Author: Bev Tappan

LOVE WITH OPEN ARMS

Isn’t that the song the sweet birds sing,

Leaving empty nests like fruit on barren

Winter trees?  Forget the crib and playpen,

College choices and careers.  Feed

Voracious appetites.  Push the young

Off the edge.  Share the joy of soaring.

As soon as you have seen them catch an updraft,

Veer to the south.  Aspire!  Aspire!  Vacate

Arboreal condos felled by passing winds,

And leave the marble halls to earthbound types.

Be vocal on the wing in wide migrations,

Flying point or following with the flock.

Our homes are fragile thatch.  Be briefly tenant.

The air, the buoyant air, is our only element.

WILD GEESE CROSSING

My Lord, what a morning!  The clothes

Flap in my face, stiffening as I pin

Them on the crusted line.  Pine branches

Toss snow all over the patio.

Across the cobalt blown-glass

Bowl of sky between the house

And the mountain, a wedge of geese

Have etched themselves arrowing north.

Like squeeze toys they eject staccato

Cries in the wind’s swelling fist

That drift down to our ears, tinny

As the notes of tongs on toy xylophones.

Forty years younger I stand

In a college classroom, teaching assistant

To a gaggle of World War Two veterans

Bickering over the symbolism of wild geese.

Take your notebooks to the marshes and the mountains

I should have told them.  Set your sights

For the next four decades and then write

The message of spring and fall migrations.

FAMILY HEIRLOOMS

Jewels like fireflies fluttering

In the shadows of spruce and cedar

Are recollections of yesterday’s children.

Out of the corner of my eye

I see legs dangling from beds

Heads disappearing down stairwells.

I hear five siblings faintly

Slamming doors or crying or

Giggling in mossy clearings

They leave things for us to find:

A size-three sandal once

Red under a brushpile.

These children today live nowhere

Until a marble rolls

Out from under a radiator

Or my brush tangles in the dog’s

Bush like a comb in waist-

Long shining brown hair,

Or sitting on the couch with a book,

Making mouths at me,

My granddaughter crinkles her eyes.

OCTOBERFEST

The maples are jars of cherry-orange

Marmalade.  I eat them with my eyes

And then the  peach and crimson dahlias

Flaring between cranberry candles

In my sunlighted kitchen pass-through..

The month of great expectations is not

June or January but October,  the season

 When all things still are possible in the school year

For teachers and for students.  That

Was the month I wanted for my wedding.

The torches of trees set my spirits on fire,

Reflected in our pond or spread across

The Appalachians like Indian beadwork

Shadowed by southbound Canada geese.

Someday I’ll make a fall journey to Japan.

Sitting in stillness at the sea of sand

And stone I’ll empty my inward space

And take into myself  the plum red

Gold embroidered hills of Kyoto.

A THANK YOU NOTE FOR THE CAST OF “THE RINK”

Still high, stoned on nostalgia,

I go into the parking lot

Humming the theme song of the play.

Like stage scenery, the sky

Shimmers with crystal.  The moon

Is a glitterball on a chain

Where any father can pull it down

For his daughter.  Look at Arcturus,

A Hope diamond on black velvet:

Follow the arc of the dipper

And you can put your finger on it.

Music and colored lights:

Ghetto kids have overdosed on them

Spacing on strobe beams and

Hard rock nuclear blasts.

Ma and Pa have split,

Riding roller coaster rainbows.

They have outgrown magicians,

Circuses, carnivals and state fairs.

They’re outward bound for Xanadu.

Tickets are only a dollar a minute.

I can remember circling

In the warm New Hampshire honey-

Suckle -scented night,

Skate wheels clicking like a locomotive

On the tracks to Monterey,

Round and round the roller rink,

Silky in my rayon dress,

Hoping a boy would smile at me,

Proud of my lace collar.

The jukebox played the Beer Barrel

Polka round and round

Until the lights dimmed for “Couples Only”

And I rejoined my parents.