THE TASTE OF ICELAND
Iceland tastes like dried cod
That sweetens slowly as you chew.
Whale’s fishy beef taste may seem odd
Until it becomes familiar to you.
Pickled herring and smoked trout
With slices of cheese and deli meats
Boiled eggs, hothouse tomatoes and cukes
Are arrayed on trays as breakfast treats
Flanked by rich brown thermal bread.
Yogurts, skyrs and fluffy mousse,
Golden butter and liverwurst spread
Are served with espresso and apple juice.
LIVING ON THE EDGE
In Iceland the shore’s the place to thrive:
Warmed by the North Atlantic Drift,
Your crops and you will stay alive,
Safe from the glaciers on your roof,
Those peaks robed in eternal snows
Whose rivers water and feed your crops
That burgeon in the summer’s light.
The shore’s the place to love and hope
And garner the bounty of the sea,
To dry the cod and ferment the shark,
Harvest birds’ eggs and minki whale meat
To see you through the winter’s dark.
ALL THE PRETTY LITTLE HORSES
A line of horses smoothly pacing
Past the windows of our bus,
Heads to flanks, manes streaming,
They look like poetry in motion to us.
Splashed white, silver and golden,
Dapples, duns, roans and bays,
Chestnut, smutty, palominos,
Buckskin, creme and smoky grays.
Flaxen manes and tails flow past
Like Neptune’s steeds upon the waves,
Slipping from our view at last,
Icelandic horses on their way.
LUPIN LAND
They call you Iceland, but to me,
You are the land of the light-flecked lupins
Lapping liquidly up from the sea,
Flowing like lava on slopes and banks,
Softening the once-rough lava beds,
Cooling the once-hot thermal earths,
Injecting beneficent nitrogen,
Fixating fine and friable soils.
Their petals are blue as the glacial flows,
Tinged with the white of glacial ice.
Like the ancient Norse, they’ve arrived to stay.
They’ll hold their ground, come what may.
RIVERSIDE LILACS
Lilac’s sweet scent
And the Bearcamp’s sluicing song
Give my heart ease
Now that you are gone.
Give my heart ease,
But do not quell the pain
Of knowing that I’ll never
Walk with you again
Except in memory’s bittersweet
Though comforting afterglow:
The luminous husk of happiness
My heart will now know.
(June, 2014)
LIFE IS A FARMERS’ MARKET
May brings the seedlings: parsley, sage
Thyme and rosemary frail and green,
Eggs of all sizes, turkey to quail,
Ruby red radishes crunchy and sweet,
The wild curled fronds of fiddlehead ferns,
Lambs’ quarters, dandelion leaves.
For rhubarb’s tangy sauce we yearn,
New peas, garlic, onions, chives.
Summer’s bounty is succulent corn,
Heritage tomatoes and summer squash.
Young carrots, beets and broccoli are borne
To the growing family’s midday repast.
New potatoes, yams and turnips appear.
With the sweetness of berries the meal is crowned
Before the table is finally cleared,
The dishes washed, the family gone.
The produce of fall is all about
Preparing for frost: sweet or hard cider,
Local beer, ales and stout,
Grapes and berries transmuted to wines.
Ripened root vegetables are stored.
Preserves, pickles and relishes keep
The taste of summer in our mouths
Throughout the winter’s long cold sleep.
WAKE UP CALL
Death is the surprise
Life springs on us
When we are not looking.
Even when we see it coming,
We’re never ready.
It takes us unawares.
Suddenly our dear one
Is not here,
Is not there,
Is nowhere.
Death does not care.
We care.
OUR BLACKBERRY YEAR
One year the blackberry blooms
Burgeoned so fulsome and rank,
With the weight of their fragrant fruit
The bushes bowed and bent.
We picked our fingers black
And filled our freezer full,
Then had to refer to a book
On concocting blackberry cordial.
This potent purple brew,
The perfect campfire quaff,
We transported in our canoe
For a day’s end toast and laugh.
LEAVE TAKING
The week before you left,
The ghost pear bloomed
Beyond our window. Perhaps
It beckoned to you, since
You could no longer pack
Your wetbag for the Allegash,
Guide us down the Chase Rips,
Or gaze at the Long Lake rainbow.
It pleasures me to think
That you are chasing rainbows.
(RiverWoods poems: May 11, 2014)
A NOTE OF THANKS TO MY MAYFLOWER GIRL
Was it in the Sixties that I first heard
The doorbell ring on the first of May
And found your wildflowers at the door
Of that hillside house your father girded
With cedar logs and sturdy fieldstones
To keep our family sound and safe?
Fifty years later your “Free Spirit”
Roses arrive (I love the concept)
At my apartment, accompanied
By purple and orange tulips and green
Cymbidium orchids, as always on the First
Day of May, their Andean-colored cheer
Brightening up a rainy day
And warming my heart with a memory.