Senior’s poetry a hit with peers

SWAMPSCOTT – Deahn Leblang, a writing teacher at the Swampscott Senior Center, says she often hears people say they don’t like poetry until they read one of Maria Mello’s poems.On Wednesday, about 30 seniors gathered at the center for a special afternoon tea to celebrate Mello’s first published collection of 40 poems, “Bird Calls.” Mello read five poems from her book while her audience ate tiny sandwiches and sipped from a mix of coffee mugs, paper cups and delicate tea cups with saucers. Many in the crowd were fellow writers in Leblang’s class, which began in the back room of a Panera Bread restaurant before the senior center was built on Essex Street.”Maria’s poems still make me cry, and I’ve been reading them for years,” said Leblang.Mello said she has been writing since she was 7 years old, her first poem being a first-grade homework assignment about Adolf Hitler. “I just kept writing because I was too shy to send anything out (to get published),” said Mello. She added that she rarely reads aloud. “I read to my cat. If he doesn’t walk out, I know I’m in the right,” she laughed.”Bird Calls” is “10 years, at least” in the making, said Mello.Mello’s descriptive poems centered around wildlife themes, like wise trees and owls hooting in the woods guiding her “from a shy girl to a strong old lady.” Mello, who worked with the Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary in Topsfield for the last 20 years, said she has been a wildlife enthusiast all her life, her passion even helping her when she was diagnosed with cancer about 15 years ago.Two weeks before receiving chemotherapy, Mello said she had a dream about a cougar being her guardian throughout the treatment. During the healing process, Mello said she imagined the cougar inside her being the tumor, and coming out to guide her back to health.Mello touched on her experience with “Tats,” one of the poems she read aloud. “When I was young, ladies didn’t get tattoos,” she began, “but then, Pluto was a planet, children played in their backyards and men didn’t walk on the moon.” As she read on, Mello described how the “four small holes” in her torso from the radiation became her tattoo, like her sailor husband’s ink. “Four small dots, still after 15 years, much like his bluebird, there for the rest of my life.”Mello said what attracts her to wildlife is that in the outdoors, “If you approach things in peace, it becomes a kind life.” Mello added that even though she was angry with her cancer at first, her image of the cougar made her more accepting.”You have to make peace with a lot of things,” Mello said. Smiling, she added, “But it worked – here I am, 11 years free, back to my own lunacy.””Bird Calls” is being published by Leblang’s collaborative publishing company, Four Square Press. It is available in the Swampscott Public Library.Kait Taylor can be reached at [email protected].