Bev Tappan

Category: Adventure Poems

Traveling and exploring are the keys to longevity

  • SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE: GOOD FRIDAY

    GOOD FRIDAY PARADE

    After an hour on the curbstones,

    Villagers in Sunday best,

    Fathers tossing babies and buying

    Ices licked by children, politely

    Declined by tiny grandmothers,

    See men in black suits issue

    From the church portals:

    Ten steps and a pause

    For the bearer to rest.

    Christ on His cross is a burden

    To heavy to be borne by

    Sidewalk poor, who may merely

    Sprinkle herbs on paving stones.

    Though among the Roman soldiers,

    A small tough centenarian

    Pipes wandering melodies

    On an Indian flute.

    Now tinseled, innocent

    Child brides, excited

    Virgins in white lace,

    Carry small guilty symbols:

    The cock and the dice.

    And rows of black poppies:

    Mothers in black mantillas,

    Black hems high or low,

    Totter on spike heels,

    Platforms or thin-soled pumps.

    How can they support these terrible

    Angels wielding spikes

    For their god’s feet?

    Children again – choirboys

    In purple collars, young

    Heralds, announce the ponderous

    Gold and glass casket.  Mary,

    Joseph and Magdalene follow,

    And last the empty cross is

    Mourned by the holy-day crowd.

  • SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE: VIGNETTES

    THREE VIGNETTES

    (1)

    It is uncouth to jolt

    In a Ford LTD over

    The cobblestones of

    San Miguel de Allende.

    Along such passageways,

    The dusty sandal

    Proceeds with more grace.

    (2)

    Vitamined and mineraled,

    The gringo father and daughter

    Stride in holy day processions

    Behind black-manteled, ancient

    Women so bowed by arthritis

    Their eyes see only dust.

    (3)

    Playing maid on Estrella’s day off,

    Hanging clothes in the garden,

    Wary of an inquisitive grackle,

    I step around rosemary, high

    As spreading juniper, and admire

    Lettuce – wavy red and knots

    Of Boston green – next to

    Flowerets of purple thyme.

  • SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE: COLECTIVO

    EL COLECTIVO

    (THE COLLECTIVE FARM)

    Two farm boys, careless of typhoid,

    Bounce  on braying burros and trade

    Obsidian arrowheads for pesos.

    Piglets scatter.  A vermillion flycatcher

    Flies over  the prickly pears.

    Grandfather in white suit and

    Sombrero signals the German

    Shepherd to round up the herd..

    Horses trot downhill among

    Mesquites which goats on hind legs

    Mount in search of moist mouthfuls.

    Dry grass and dusty furrows

    Must wait yet another month

    Until the rains may or may not come,

    While out in the purple valley

    Unreachable reservoirs gleam.

    A sailboat crosses at sunset.

  • NORWICH YEARS: CAIRNS

    REPAIRING CAIRNS ON MT. WASHINGTON

    We are constructing castles

    Of stone on an alpine meadow.

    Sunlight rich as butter

    Ignites mica in granite.

    High and small, blue-black

    Ravens waft past.

    Drinking champagne air

    We scan sparse grasses

    For large but liftable boulders,

    Glacier-dropped chips

    Off the old mountain block

    No longer Himalayan high.

    A Cheshire mason’s son

    Ad-libs British quips

    As we stagger back, arms

    Stretched, strapping stones

    Against our thighs like refrigerators

    Belted to dollies.  He drops

    The rocks in their sockets

    Just so, broad, level and sturdy

    Enough to hold up the upper

    Stories.  The pyramid reaches

    Its peak.  He bounds on top.

    Kodaks capture the moment.

    Once in Peru on the hills

    Above Lake Titicaca we saw

    Such chimneys of fieldstone

    But rounder on top and taller:

    Local dignitaries’ towers,

    Wolf-proof bone repositories

    Rippled by sere sedges,

    Pre-Incan time capsules

    We chose not to open,

    Landmarks on the hard-packed

    Pathway to Elyssian fields

    We were not prepared to follow.

    Our cairns today escalate

    Our spirits on our high way

    And lead us to the blustery summit,

    Blistered but lighthearted,

    Knowing that some fogbound,

    Windswept, rain-driven hiker

    Will hunker down behind them,

    Lay on thankful hands,

    Peer cloudily from marker to marker,

    And whistle as he descends

    To sheltering evergreen hedges

    And the canopy of oak and birch.

  • NORWICH YEARS: TRAIL CREW

    Fifty pounds of bark chips on my pack board

    Slant me forward, thumbs under shoulder straps,

    Eyes fixed on last year’s beech leaf carpet

    Softening the old lumber road that knifes

    The Pemigewasset Wilderness like a tunnel of light

    In an early death experience.  My small companion

    Carries over one third of her body weight.

    Crossing rivers, we topple off stepping stones

    And feel the icy mountain silver sluice

    Our toes inside our socks inside our boots.

    We’re loaded with fuel for a composting toilet

    At Thirteen Falls campsite, five miles

    Beyond the closest forest service road.

    Balanced on half-log bog bridges,

    We pause by a pond to look for moose. Another

    Month and beavers, those flat-tailed engineers,

    Will have submerged the trail.  “Get psyched!”

    Calls our leader: “Only three more miles to go!

    Water break at the next bend of the river!”

    By now we feel a boot-deep relationship

    With Franconia Brook.  We pop sourballs

    And tramp on.  Canada winds lift

    Shingles on our leafy roof,  leaking in sunlight

    And puzzle pieces of blue sky.  Esprit

    Balloons us up the last rocky slope.

    “Only two more football fields to cross!”

    Our big black bear charges ahead,

    Encouraging directives drifting in his wake.

    “Right turn to the latrine, left to the falls!”

    On sun-scoured New England granite

    Recliners, we spread out our lunches and dip

    Our water bottles in the crystal cascade,

    As the stream glissades down glacial slaloms.

  • NORWICH YEARS: WINTER BACKPACK

    WINTER BACKPACK

    Tentative fingers of dry sleet

    Tap on our cheeks in the twilight.

    We tie our tents to tree limbs

    And cook by lantern light.

    White moths tick on nylon.

    We sleep away the dark

    And wake to clarion sunshine

    Domed by cobalt glass.

    Our snowshoes write our thoughts

    On unmarked pages twined

    With notes of hooves and paws.

    But when we pause for breath

    And look up, we are skylarks

    In a silvery-netted aviary,

    By blueness mesmerized.

    On the ridge we become giants,

    Our heads level with rows

    Of crystal-coated bonsai

    And balsam bowed by snow.

    Floundering down the mountain,

    Our big feet swallowed in drifts,

    We marvel at undulations,

    Tide ripples sculpted by winds

    Which roar that night down the valley,

    Express trains passing our camp,

    Reminding us of Himalayan

    Climbers marooned in tents.

    But these winds are siroccan:

    They black out cities of stars

    And brew a broth of fine rain

    By the time we reach our cars.

  • NORWICH YEARS: PINKHAM NOTCH

    A CHANGE OF MOOD

    (In Pinkham Notch)

    Winter nights can be too lonely

    To prolong.  I’m off the bunk

    And on the trail when the first blue glow

    Lanterns the snow, and the last

    Daystar flashlights over the ridge.

    I hear the falls before I reach them:

    Dark volcanic seethings

    Unseen beneath a polar carapace:

    Placid gravemounds of snow

    And brittle veils of frozen spray.

    The lodge windows are fireflies below,

    Heatless and harmless.  Above

    The next switchback a rosy white

    Spectre looms, brightens:

    Alpine snowfields fired by sunrise.

    Now my heels crunch stairsteps

    Down the path.  I relish

    The bounding pawprints of a weasel,

    The cascade’s vigorous mirth,

    The parade of pink clouds up the notch.

  • 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.

  • TRAVELS: GIBRALTER

    Several months ago, the British
    Unlocked the mainland border gates.
    Workers can go freely home at night.
    Tourists cross by bus as well as boat.
    Spain has access to her own peninsula

    The taxi takes us mile by mile
    Into the garrisoned warren, the tunneled
    Ant like arsenal. Pirates, moors,
    Spanish, Germans, British and French
    Drowned in flames for this barren rock.

    Within numberless caves carved
    By wind and water, some as vast
    And domed as cathedrals, limestone pillars
    Refracting thin aeolian chimes,
    Neanderthal families gathered by their fires.

  • TRAVELS: PERUVIAN PORTRAITS

    Patrician as a Spanish grandee,
    The Andean grandfather gazes
    At llamas, alpacas and sheep
    Weighing their fleece. His mouth
    Is firm under a Roman nose.
    Long eartlaps of a knitted
    Chulpa frame angular
    Cheekbones and a gray moustache.

    He no longer plays soccer,
    Inhaling the sparse oxygen:
    His air fuel- injected
    By high-octane hemoglobin.
    His chest is now concave.
    The serape slopes over shoulders That will carry the village sheep
    At Sunday mass to the padre.

    His wife has worked up a smile
    For her grandson the artist, eyes Squinting in sunlight unshaded
    By the upright salad bowl,
    A scarlet melon slice,
    Crowning her gray hair.
    Rolled into a warm collar,
    Her blanket comforts old bones.

    She keeps her hands busy
    Pulling and twisting wool
    On a spindle. She often laughs
    With neighbors at weekly markets
    Buying potatoes and beans or
    Sipping a glass of chicha.
    She pacifies great grandbabies
    with chunks of sugar cane.

  • TRAVELS: SEQUOIAS

    Just to know they are there,
    Earth’s gentle giants:
    Gripping the ground with aged
    Swollen joints, mahogany
    Leathered, hairy, wide
    As a circle of sixteen people outspread arms, cloning
    Their young, cedary skyscrapers
    Journeying back and forth
    As we explore from our roots:
    Calmly outliving, ignoring
    The rise and fall of nations
    Quiets the racing pulse
    Unwinds the atomic clock.

  • TRAVELS: MEMORIAL DAY IN SPAIN

    MEMORIAL DAY IN SPAIN

    The water tastes like death in the Valley of the Fallen:

    Franco’s cross casts a long shadow

    Between the hills.  How many mothers’ sons

    Are stacked like cordwood in that vast basilica

    Where roses, those old deodorizers, exhale

    Funereal fragrance.  Here the wolf and the lion

    Lie down together: brothers in blue and gray.

    They choked on mule dust and blew up bridges,

    Wearing the delicate stitches of machine gun

    Fire.  Here the Olive barons of Seville

    Do penance once a year for their Contra,

    Their freedom fighter: Franco the Frog, he’s called,

    For all the reservoirs he built that could not

    Wash the taste of death out of his mouth.