Bev Tappan

Month: June 1987

  • NEW ENGLAND: REACTION TIME

    The intersection coming into view
    Is a slow motion silent
    Moving picture. A fountain
    Of glass showers the road
    From a front headlight bounced
    Off the rear bumper of a car
    That seems to have overshot the stop sign.

    Trying to comprehend we watch
    A hit and run scenario
    Unwind. The wavering offender,
    Turn signal still blinking,
    Like a mechanized rabbit nipped
    By a racetrack greyhound, disappears.

    What will Jessica Fletcher
    Think of us for not memorizing
    The license plate? Meanwhile,
    The confused victim sits
    Stalled on the state highway.
    A flash flood of beach
    Traffic surges into sight.

    But help, we note, is at hand.
    Two women wearing aprons
    Run from the firehouse kitchen.
    One, like a French gendarme
    In the the Place de la Concorde, tames
    Stampeding vehicles to a snail’s pace.

    The other wields a pushbroom.
    As swiftly as a hockey forward
    Dribbling the puck for a goal,
    She herds the broken glass
    To the roadside, marshalling
    Into her parade the still dazed
    Driver. At last we make
    Our move, saluting the resduers
    For speed and savoir faire.

  • NEW ENGLAND: RETIREMENT PARTY

    Tiny volcanoes of citarette stubs puff
    In our faces. The saxophone player
    Wears a toupee. Everyone’s hair is
    Or would be gray if…
    The gifts, a roll-up trailer hose and cord,
    Will soon be snaking in
    And out from Florida to Texas to LA.
    Gargantuan prime ribs
    Alarm us. The salad is nondescript. A cynical
    Waitress deals out
    Slabs of gluey supermarket ice cream.
    Bubbles of jovial laughter
    Burst above beer bottles. Smiles stretch
    Tight from cheek to cheek.
    On the dance floor calves still shapely
    Fox trot gracefully but almost
    Lose control rocking on jitterbug curves
    After the plaques and fare-
    You wells, the moon blows us home
    Like shad on the spring tide.

  • AT HOME: A GIFT OF LAND

    Olof, the hale old Swede who cleared this hill,
    Tossing an avalanche of fieldstones down the draw
    When these tall cedar trees were bluegray berries,
    Cut wagonloads of black birch to be milled
    For wintergreen to oil less supple joints,
    Pastured his dairy cows where we now play
    At carpenter and mason after work,
    Gathered snowy mounds of princess ppine
    For Ingrid his wife to weave in yuletime weaths
    And picking marigolds for marshy salads
    Paced on glacier droppings over wetlands
    He rightly guessed could be gouged to a pond,
    Rode with us to scan a gravel bank
    For gleanings of choice rainwashed building stones.

    We asked the owner what she’d take for them.
    She said she’d be obliged if we would come
    And help ourselves to what were hard to move.
    Rocks, being common, were as free as air.
    Her mother was an Indian, said Olof
    When we thanked her. Came from Signal Hill.
    Her father was a white, her husband too
    And only one of her six kids was Indian.
    That one’s a teacher now, a real nice girl.
    No Indians are left now on the reservation.
    You have to be full blooded to live there.

    We did not speak but thought, the town
    Has finally become desegregated, then,
    And Asiatic faces, warm brown skins
    Have mingled with us northern Europeans.
    You do not seem to mind and yet you sat
    One recent evening scowling over coffee
    Indignant at some legislative pup
    Who dared propose that blacks should dwell near whites
    If they could pay the price, dollars being green.
    “They all smell bad,” you said, “and I’d not want
    My daughters to get near them nor would I.
    They’ll buy a house and fill it full of kith
    And kin whose kids will overrun the neighborhood
    And all the houses will be sold to them.”

    We wonder, Olof, what you’d say if you
    Were living now, twenty years later when
    It begins to look as though the Reservation
    Will soon outgrow the town. With government grants
    The Indians have built new houses, purchased land,
    Bought out a restaurant, developed a gravel mine,
    And opened up a high stakes bingo hall.
    Meanwhile, the blacks are still not numerous among us.
    What is the difference whether the skins of neighbors
    Are black or brown or white except for the guilt
    That we once took their lands away from the Indians
    And from their lands we took away the Africans.

  • AT HOME: FIELDSTONE MASONRY

    Gravel under and behind
    Will dissipate the rainfall.
    Dig the base below the frost.
    Drain with pipes a wall.

    Lime, cement and screened sand
    Lightly mix to morter.
    Color, texture vary not
    Nor increments of water.

    Green or white or dusky rose
    Choose the stones with love:
    Black or brown or mica-sprinkled
    Orange, blue or mauve.

    Place the best face to the front.
    Hose off grass nd dust.
    Chock each rock and check the level.
    Iron streaks will rust.

    Tamp the morter in the joint.
    Smooth it to each face.
    Wind and water will invade
    A rough or hollow place.

    Walls are built to stand the weather.
    Walls are built to wear.
    Form and texture and technique
    Hands must blend with care.

  • AT HOME: CELEBRITY

    Juncos his advance scouts,
    Royally he drops down
    Flanked by jays to sample
    Seeds, for once a groundling:
    Zebra-striped, scarlet-

    Crowned as Juan Carlos,
    His hair sun colored,
    Alighting from the last car
    Accompanies Holland’s Berenice
    To view the cathedral of Toledo.

    One move and he
    Is gone. Binoculars in hand,
    I wait. The wall clock bongs
    Nine times. The woodpecker
    Is in no hurry to return.

  • AT HOME: LE PRINTEMPS

    I

    Quacking and chattering like demented ghosts,
    Small frogs in woodland pools
    Startle us. We lift an oak leaf
    To uncover the first velvet pipsissewa.

    Onioins and pink coated peas
    Are lined up in trenches like good soldiers
    Waiting for the sun to bugle reveille.
    Chives shoulder green lances.

    Rejoice greatly, ye robins and phoebes.
    Gambol, you worms, in the compost. Our window
    Shutters make excellent nesting ledges.
    Prepare a welcome for the tree swallows.

    II

    Like a chocolate bunny
    Encircled by Easter
    Eggs, the gray
    Squirrel sits
    Among the yellow,
    White and lavender
    Crocuses eating
    Seeds under the bird
    Feeder. Suddenly
    He runs up
    The ree and clings
    Horizontally, flapping
    His beaver tail,
    A dusty rug,
    Head turning
    To eye my binoculars.

    Some people
    Hear colors.
    The cardinal’s a siren;
    His wife, Morse
    Code. In polyphony
    They peck like hens.

    Holding up
    Her red beads,
    The maple admires
    Her reflection
    In the window glass.

  • AT HOME: SUMMER FOG

    Tranquilly
    Mist drips
    From cedars
    Whose tips
    Spiders
    Have laced
    With silver.

    Invisible
    In a smoking pond
    Snow bellied
    Bass swirl
    And slap water
    Snapping
    At ephemeridae.

    Crickets
    Bleating
    Unceasingly
    Flood our heads
    With liquid
    Dribble.

  • AT HOME: JUNGLE WARFARE

    Leaning back on the mower,
    I ride the green billows
    Down the hill and around
    The pond. Blades clash and
    Leopard frogs arc
    To save their trailing legs.
    The air fizzes with a dandelion
    Blizzard. All that crunch
    And crackle of fecund weed,
    Foetid with aroma of bog,
    Spurts confetti swarms
    Of gnats, ticks, and ephemeridae
    Like killer spores of an alien
    Planet gassing the invader.

  • AT HOME: MOCK ALERT

    On my left hand, poised
    Over the control key of the word
    Processor, my forefinger
    Grew numb and then
    My thumb. I was writing a poem
    About death. Insatiable tourist
    That I am, it was a travel
    Brochure luring me to visit
    The valley of the shadow. I leaped
    Up, flexing my digits
    Above my head, and danced
    Around the living room
    To the pulsing strains of an eleison:
    Robert J’s contribution
    To post-Easter Monday.

    This could not be happening. I sat
    Down again and copied
    The poem with many a change
    Mode and saved it on the disk>
    If I were dying, at least
    That would be finished. But blood
    Was now returning to my hand.
    Taking off my robe,
    I found the elastic wrist
    Of my knitted sweatshirt nightgown
    Had been pushed too high up
    On my arm, cutting off circulation.
    Interesting as they sound, apparently
    I was not yet a candidate
    For an early death experience.

  • AT HOME: MORNING COMES TO MY LIVINGROOM

    The popup sun, plump
    As a cherry pincushion, laves
    A rosy gouache over wintry
    Webs of antlered trees
    Onto fuchsia cactus flowers
    And glossy red rimmed jade.

    Around the northwest shoulder
    Of Pitcher Mountain, the Canada
    Express, a spring cleaning
    Housewife, shakes treetop
    Dust mops and scrubs Crystal
    Patches off the blueblack pond.

    Careering down stairs, the sixfoot
    Wolfbred shepherd hairpins
    Spraying up doves and juncos.
    A cheetah hurdling furled
    Swamp cabbages, he pants
    Back to pen and biscuits.

    In golden windows aloe
    Glows. Hollyhock stairtreads
    Gleam coral. Dust
    Moats spark. Dawn
    Explodes into morning glory.
    Coffee calls me to the kitchen.

  • AT HOME: RIGHT BRAIN AT WORK

    Poems swim up unsummoned
    When you are not fishing.
    Like wary young sunfish they nibble
    But never bite on your nightcrawlers

    Or settle like a charter flight
    Of waxwings noisily snackbreaking
    On smoky blue cedar berries
    Before resuming their scenic tour.

    Poems are showers of falling stars
    Caught by the camera you thought
    You aimed at Halley’s comet or
    The big dipper over New York City.

    You might as well try to net
    A sunbeam, corral a hurricane
    Or harvest snowflakes as tame
    A poem to come on call like
    A hummingbird to a sweetwater feeder.

  • FRIENDS: SERMON BY OUR FAVORITE HERETIC

    Sunlight dyed crimson by the lead-limned folds
    of the master shepherd’s cloak
    Turns auburn the coiled braid of the harpist
    Leaning gently into her royal
    Instrument inlaid with vines, a Corinthian column
    At its prow. She weaves us melodies.
    The stained glass sheep listen, eyes
    Downcast or mesmerized, feet
    On apple green astroturf. HOw sweetly
    Jesus leads his flock.

    But what is this we hear? What heresy assaults
    Our ears? The seed that Origen
    Implanted ran rampant like kudzu or bittersweet when
    Rowed ashore by Murray, who was
    Blown off course and washed up in New Jersey
    Where crazy farmer Potter’s
    Chapel waited for an anti-Calvin to unbolt
    The gates of Hades and harrow
    Hell and escalate sinners to God’s coffeehouse.
    Not obedient sheep.

    But randy goats, fauns, satyrs, Pan’s
    Unspeakable obscene ilk were
    All invited to a divine live aid
    Amplified synthesized concert
    After, of course, some brief retraining in the basics of
    Remedial ethics: Miss Manners’
    Finishing school for psychopaths, terrorists and sadists
    With rehabilitation guaranteed.
    Verily he would never insult us by calling himself
    Pastor to a flock of sheep.