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.

Nurture Passion

How about we all take the bull by the horns and make this blog thing work! Your job this week is to do something with your blog that is powered by the passion that is in you. Passion is the one thing you have some control over. There are plenty of smarter, more...

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...

You Are All a Bunch of Punks

Poetry without form is like tennis without a net. ~Robert Frost Free verse poetry is not, as many assume, poetry without rules. It is a measured and thoughtful crafting of an idea into lines, spaces, and breaks intentionally and willfully crafted to heighten and...

The Storm of Fallibility

One good cigar is better than two bad cigars, or so it seems right now. It is a beautiful and stormy night--pouring rain and howling wind, and I thought a good smoke would be a fitting end to a busy and over-booked week. As it goes, I bought a couple of cheap...

Diesel Lullaby

I've been spending a lot of time lately writing sketches of songs—some more complete than others. I have found that it takes time for a song to evolve into its final form, so what I have posted here is more the end of the beginning, not the end. Denise gave me the...

What Christmas Is

I am not sure what Christmas really is anymore. I am almost afraid to think of what Christians are going through in the lands of the original Christian faith. By dint of place and time, I grew up in the Catholic faith, and try as I might, I can’t ever escape the...

Denise

There is something about coming hometo this empty house, yesterday'sheavy downpours scouringclean the alreadyweathered deckwhere I sitwishing for,wanting,you.

Thanksgiving

I am surprised sometimesby the suddenness of November:beauty abruptly shedto a common nakedness--grasses deadenedby hoarfrost,persistent memoriesof people I’ve lost.It is left to those of us dressed in the hard barky skin of experienceto insist on a decorumthat rises...

Busy…

The start of the school year, and I have literally spent every free moment working on what is ostensibly pretty cool stuff, methinks...but it is work in every sense of the word, so I do miss those long summer mornings when could literally write to my heart and heads...

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...

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...

A New Paradigm

Sometimes, like right now, I long for a pile of papers on my lap that I could speed through, grade with a series of checks and circles, a few scribbled lines of praise or condemnation, and drop into a shoebox on my desk and say, "Here are your essays!" But I...

The Blathering of Teachers

To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions. ~Benjamin Franklin Maybe we are born more to ignore than to listen. I understand too well how easy it is to ignore the blatherings of teachers. I was a master of it once myself, so why...

The Teacher’s Couch

It’s not just a couch; it’s a sofa, too ~Fitz I remember my first year teaching at Fenn—and it was really my first stint as a true worker with responsibilities outside of what I already had in my wheelhouse—and on this day, some twenty something years ago, I...

Kampuchea

I stutter for normality across the river from black men fishing for kibbers and horned pout. Barefoot children rounded bellies curled navels stalk the turtle sunning on a log. lonely in the field grass lonely on the curbstones I stutter for normality. Not a mother...

I have been here before

Trying to pull a final day Back into the night, execute Some stay of time, Some way to wrap The fabric of Summer Around the balky, frame of Fall, sloughing My skin, unable to stop This reptilian ecdysis— This hideous morphing Into respectability. My students, tame As...

Joshua Sawyer Podcast

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...

When the same thing happens again

I wonder if God is testing me, giving Me some affable warning Or, perhaps, a more Stern rebuke, replaying A foolish mistake, Rehashing and reminding me Of a harsher possibility. It is only a small 10 mm wrench tightening A loose bolt on the throttle body, slipping...

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...

The Nagging Thing

Not many more nights like this, warm enough to sit outside on the back porch. The kids and Denise long asleep. Usually, during the school year, this is my "time" to catch up on schoolwork--grading, posting the assignments for the week and playing the general catchup...

Marriage & Magnanimity

If we want to have the freedom to marry whom we want to marry, why is it so important that the state (government) recognise that marriage? Is it simply the expediency of dispensing the entitlements of a marriage certificate: tax benefits, employment benefits, or the...

Concord

The people, the music filledness of rush hour traffic skirting puddles work crews packing in laughswearingmudyellowed slickers lighting candle bombs. My sadness the euphoric detachment. I love this town. It breathes me.

Pruning

These trees have driven so many friends batty, wedged in unstable crotches, embracing hollow, heart-rotted limbs, reaching tentatively, maddened with indecision. From a distance your gestures are very lobsterlike— waving a last embattled claw, as if dueling some...

The Snow

has dropped a seamlessness before the plows and children can patch it back to a jagged and arbitrary quilting putting borders to design and impulse. I imagine myself falling everywhere softly, whispering, I am here, and I am here.

Know Thyself…

Writing a Metacognition Know Thyself… Explore, Assess, Reflect & Rethink If we don’t learn from what we do, we learn little of real value. If we don’t make the time to explore, reflect and rethink our ways of doing things we will never grow, evolve and reach our...

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...

Another Wednesday

It is a good night for meatballs. The same meal we have cooked every Wednesday night for thirteen years and counting. Tonight is a beautiful and warm night of vacation week, so more than likely we will have a big crowd joining us—but we never know who. The...

Thanksgiving

I am surprised sometimes by the suddenness of November: beauty abruptly shed to a common nakedness— grasses deadened by hoarfrost, persistent memories of people I’ve lost. It is left to those of us dressed in the hard barky skin of experience to insist on a decorum...

Out of the Forge: April 13, 2017

In my forty years or so of actively singing and playing folk music and writing songs, I have played together with a remarkably narrow list of musical partners: Rogue, Wally and Barry with camp songs and Hatrack and Seth with literally everything. These last few years...

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