Bev Tappan

Category: Family Poems

Love songs to family members

  • JAPAN POEMS: ODYSSEY

    ODYSSEY

    I have returned to Japan after thirty years

    Since our youngest daughter made her way

    To complete in Osaka her BU college degree.

    Her father was still jogging every day.

    Life and the rice fields were still green.

    On this fall visit to Japan I plead

    For some relief from grief.  I ask

    The gracious Buddha for heart’s ease.

    And as the strenuous swift days pass

    Through alien and exotic scenes,

    I sense a slowly growing distance

    Between my sweet lost loves and me,

    A moat of separation from the past.

    Though no less dear their features be,

    I stand outside the looking glass

    Between what is and what can never be,

    Between acceptance and a world of pain,

    And lightening my dark misery

    I feel a welcome sense of peace.

    The rice stalks now are drying in the fields.

  • POETRY ASSIGNMENT: WHAT A WORK OF ART SAYS TO YOU

    THE OSAKA VASE

    The lamplight glides off the sloping sides

    Of the blue-gray stoneware Osaka vase.

    My daughter, the potter, had asked advice

    From her teacher with the long black hair

    And gentle hands on how to inscribe

    In vertical kanji a plea for peace

    Inspired by her Hiroshima pilgrimage.

    This old vase of some thirty years

    Has suffered breakage and repairs.

    Equally old are the skeletal stalks

    Of the dried flowers and reeds it holds

    Which we found in the Victorian home

    A block or two from our children’s school.

    It sends a mute and ancient message

    Still falling on deaf human ears.

  • MEMORIES: BREAKING AWAY

    BREAKING AWAY

    One summer your daughter’s friends

    Trucked their hot air balloon

    To her annual potluck barbecue

    And some of us held the ends

    Of the ropes that tethered down

    That globe as it filled with air

    And struggled up to be gone,

    To be off and away somewhere.

    I feel you tugging the strings

    That bind our hearts to yours.

    Our bittersweet memories bring

    Less comfort with passing years,

    And our own ties that bind

    Us to our youthful friends

    Are severed one by one

    As they too take to the air.


  • TAMWORTH POEMS: HANDS

    HANDS

    They all called him handsome,

    But it was not his face

    I loved, though he was comely,

    And his smile could erase

    Any hint of gloom

    That ever lingered on

    In any darkened room.

    It was his hands I loved,

    Strong and long-fingered,

    Hands that gripped an axe

    With purpose and affection

    To cut our yearly firewood,

    Hands that drew the hoe

    Between the beans and cornstalks

    And arrowed our canoe

    Around the foaming rocks

    To where we had to go

    To reach our evening campsite,

    Hands that pounded tent stakes

    To secure us for the night,

    Loving hands that gave me

    Memories of sweet delight.

     

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: WISH YOU WERE HERE

    WISH YOU WERE HERE

    I’ve gotten used to 

    The empty chair,

    The unwrinkled pillow,

    And one place at the table

    Without you,

    But how can I watch

    The moon tangled in black branches,

    The sun rise over Carter Notch,

    Or the first flakes of new snowfall

    Without you?

  • TAMWORTH POEMS: SMOKE GETS IN MY EYES

    SMOKE GETS IN MY EYES

    How many campfires did you lay,
    Birchbark, twigs and slender sticks,
    To tempt the creeping tongue of flame
    And feed its fiery appetite?
    You learned to build the pyramid
    With tinder arching over bark:
    A single match would serve to wick
    The pyre construed with boy scout art.
    How many trees did you cut down
    And split and stack for winter fuel
    In the Franklin stove that kept us warm
    And gave us cheerful hearts as well?
    Now as I feed my grandson’s blaze
    Constructed with his sage advice,
    I think of your consistent ways
    And feel the smoke tear up my eyes.
    (July 2014)

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: STILL MISSING YOU

    STILL MISSING YOU

    I say I’ve shifted gears,

    Embarked on new affairs,

    Traveled to foreign ports,

    Shrugged off all my cares.

    But then a memory

    Will catch me unaware

    And I will start to weep

    Because you are not here.

    Because you are not here,

    My love, because you are not there:

    No matter where I look for you

    You are not anywhere.

  • TAMWORTH POEMS: RIVERSIDE LILACS

    RIVERSIDE LILACS

    Lilac’s sweet scent

    And the Bearcamp’s sluicing song

    Give my heart ease

    Now that you are gone.

    Give my heart ease,

    But do not quell the pain

    Of knowing that I’ll never

    Walk with you again

    Except in memory’s bittersweet

    Though comforting afterglow:

    The luminous husk of happiness

    My heart will now know.

    (June, 2014)

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: LEAVE TAKING

    LEAVE TAKING

     

    The week before you left,

    The ghost pear bloomed

    Beyond our window.  Perhaps

    It beckoned to you, since

    You could no longer pack

    Your wetbag for the Allegash,

    Guide us down the Chase Rips,

    Or gaze at the Long Lake rainbow.

    It pleasures me to think

    That you are chasing rainbows.

    (RiverWoods poems: May 11, 2014)

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: A NOTE OF THANKS TO MY MAYFLOWER GIRL

    Was it in the Sixties that I first heard

    The doorbell ring on the first of May

    And found your wildflowers at the door

    Of that hillside house your father girded

    With cedar logs and sturdy fieldstones

    To keep our family sound and safe?

    Fifty years later your “Free Spirit”

    Roses arrive (I love the concept)

    At my apartment, accompanied

    By purple and orange tulips and green

    Cymbidium orchids, as always on the First

    Day of May, their Andean-colored cheer

    Brightening up a rainy day

    And warming my heart with a memory.

  • TAMWORTH POEMS: A BACKWARD GLANCE

    A BACKWARD GLANCE

    From my car radio come the slow sweet strains

    Of Mozart’s First Horn Concerto, and I am

    Suddenly transported into that Victorian room

    Where we made music, seated on the piano stool,

    Hands on the black and white keys, my girl

    Standing beside me easing the smooth tones

    Out of her French horn, and I am aswirl

    In waves of nostalgia, longing for that ample home,

    Those five ripening minds, their patient Dad.

    We did not know what signal bliss we shared.

    We hurried forward through a sacred time

    That my heart now cries out to live again.

    (April 2014)

     

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: REFLECTIONS

    REFLECTIONS

    In my mother’s mirror with its faux

    Ivory, celluloid handle and backing,

    I am looking for her, and I see some

    Of her and some of my father’s face.

    I ask myself why it is that I,

    Their only child, should have striven

    Always to differ from their prescriptives,

    Always to escape their vigilant directives.

    Was it the sound of my mother crying

    Every Saturday night and emerging late

    And red-eyed on Sunday mornings?

    Or was it the summer she took the car

    And we drove to her friend’s cottage in Hampton

    For a week on the shore before we came back

    To the boy scout camp my father directed

    And they stared at each other while I watched?

    Or perhaps I knew at my father’s funeral

    To which his handsome, never-married waterfront

    Director came, why his grief was greater 

    Than mine and why the siblings I longed for

    Had never arrived.  And so I determined

    That my sons would have brothers

    And my daughters would have sisters,

    And their parents would be truly a pair.

    So much does my mother’s mirror

    Show me as I look for her face

    And some of the face of my father

    And find at last only my own face.

    (March, 2014)