Author: Bev Tappan

PAW PRINTS

My hand recalls the hard curve

Of his skull and the pull of the wire brush

Through his coarse tail.  Big Mick

Was a rock hound who nosed up

Smooth stones to cradle in his jaws.

 

He swam endless laps in the pond

Towing a small boy.  He barked

Into the water to scare the fish.

His wolf eyes beamed us down the drive.

He danced his welcome up the steps.

 

Vacuum cleaners were fair game.

New ice at the edge of the outlet

Shattered under his paws.  Snow frosted

His muzzle.  His tracks in the woods, enlarged

Like Big Foot’s, soon will be melted.

(Reutemann Road poems 1960-1972)

GIVING THANKS

Meandering out of the village the car

Shudders and stops short

To let a bronze native turkey

Hurtle across the tar-top

Almost under the wheels, desperate,

Floundering into the furze.

The sacrificial victim flees

The carnage.  One wants to cheer

As when Canadian geese last week

Gleaned in Farmer Burdick’s

Cornfield, undisturbed by chattering

Guns or barking curs.

(Reutemann Road poems 1960-1972)

EVANESCENCE

Tonight we see two moons:

One has fallen in the pond,

A fire opal clasped in prongs,

Caged in black branches.

The other moon is ringed in flames.

Knowing this moment cannot last,

We hurry to get a camera.

On our return, pale ripples

Stir the darkening water

And smoking ashes shimmer in the sky.

(Reutemann Road poems 1960-1972)

ROLE MODELS

Mourning doves are Quaker ladies

Sedate, subdued and graceful,

Habited in buff and gray with sable

Accents and tapering tails.

Muslim women congregating

At the well, they softly wait

Until among the seeds a space

For feeding makes itself available.

Nodding their heads they circulate

With delicate steps, amiable

Party guests, unruffled, contained,

For simple favors grateful.

ALL HALLOWS DAY

Prizefighters, the trees, muscular and bare-

Chested, have shrugged off florescent

Dressing gowns, ready to go

Six rounds with winter, that old

Title holder.  It’s the first of November.

We are out to resurrect the leaves,

Give them a new start on life

In compost piles where they will steam,

Reduce themselves to a stew chewed by hearty

Worms into a meal fit for the delicate

White fingers of April radishes.

Harvesting leaves is not like tugging out

Rocks or cutting clusters of grapes.

With wide-spread arms we hug

The feathery mounds, we press them down

Into the cart.  My husband tramples them underfoot

Like hay in the barn loft, he recalls,

Dust floating up and people sneezing.

Chickadees complain.  Gray squirrels

Brandish their tails.  A jay keeps his distance.

Under the clouds a focal flock of geese

Shift lanes, honking for the right-of-way,

Ignored by a pair of hang-gliding hawks.

Radical tamarack candles flame

 Among conservative pines and cedars,

Electing to cast all their needles off

In one annual fling rather

Than pluck them out a few at a time.

At noontime we pause.  I cut pink

And maroon chrysanthemums for the table.

Bumblebees fasten themselves like pins

On the yellow stamen.  I flick them off.

But that evening on the kitchen counter

A microscopic neon emerald bee-like

Creature glints on a pastel petal.

(Reutemann Road Poems, 1960-1972)

BREAKING OFF

The old bass grins with a mended lip,

A zippered gash where a hook was ripped

Across the cartilage and out,

Taking a corner of the mouth.

She chose to spew the succulent bait

Rather than swim on a leash and wait

For the dull hammer thud on the head,

The knife edge sawing through the neck.

The old wolf lopes with a missing paw

On the stubborn bone she chose to gnaw

In a long cacophony of pain

And not like a docile dog remain

In the tender clasp of talons of steel,

Starving by inches on rancid meat,

Awaiting the bullet’s swift reprieve.

The best revenge is living free.

(Reutemann Road Poems 1960-1972)

THE CATCH

Two hooks in her cheek, one in her lip,

The bass lay passive on the gravel bank

As though my fingers twisting barbs out of cartilage

Were veterinarian healing probes.

Back in the water, leashed on a stringer,

She rested in rusty bottom reeds,

Sometimes backpaddling the length of her tether

With small delicate strokes of her fins.

She’d made her protest demonstration when the pain

First snagged her face, that treacherous

Red lure.  She arched my rod, launching

Herself like a rocket out of control.

I sharpened the blade for a fast scalpel cut

At the base of the head.  She lay still

As a patient on an operating table.  Scales scattered.

I saw her sacks of roe were full.

My father taught me how to fish, threading

The worms as casually as bacon rind

Onto the hooks, smoothing down the fins,

Enclosing the perch in his freckled hand.

(Reutemann Road Poems, 1960-1972)

EVANESCENCE

Tonight we see two moons.

One has fallen in the pond,

A fire opal clasped in prongs,

Caged in black branches.

The other moon is ringed in flames.

Knowing this moment cannot last,

We hurry to get a camera.

On our return, pale ripples

Stir the darkening water

And smoking ashes shimmer in the sky.

(Reutemann Road Poems 1960-1972)