Poems

Patrician as a Spanish grandee,
The Andean grandfather gazes
At llamas, alpacas and sheep
Weighing their fleece. His mouth
Is firm under a Roman nose.
Long eartlaps of a knitted
Chulpa frame angular
Cheekbones and a gray moustache.

He no longer plays soccer,
Inhaling the sparse oxygen:
His air fuel- injected
By high-octane hemoglobin.
His chest is now concave.
The serape slopes over shoulders That will carry the village sheep
At Sunday mass to the padre.

His wife has worked up a smile
For her grandson the artist, eyes Squinting in sunlight unshaded
By the upright salad bowl,
A scarlet melon slice,
Crowning her gray hair.
Rolled into a warm collar,
Her blanket comforts old bones.

She keeps her hands busy
Pulling and twisting wool
On a spindle. She often laughs
With neighbors at weekly markets
Buying potatoes and beans or
Sipping a glass of chicha.
She pacifies great grandbabies
with chunks of sugar cane.

On Lantern Hill the shadbush blooms
And clouds meander overhead.
The rocks are rough beneath my boots
The lichens stiff beneath my hand.

A small black-suited butterfly
Imbibes the blossoms airy mead.
I watch the redtails hover by
Stretch out my legs and take my ease.

I’ve heard that when the shadbush blows
The shadfish breast New England stream
Their frail white petals brush my nose
Among the still-emerging leaves.

Just to know they are there,
Earth’s gentle giants:
Gripping the ground with aged
Swollen joints, mahogany
Leathered, hairy, wide
As a circle of sixteen people outspread arms, cloning
Their young, cedary skyscrapers
Journeying back and forth
As we explore from our roots:
Calmly outliving, ignoring
The rise and fall of nations
Quiets the racing pulse
Unwinds the atomic clock.

John Muir danced over glaciers. He
Hunkered down to chat with new
Acquaintances among the plant people and
Grieved when they drowned in damned reservoirs.

Coatless, he bedded under bent boughs,
Warmed by climate-changing campfires.
Emerson missed his invitation to breathe
The star-spangled midnight air.

Thoreau would have leaped onto the ledge
Behind the waterfall to view the moon bow.
“Hang on,” John tells us. “Jam your fist
In the crack. Scrabble for toeholds.

Sway in the storm, rooted in wildness Eat apples and look at the larkspur, ” As his mother advised. Above all,
“Savor the taste of good bread. “

The windy hills New England farmers took.
Along with slamming doors and rattling panes
And blasts of blizzards off Laurentian plains,
For a broad and various, free, egregious outlook.

No stifling hollows air for high land lovers.
A hill borne, clear keen wind the chest unbands.
Roots and fruits rot in unstirred low- land damps.
The soul also, closed in, molders and smothers.

Site seekers on the ridge roads envy the views
These many-windowed farm homes gleam to behold
At dusk they eastward gaze to find the gold
Of childhood dreams mirrored in glassy hues.

Que paseo! What a ramble!
Six lightning-zigzagged poppies:
Peonies and dahlias waft in gentle Dignity down the valley, silent Between bursts of hot gas.

Cars stop and faces lift
Washed with early morning delight.
Straight up I photograph the basket
Beneath the blossom passing the moon.

In the evening we walk to the village green
To watch a huge purple tulip
Held captive by nylon vines
Rise and descend like an elevator.

Suddenly wind ruffles the petals.
A hefty, passenger dismounts in vain.
The silken tower sways and topples,
Pants and heaves on the ground like a sulky
Elephant. Men shout and tug
Out the last whisper of air.

Then like a tiny spaceship launching
Out of trees, a child’s helium
Balloon escapes into the darkening sky.
We watch until it winks out of sight.

Homegrown New Hampshire hybrids,
They wheel casually into box seats
At the curbstone, enthroning themselves of glistening red
Motorcycles to enjoy the Fourth of July
Fireworks. Her hair is tightly permed
And slightly gray. His beard boasts
He will live free. Both with vigorous
Bites relish their pizza slices,
Uninhibited by diet or fitness prescriptions.

She leans down to flick off
An invisible speck from the chrome pedal,
Admiring her windshield and rearview mirrors.
As magnesium mortars detonate in rainbow
Cascades, two comrade cyclists arrive
And lift off helmets from snow white hair.
From the grass where we sit, a toddler
Runs to hug her cruising grandparents.

MEMORIAL DAY IN SPAIN

The water tastes like death in the Valley of the Fallen:

Franco’s cross casts a long shadow

Between the hills.  How many mothers’ sons

Are stacked like cordwood in that vast basilica

Where roses, those old deodorizers, exhale

Funereal fragrance.  Here the wolf and the lion

Lie down together: brothers in blue and gray.

They choked on mule dust and blew up bridges,

Wearing the delicate stitches of machine gun

Fire.  Here the Olive barons of Seville

Do penance once a year for their Contra,

Their freedom fighter: Franco the Frog, he’s called,

For all the reservoirs he built that could not

Wash the taste of death out of his mouth.