Bev Tappan

Author: Bev Tappan

  • NORWICH YEARS:DISSONANCE

    DISSONANCE

    You can’t hear the music in my headphones.

    We’re wired up to different frequencies.

    You jog to Bach, I to The Grateful Dead.

    It’s Lohengrin for you and Julio for me.

    When we dance it’s hard to keep in step.

    You dip and turn to waltzes from Vienna.

    I rock with The Beetles’ antic drums.

    No wonder we tread on each other’s feet.

    Chording is difficult in counterpoint while

    Humming a tune with Peter, Paul and Mary.

    Why don’t we start exchanging our cassettes?

    Then we might sing along in harmony.

  • REUTEMANN ROAD POEMS:ROWING

    ROWING AT SUNSET

    Feathered blades skip over the waves

    As I lean back into the westerly wind

    That encases and straightens my arrowing scull

    Crossing the cove to the river’s bend.

    A raftful of cormorants watch me pass,

    Rubber necks circling like periscopes.

    Awkwardly,  I too twist to survey

    Over each shoulder the liquid highway

    And pause, outrigger oars held flat,

    To let a motorboat rocket by

    That flushes up the black spectators

    Frantically flapping in disarray.

    They settle again as sinuous swimmers,

    Casually dipping for fishy hors d’oeuvres,

    And I resume my water skimming,

    The sun as I turn a glory in my eyes.

  • MEMORIES: PINE HILL

    UP AND DOWN PINE HILL

    Face down on the Flexible Flyer,

    Runners tuning up, a

    Conveyer of tire-treaded snow

    Trembling into motion,

    My watery eyes slitted by wind

    Singeing my nose and chin,

    At the curve I slid onto unresisting air,

    Exhilerated as a sky diver,

    And thumped, breathless, onto the virgin drifts

    Of a neighbor’s sunken garden.

    In spring we wound on roller skates,

    Turning butterfly keys until

    Clamps tightened on shoe soles,

    Tenacious as bulldogs. Then,

    Head down and arms swinging, we

    Herringboned up the sidewalk

    And schussed down, knees bent,

    Locomotive wheels clacking,

    Hedges blurring past, decelerating

    At last to a leisurely standstill.

    Summers we stood on bicycle pedals,

    Weaving drunkenly uphill.

    Fall was leaves whispering underfoot as,

    Schoolbags slung over shoulders,

    We slogged through fungal fragrance

    While peach and violet sunsets

    Silhouetted the limbs of lindens.

    I still love scrambling and

    Panting up precipitous trails

    Or jogging on snowshoes down.

  • MEMORIES:WALES

    GHOST TOWNS IN NORTH WALES

    We walk in upland dales past roofless towns.

    The wind off glowering crags is

    Muffled by slate fence rows: mansized

    Slabs ragged from edge to edge,

    Planted in soil too thin to bury the dead.

    These blue-black panels, weathering grey,

    Echo the softly slurring gutterals

    Of short and sturdy dark-haired Celts:

    Miners who with their wives and children

    Walked these paths some forty years ago.

    Their boys at twelve did not join boy scout

    Troops but took their futile candles

    And six-foot iron drill rods

    To brave the brimstone depths they’d

    Long been warned about by chapel preachers.

    Each night they hurried out for a wash

    And supper and choir practice, that

    Other world that kept them sane and literate

    Along with lunchtime meetings where

    Roberts’ Rules governed debates.

    Empty now are the slate caverns.  Vandalized

    Is the manager’s house in the grove.

    Open to wind and hail, the miners’ homes

    Welcome the chimney swifts while

    Waiting for men who never returned from war.

    We point binoculars at hardy sheep

    Cropping the mountain meadows:

    Their lambs are radioactive since Chernoble.

    A wagtail showers himself

    In acid rainfall blown here from New York.

  • NORWICH YEARS:EXCHANGE

    EXCHANGE

    They had to raise their voices to be heard

    Above the hoarsely caroling ghetto box

    Exuding Christmas atmosphere for senior

    Citizens.  The food was their concern:

    Roast beef with cheese on buttered bread would not

    Have met with Doctor Pritikin’s approval.

    They recollected chickens fed on grain,

    Scalded in iron sinks of farmhouse kitchens.

    She told of pitting dates and cracking walnuts

    With her sister after school and slicing

    Maraschino cherries for the cornflake-

    Dusted cookies known as cherry winks.

    He responded with his memories

    Of fingers stained by black walnut shells

    And pricked by nutpicks prying out the smoky

    Bits his mother folded into clouds

    Of sugary egg whites called divinity fudge

    That melted on the tongue like snow in summer.

  • REUTEMANN ROAD POEMS:SHARDS

    STUDY IN BLACK AND WHITE

    Shards chatter as I brush past ice-encrusted

    Branches that glitter like the Snow Queen’s chandeliers.

    Silicon-coated skeletons, trees crack

    Overhead.  I break into a run, my footprints

    Paralleling those of deer.  The snow is pockmarked

    By glass bullets.  Cedars weighted down

    With ermine furs kowtow to the north wind.

    Our fish pond is a bottomless black tarn,

    The lair of whitehaired trolls long in the tooth.

    An albino whale, the shape of Ahab’s paranoia,

    Drowned him in sunless watery darkness.

    Our bones recall an age when glaciers flowed

    Like lava from volcanoes, stiffening life

    In diamond-sequined winding shrouds.

    O

  • NORWICH YEARS:TAKAYAMA

    THE INN AT TAKAYAMA

    Clad in our blue and white guesthouse kimonos,

    We sit at a low table

    Where oval cups repose while tea leaves

    Steep.  Calm as anemones,

    We drifted in steaming baths, shedding travel

    Stress with western clothes.

    Lemon lilies smile by the television.

    From cherry tree to river,

    Goldfinch notes drop with white petals.

    Kneeling on the tatami,

    The Innkeeper’s wife and her maid pull the sheets,

    Smooth as just fallen snow,

    Tight across firecracker red futons.  Later

    We will stroll along the shore

    And cross the bridge to the three-story pagoda.

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS:A SNAPSHOT

    A SNAPSHOT IN TIME

    From the bend of the river

    We look back at town,

    Our eyes first drawn

    To the fall-colored copse

    Of maples and oaks

    Beyond the boathouse

    Of the post-colonial

    Academy and below

    The cupolas of the

    Briefly colonial capitol’s

    Church and town hall.

    Across the tumbling outflow

    From the crumbling Great Dam

    Rise mustard-colored walls

    Of once-dockside warehouses

    A mill run apart from

    The towering smokestacks

    Of one-time mills.   And

    Then a fluttering flag

    Marks the brick powder house

    Whose contents were fired

    At the Battle of Bunker Hill.

    So much we see as we

    Look back before we

    Turn to go down the river.

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS:WINTER

    WINTER MAGIC

    Every year we fall for it again:

    The first white flakes, ski tracks on

    Virgin snow, the new moon shine

    On ice-encrusted lakes, rime-

    Frosted lawns and shivery dawns,

    Wassail and holly and Good Saint Nick.

    We never learn that it is all a trick,

    A sleight of the Great Magician’s hand

    To hide from sight the blasted rose,

    The bony skeletons of leafless trees,

    Their piles of wilted, sere and crumbling leaves,

    Until the last soot-blackened snow patch goes.

  • SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE:DISPATCHER

    OUR DISPATCHER

    At the newly painted station

    A small boy attaches himself

    To our luggage and ties on tags.

    The White Star Line bus will,

    He assures us, leave on time.

    Meanwhile on the pavement,

    With shrill cries he alerts

    The passersby to the imminence

    Of departure for Mexico City

    In fifteen minutes.  Sure enough,

    He is soon loading our bags

    And being reimbursed again.

    As the bus pulls out, he

    Comes down the aisle with

    A basket of tortillas

    And writes out tickets for

    The four senoritas who heeded

    His recent announcements.

    With regret, on the outskirts

    Of San Miguel, we observe

    The young entrepreneur

    Taking his leave.