Bev Tappan

Author: Bev Tappan

  • REUTEMANN ROAD POEMS: VIGIL

    HIROSHIMA VIGIL 1987

    We stand at sunset on the Mystic Bridge,

    Old friends holding flowers.

    For twenty-five years we have come together

    To sing our prayers for peace.

    Look how the fish are leaping out

    Of the reddening waters, dancing

    To our tune.  They have a place

    On the tree of life and so do we.

    Christ cannot help us, he who predicted

    The end of the world in his lifetime,

    Nor Mohammed, exhorting the slaughter of infidels.

    We must go back in time

    To primitive gods who were earthy

    And love the planet.  We float

    Our candles out on the ebbing tide,

    Out of the river’s mouth

    Into that element that is our element,

    Invoking the spirit of the deep:

    Save us Jehovah, Father Poseidon,

    Preserve our holy waters.

  • REUTEMANN ROAD POEMS: DEER

    ARMISTICE

    All year long the deer evade us:

    Blurry twilight bounds at the end

    Of the path as the shepherd tugs at his leash,

    Shadows at dawn by the pond’s outlet.

    On snowshoes we cross so many tracks

    Up to the meadow and down to the brook,

    Briarpatch beds and mounds of pellets:

    A phantom herd inhabits our acres.

    This September Sunday we turn

    Into the gravel drive and meet

    A pair of whitetails grazing like calves,

    Unhurriedly waving their flags in farewell.

    An air of Glasnost has prevailed

    Since the dog retired to New Hampshire.

    Woodchucks browse on lettuce and beans.

    A great blue heron steps high in the shallows.

  • MEMORIES: SPANISH GETAWAY

    SPANISH INTERLUDE

    (For Pauline)

    Behind us crystal curtains

    Flow over royal fountains.

    Madrid’s sunlight is unkind

    To our aging skin, but her pixie

    Style bridges the years

    Since I last saw my earliest

    Friend.  We were spanked

    For crossing streets and wheeling

    Doll carriages around the block.

    We whispered forbidden secrets

    And played ring-o-leave-o after dark.

    Now we have escaped for a week

    On a trans-world getaway

    From family responsibility.

    Palace flags flap.

    Sipping diet drinks,

    We watch a gardener shaping

    Boxwood towers.  Having sought out

    Marzipan, porcelain and damascene,

    We are free to recall paella

    On Fishermen’s Beach, staccato

    Heels and castanets, Velasquez’

    Golden glow, reflections

    Of roses in Moorish pools.

    Lacy arches, Don Quizote

    Tilting with windmills, olive trees,

    Neanderthal caves on Gibralter, and

    At El Escorial the odor of mortality.

  • MEMORIES:BON VOYAGE

    BON VOYAGE

    Three burials in three months:

    We socialize over your funeral coffee.

    Sisters, you have left the party early,

    Set your atom particles swirling

    And abandoned your good books,

    Flower gardens and canoe trips,

    Spinning off children, husbands and pets.

    And so I plan the mode of my departure:

    Not to be draped in black tapestry

    Inscribed with a white six-pointed star,

    Or canopied in satin spattered by rainbows

    Sifted through stained glass windows,

    But taking a long view of the memorial

    Service through the wrong end of a telescope.

    My bones already oxidized and glowing,

    I will pinwheel into Van Gogh’s Starry Night,

    Hitching a ride to the nearest galaxy.

    The coral shells I leave behind

    Will fertilize another crop of beans

    Or drift in sun-filtering mists

    Onto the fossil seas of the White Mountains.

  • MEMORIES: HELENE

    AN OVERDUE NOTE

    (For Helene)

    All right, Helene, here is a poem

    About our salad days as wives

    Of graduate students, housed in adjacent

    Twenty-foot trailers next to the

    University stadium.  “On Wisconsin”

    Energized our weekends.  Saturday mornings

    Over cups of coffee, I asked you

    What it was like playing clarinet

    In Phil Silver’s All Girl Orchestra,

    And envied the separate vacations you

    And your husband took to visit relatives.

    You tried to make me read Karen

    Horner, for whom I think you named

    A daughter.  You were the first and most

    Liberated woman I’ve known.  We’re talking

    Now about the forties.  You asked me how

    I grew my hard shell.  I counted all

    The closed doors in my parents’ house.

    When we had children, your four,

    My five, your milk and affection

    Flowed like sap.  You were not

    Strict about toilet training.  You

    Were as self-fulfilled as a redwood

    Sheltering sprouts.  They tell me when

    You died of breast cancer, you made

    The parting bearable for all your brood.

    You were always ahead of me, Helene.

  • REUTEMANN ROAD POEMS: ASPIRATIONS

    ASPIRATIONS

    How we long to excise peasant fat

    As Gloucester fishermen slice the cod,

    Lifting flesh cleanly off the bone,

    Sculpting ourselves to aristocratic

    Skeletons: ballet dancers under the skin.

    And wear our heart lines open to view

    Like silk-embroidered Persian shields

    Or manzanitas whose bronze branches,

    Coated with smooth-meshed capillaries,

    Have cast off the armor of bark.

    We dive into surf to be tossed and  tumbled

    By breakers and scoured on washboard sand:

    Bottles and granite together giving up

    The cutting edge, the obdurate mass,

    Emerging as sea glass and luminous gemstones.

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: A PAUSE BY A POND

    A PAUSE BY A POND

    We stop to sit awhile beside

    Our pond, the asters to admire

    (The royal purple, not the white)

    And note the scarlet-turning sumac,

    Hoping we may hear the flap

    Of slow-descending heron wings

    Or hasty mallard putting on the brakes

    And ruffling up the water, though

    We know our watering hole’s too small,

    And yearly getting smaller, to attract

    A southbound flyer not at all

    Deluded by our wooden replicas.

    At least we may sight the shifting V’s

    And hear the goodbye calls of geese.

    The fall migration’s underway

    And only we must opt to stay.

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: BUYER BEWARE

    BUYER BEWARE

    I marvel how the trunks of dead and dying trees

    Are garlanded in fall with poison ivy leaves

    Gladdening the eye and asking to be gathered

    To deck a table for a feast in autumn.

    As coral snakes beguile like harmless cousins,

    Just so were ancient reefs adorned with sirens,

    Caskets with resurrection lilies beautified,

    And cereals with powdered sugar iced,

    And no-down-payment mortgages entice.

    Glittering like gold is worthless pyrite.

    Caveat emptor still is good advice.

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: SQUAMSCOTT BIRCH

    THE SQUAMSCOTT BIRCH

    Barrel chested and brawny armed,

    The aged birch still stands

    Incongruous on the riverbank.

    They have fenced it in

    With posts and a metal chain

    To ward off scrambling kids.

    How many years did it take

    To put out all those limbs,

    One torn off by lightning

    Or by wind: the scar remains.

    It’s younger than the pines

    That sheltered shell diggers,

    But did it watch the big-sailed

    Gundalows barging bricks?

    It could not in its salad days

    Arrow skyward slimly straight

    But branched and branched again

    For what was near at hand.

    Hugely ugly, it calls

    Out to me.  It haunts my

    Memory.  It’s begging to be

    Made into a poem.

  • NORWICH YEARS:WINTER TRAILMAKING

    WINTER TRAILMAKING IN MT WASHINGTON VALLEY

    It’s the next thing to walking on water,

    Sinking snowshoes into drifts

    Of down almost out of sight,

    Lifting webbed feet easier than

    We thought but effortfully, white

    Ashes floating up like smoke,

    To take the next giant step

    On immaculate virgin territory.

    This cold day we see no  mouse prints,

    No trails of birdclaws like the tracings

    Of sandpipers playing tag with the tide,

    Only dents of icy missiles

    Windblasted into marble quilts.

    But look.  A raven evicted from pipe-frozen

    Flats above the treeline takes

    Lodging in a topless cage

    Of bare branches, querying us

    With raucous uncrowlike challenges.

    And by that wall a small red squirrel

    With straggly tail munches a pineseed

    Until we shift a pole and he

    Submerges into the briarpatch,

    Rockets up a hemlock and turbo-

    Drives across arboreal highways

    As silently as the beech leaves

    Flutter and scatter across the snow

    Onto our cross-stitched calling cards.