Bev Tappan

Month: June 2018

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: FREAK SHOW

    Why do we sit in our circus seats

    Watching a shaggy yellow-haired ape

    Swagger and strut his pompous stuff?

    Hear all the dissonant noise he makes!

    Does he mean us harm?  Is that a stick

    Of dynamite or is it sugar cane?

    And is that a cigarette lighter

    His other hand points and waves

    At us?  Why don’t we boo and hiss

    Until they drag him off the stage?

    We like to play with fire.  We love

    To tempt the bull, wave the red cape,

    Run our outdated nuclear reactors,

    Ignore the winds of a blackening hurricane.

      

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: SPRING FEVER

    SPRING FEVER

     

    What a beneficent day this is:

    Sumer is icumen in,

    Lilacs at the door now bloom,

    Our time for flowering has come.

    Toss the cumbrous coats aside.

    Light and lithesome is our style.

    We’ll be darkly cloaked no more.

    Warmth has reached our northern shores.

    From our caverns we’ll emerge,

    For frolicking we feel the urge.

    Setting out plants and pulling weeds

    With gardening fervor we are seized

    Old bones step out with vigor and vim

    And all the world is young again.

     

     

     

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: CUTTING THE CORD

    CUTTING THE CORD

    At the age of twelve, why did I

    Decide it was time to be baptized?

    In our church, full immersion was the rite.

    I never experienced an epiphany,

    No inner voices spoke to me,

    My nights were calm: no vision dreams.

    It was a fairly embarrassing sight

    To be draped in a tent-like gown of white:

    A dunked and dripping young acolyte.

    But it seemed like a step toward maturity,

    Like a high school diploma, a college degree:

    An escape from parental authority.