can Still Go to Hell and Other Truths about Being a Helping Professional is Moon Pie Press’s all time best seller. His poems have been read by Garrison Keillor on the Writer’s Almanac three times.
A Love Supreme
At a bus stop in San Francisco in 1980,
an old drunk dances unsteadily down on the corner.
He bends low within himself and bellows,
“Ah played with John COLTRANE.
Do ya HEAH me?
Ah played with JOHN COLtrane!”
The others waiting for the twenty-two Fillmore
roll their eyes and snicker
and I can’t claim that I believe him,
but acknowledge that somewhere
in the sad history of the world
the solo he plays tonight
harmonizes a mournful
and passionate song. -- David Moreau
Midnight P-Ridge
Along the dark road
I feel the fields silent
and invisible beckon
with soft bedding,
breezes, willing earth.
Is it the wind or your spirit
brushing my cheek?
What’s been gripping me lately
gently paralyzing, disorienting,
seems to blow in like dark clouds
or locust, silently over fields,
something seasonal, almost planetary.
High in the southern sky
glowing, like a red gemstone
lit with yellow back-light,
Mars gleams, not angrily as in the myths
but puzzled, maybe at the wars
battering earth’s orbit.
Outsized orange half-moon
caught among treetops – I’m sick
of unreachable beauty, sick
of gravity and my own fixed
broken orbit – once, if cut free
I would have panicked, now
I’d simply stretch until I reached you
floating by, one more shooting star. -- Jay Franzel
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