NUCLEAR THREAT
This solitary passion cuts the core
Out of my apple.
Bloodless lasar surgery burns
A frozen section
Out of my heart. I stare at the eclipse
Of the sun and go blind.
My tongue is welded to the icy iron
Knocker on your door.
A falling meteor consumes itself
Inside my womb.
My radiation count is high.
Beware of me.
I could be tranquil as the summer seas
If you were here.
Your kiss would turn the strychnine I have drunk
To sparkling burgundy.
BACKYARD EROTICA
Rain sated, the lily quivers:
Magenta, deep-throated
Open since daybreak, leaning
Into the shimmering
Gauze curtain of water.
An interlude of silence:
We hear the final
Chime on the patio stones.
Stroked by sunlight,
The lily arches, uplifted
For the hummingbird’s thrust.
RUG HOOKING
Three women, warmed by a wood stove
And cactus blooming in springtime, handle
Soft wool. One thumb and finger, unseen
Beneath the burlap, locate the next connection.
A dowser’s stick or well bucket, the hook
Goes down and brings up particles of water,
Petals, greenery, clouds or sky. A starling
Flaps at the window, puzzled by plants in pots.
She streaks the race and toss and curl of wave
In wind, the sail tilting, seagulls diving.
Medieval women weaving tapestries,
Nuns embroidering altar cloths, or frontier
Wives quilting Texas stars, they talk
Of coming wars, sickness, healing herbs,
Babies, retirement plans and children’s destinies.
The pup, a fluffy mushroom, sniffs and sneezes.
EGYPTIAN STATUETTE
(for Jennifer)
The swimming child is as slim
As the stem of a daisy.
Who carved her eased the knife
In a sharp caress
That shaped her slender thighs
And outstretched arms,
Prenubile breasts and tiny
Waist. Her hair
Is gathered at the side –
A young girl’s style.
Her toes are dancer’s points.
She may have held
A fish between her hands.
The golden foil
Of bracelets and broad collar
Have left their marks.
She was not a commoner.
I want to buy
Her replica and give her
To my granddaughter,
Who only last week swam
To me as straight,
As juvenile
And as ephemeral.
ENDINGS
Overnight,
Like a peony,
Love may fall into a heap
Of petals
Or stand tall,
A pearly everlasting,
Nectorless,
Sundried.
A POEM FOR CARL SAGAN
(and NASA’s Natalie Bataha, who discovered Kepler 10)
“In order to let go, you have to be there
In the first place,” Carl said.
Walking and seeing, perceiving and feeling,
Attention must be paid:
Inspecting grains of sand, glimpsing exo-planets,
Forgetting the self,
Neurons interconnecting, concocting recipes,
Not “buying off the shelf.”
Though we are merely stardust
And to stardust must return,
Our flickers of light, in the midst of dark matter,
May provide some insight.
Songs in the car, my mother’s mellow contralto
The white fringe of birches framing Lake Chocorua
Her trudge up the Jewell Trail wearing a dress:
Calling out blazes on granite slabs
Spying the next cairn, the misty channel
Marker – or so I like to recall although
In truth my father may have been ahead.
How I resented the leash that reined me to them
After my toddler’s wobble toward the road
Where Model T’s jolted like windup toys.
The clothesline pulley ran me like a dog.
I was the bass my father trolled for what
Seemed hours in lucid lakes of northern Maine.
“You are all we’ve got, ” he often said
Spanking me whenever I crossed the street.
Today my mother came home from the hospital
Short of breath, unsure of the order of pills.
I cooked and laundered, fetched her water and kleenex
And snapped at the choke chain tightening on my neck
The way our shepherd balks at the door of the pen
Until we looked at curling photographs:
Her home-made lacy graduation dress
The boy with his bicycle twenty-five miles from home.
Unruffled sheets on half the bed
Manure and compost piles unspread
No woodchips on upholstered chairs
No wads of mud on cellar stairs
A pair of running shoes unfilled,
The ergometer counter stilled
Computer monitor unscribed,
Animal carvings undefined
The silent eight-day clock unwound,
No need to ring the dinner gong
No answer to the office phone,
A truck with no commute from home
The waxplant tolls its heavy blooms
Their midnight scent invaded the rooms.
I ask myself why Baroque music
Is the music for me
Why not Tchaikovsky but W.A. Mozart
Is my main man
And not just for the horn passages
Sweet as they are
Stravinsky says all eighteenth century
Music is to dance by.
It’s true my feet prance off without me
At the opening measure
Of any toe-tapping tune and especially
Contra dancing
Where men and women take their turns
Meet and separate
Do their things and greet their friends
Together and apart
Grand right and left and swing your partner
On equal terms.
Baroque music is like that: two voices
Male and female
In animated cross-talk. The flute
Makes a remark.
The harpsichord agrees and amplifies
Or the bas viol asks a question
The violin responds
And off they go in joyful repartee.
If daughters could talk
With fathers like that they’d grow up
To be happy women.
He garlands her with white arbutus in spring
And she is Frigga, Venus of Scandinavia.
Through drowsy summer days he paints
Her flesh pearly and smooth as silken linings
Of conch shells, her long limbs loose in sleep.
But fall diminishes her. A lesser wood nymph
Under a maple leaf, Persephone sliding
Back into earth, she moves away from him.
Against the black winter oak in her army
Cape she deflects his gaze with the icy eyes
Of Freyja, Prussian queen of slaughtered warriors.
Over the years his drybrush explores the ripened
Wheat of her hair, the Viking angles of her features.
The unsmiling mouth at last defeats him.
That season of my life I now can savor
When goldenrod on every back road border
Ignites its solar flares, and purple asters
Lift their wine in one last toast to summer.
My sugar maple leaves illuminate
The swamps where darning needles copulate.
My milkweed pods are tightly packed to labor
And let fly seeds on any passing vapor.
Meteors arc across my inner spaces.
Unblemished roses baptize me with fragrance.
The wild geese point to south my weather vane
This is the time for riding hurricanes
Before the tawny grasses crystallize
Before the long dark winter nights arrive.
Several months ago, the British
Unlocked the mainland border gates.
Workers can go freely home at night.
Tourists cross by bus as well as boat.
Spain has access to her own peninsula
The taxi takes us mile by mile
Into the garrisoned warren, the tunneled
Ant like arsenal. Pirates, moors,
Spanish, Germans, British and French
Drowned in flames for this barren rock.
Within numberless caves carved
By wind and water, some as vast
And domed as cathedrals, limestone pillars
Refracting thin aeolian chimes,
Neanderthal families gathered by their fires.