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December 5, 2025

Talbot Spy

Nonpartisan Education-based News for Talbot County Community

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Christmas Eve Selfie by Sue Ellen Thompson

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Now that Christmas shopping can be ignored—
parents long gone, no grandchildren to shop for—
I find myself looking forward to the holidays,
whose significance resides in the way
we prop the phone up on a pile
of books, click on the self-timer,
and rush back to the sofa to compose
ourselves, thus creating the tableau
that has become our emblem: heads inclined
and touching lightly at the hairline,
my hand having found yours at my waist—
the two of us in the small, warm house of our age.

Sue Ellen Thompson is the author of six books of poetry—most recently SEA NETTLES: NEW & SELECTED POEMS. She has taught at Middlebury College, Binghamton University, Wesleyan University, Central Connecticut State University, and the University of Delaware. A resident of Oxford, MD for the past 18 years, she mentors adult poets and teaches workshops for The Writer’s Center in Bethesda. In 2010, the Maryland Library Association awarded her its prestigious Maryland Author Award.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

At 89, My Father Takes Up Swearing by Sue Ellen Thompson

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This is just one of the poems Sue Ellen will read when she returns to the Stoltz Listening Room on September 25th for the first of four Spy Nights this fall to support the Avalon Foundation and the Talbot Spy. Her special guest will Beth Dulin, last year’s winner of the Eastern Shore Writers Association’s 2023 poetry competition. Beth will share some of those award-winning poems along with new ones.  Tickets are available here.

This video is approximately two minutes in length.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

It was a Small Town by Sue Ellen Thompson

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Editor’s Note: Perhaps relying on that extraordinary intuition that comes with being a poet, Sue Ellen Thompson felt a noticeable mood shift in her hometown a few years ago. Well before the Oxford community exploded with the dismissal of a popular town police chief, Thompson sensed that the town where she and her husband had lived for over two decades was becoming politically toxic. In response, Sue Ellen composed a poem about her dismay at the growing polarization but also her unaltered affection for Oxford. 

It was a Small Town

which made everything
that happened there look
huge. The holiday parades
were endless, coursing
through the streets
like floodwater.
Parties overflowed
as well, channeled
by the narrow chambers
of what had once been
watermen’s modest houses.

Almost everyone who lived there
had been Somebody once.
Widowed now, or simply
retired, they inflicted
their formidable talents
on a one-room library
and small stone church.

In summer, when the town
sprayed weekly for mosquitos
after midnight, those
who remembered it was Tuesday
and brought their pets indoors
talked of it the whole next day,
inviting praise for their vigilance,
while those who’d left
their windows open
quietly prepared to die.

Low-lying and surrounded
on three sides by water, it afforded
little opportunity for harsh words
to evaporate. Instead, they often pooled
into final severings. Small disagreements
took root in the flood-softened earth
and spread like trumpet vine, dividing
entire neighborhoods into plaintiffs
and defendants. Why would anyone,

you might ask, want
to live there? Because every year
there was a day in early summer
when the first magnolia grandiflora
bent down low, distributing
its fleshy bowls to the poor and hungry,
of whom there were none and all
were lost in its vast perfume.

This video is approximately one minute in length.

This is just one of the poems Sue Ellen will read when she returns to the Stoltz Listening Room on September 25th for the first of four Spy Nights this fall to support the Avalon Foundation and the Talbot Spy. Her special guest will Beth Dulin, last year’s winner of the Eastern Shore Writers Association’s 2023 poetry competition. Beth will share some of those award-winning poems along with new ones.  Tickets are available here.

 

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Winter Light by Ted Kooser Read by Sue Ellen Thompson

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Winter Light

What is it about this late afternoon light
in December, with its absolute stillness,

its blues, its few browns, its deep evergreen
greens and its scattered patches of white,

that somehow seems to know it’s a Sunday,
this light that’s come far, low over the fields,

now at rest, bright in the treetops, with no
ambition to reach any farther into the day.

Soon, in the silvery dusk, it will gather
some shadows about it and leave. We’ll be

able to see it then, paused on the horizon,
warming its hands at a bonfire of clouds.

—Ted Kooser
sdfdsfad
Sue Ellen Thompson, of Oxford, MD, is the first “featured writer” in the Delmarva Review. Among her published works, a sixth book of poems, SEA NETTLES: NEW & SELECTED POEMS, was published in 2022. She has been an instructor at The Writer’s Center, in Bethesda, since 2007, and has previously taught at Middlebury College, Binghamton University, the University of Delaware, and Central Connecticut State University. She received the 2010 Maryland Author Award from the Maryland Library Association.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Taking down the Tree by Jane Kenyon Read by Sue Ellen Thompson

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Taking Down the Tree by Jane Kenyon

“Give me some light!” cries Hamlet’s
uncle midway through the murder
of Gonzago. “Light! Light!” cry scattering
courtesans. Here, as in Denmark,
it’s dark at four, and even the moon
shines with only half a heart.
adsasd
The ornaments go down into the box:
the silver spaniel, My Darling
on its collar, from Mother’s childhood
in Illinois; the balsa jumping jack
my brother and I fought over,
pulling limb from limb. Mother
drew it together again with thread
while I watched, feeling depraved
at the age of ten.
adsasd
With something more than caution
I handle them, and the lights, with their
tin star-shaped reflectors, brought along
from house to house, their pasteboard
toy suitcases increasingly flimsy.
Tick, tick, the desiccated needles drop.
adsasd
By suppertime all that remains is the scent
of balsam fir. If it’s darkness
we’re having, let it be extravagant.
adsasd

The poet Jane Kenyon, born in 1947, married her college poetry professor, Donald Hall, before moving to his family’s ancestral farm in New Hampshire. The two poets lived and wrote there for 20 years, during which they were beset by a series of illnesses and medical crises. Kenyon published only four books before dying of leukemia at the age of 47, but she is widely recognized today as one of America’s premier lyric poets. Although she struggled with depression throughout her life, this poem brings a message of hope.

Sue Ellen Thompson, of Oxford, MD, is the first “featured writer” in the Delmarva Review. Among her published works, a sixth book of poems, SEA NETTLES: NEW & SELECTED POEMS, was published in 2022. She has been an instructor at The Writer’s Center, in Bethesda, since 2007, and has previously taught at Middlebury College, Binghamton University, the University of Delaware, and Central Connecticut State University. She received the 2010 Maryland Author Award from the Maryland Library Association.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Christmas Eve in the 1990s by Sue Ellen Thompson

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Christmas Eve in the 1990s

“Nine Lessons and Carols” would be on NPR,
I’d be polishing silver, you’d be in the yard
clipping holly for a centerpiece, my father
following you around. My mother
would be ironing the dark green linen
tablecloth, the lace-trimmed napkins.
My sister and her family would arrive as usual—
dinner for 12, no need for miracles.

Later, after assembling whatever piece
of sports equipment our young athlete
had begged us for all year, you and I
would light the tree and sit there for a while,
counting up how many holidays we’d spent
in this same company, which seemed so permanent
that change was unimaginable.
That, I realize now, was the miracle.

–  Sue Ellen Thompson

Sue Ellen Thompson is the author of five books of poetry, including They (2014), The Wedding Boat (1995), and This Body of Silk (1986). Her two other books, The Leaving: New & Selected Poems (2001) and The Golden Hour (2005), were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Her latest book, Sea Nettles: New & Selected Poems has just been published. Thompson has received numerous awards and honors, including the Samuel French Morse Prize, the Pablo Neruda Prize, the Maryland Author Award, and two Artist Fellowships from the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Perfect by Sue Ellen Thompson

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The Spy’s annual seasonal tradition of publishing a poem by Oxford’s Sue Ellen Thompson is now entering its  fifth year this December with Perfect.

Perfect

Couples, some with children, flood
the studded hillside with its grid
of spruce and fir. Some are armed

with saws to cut their trees down early—
tags have been switched by the wordly
among us, and Christmas is hardly

the time to take up trust,
with signs in all the parking lots
reminding us that we must lock

our valuables inside. As usual,
you’re eager to be done with it and pull
aside the first remotely conical

shrub you find. But I’ve got
the saw, and simply saunter on
as if you were a tree yourself, and far

from perfect. See Jack and Jill,
who came with us, head up the hill
in silence? Last night she told

me he was seeing someone else and hasn’t
touched her in six months. Isn’t
it enough to break your heart (and wasn’t

that marriage too perfect to be true?)?
Instead of the plump blue spruce
you hold up a spikey, goose-

necked pine. No, no—
it will not do.
Why must you

be so quick to settle for less than what
could be ours? And what
does it say about the two of us

and our flawed companions on this hunt
that we seek the perfect form in nature
we can’t quite manufacture

on our own by framing
a tent above our children, or by leaning
toward each other, warming

the bitter air that separates
the long-married? If earth is the base
and we’re the sides, then your face

and mine together form a vertex
when we agree, be it sex
or aesthetics. Don’t let me wax

geometric—it was my only C
in high school. Forget the other trees.
In your arms, I’m the perfect isosceles.

Sue Ellen Thompson is the author of five books of poetry, including They (2014), The Wedding Boat (1995), and This Body of Silk (1986). Her two other books, The Leaving: New & Selected Poems (2001) and The Golden Hour (2005), were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.  Thompson has received numerous awards and honors, including the Samuel French Morse Prize, the Pablo Neruda Prize, the Maryland Author Award, and two Artist Fellowships from the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism.

 

 

 

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

The Spy Holiday Poem: Mid-Winter Migrants by Sue Ellen Thompson

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The Spy continues our tradition in sharing the best of local poetry as our way to celebrate this holiday season. Once again, we turn to Oxford’s very gifted Sue Ellen Thompson to honor us with her work.

Mid-Winter Migrants

When snow geese rise
en masse from a shallow pond.

When they wheel,
remembering what they left 

behind, then wheel
again, a change of mind.

When one black wing-tip
clips that of another 

and no one complains.
When they extend 

their legs in front,
drawing their wings back

as if reluctant to land.
When they rise 

again just moments later—
whether it’s because 

a car door slams
or in primordial alarm— 

you can be certain
that they have no

choice and that they won’t
return to this same pond

in this same company,
with this much hope.

 

Sue Ellen Thompson is the first “featured writer” in the Delmarva Review. Among her published works, a fifth book of poems, THEY, was published in 2014. She has been an instructor at The Writer’s Center, in Bethesda, since 2007, and has previously taught at Middlebury College, Binghamton University, the University of Delaware, and Central Connecticut State University. She received the 2010 Maryland Author Award from the Maryland Library Association.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.