Bev Tappan

Category: Family Poems

Love songs to family members

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: HARD TO KEEP UP WITH

    HARD TO KEEP UP WITH

    They are so frighteningly bright,

    These cousins, gathered for a night

    Of school vacation at the house in Maine

    Around a Mexican Train dominos game

    To which they have been briefly introduced

    And all its rules have instantly deduced.

    Their ages range from eight to early teens.

    I, as a grandmother, am not so keen.

    They fidget at the time I take for thought,

    Remind me of some rule I have forgot.

    I must take time to calculate my moves,

    I am outrun by their unbridled youth.

    (February, 2014)

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: LAMENT

    LAMENT

    Where and when did it begin,

    This call to me of the wild?

    Was it the chatter of tanagers

    Flitting in Amesbury pines

    Waking a six-year-old child,

    Or was it the dip and dip

    Of my parents’ canoe paddles

    In the Powow River north

    Of camp on Tuxbury Pond,

    Or when I looked up at trees

    And hooked my hand on the smooth

    Bark of birch and aspen

    As I struggled up Mt. Chocorua?

    Later I came to mourn

    The hurricane’s blast, the pines

    Strewn like tangled match sticks,

    The scarlet tanagers gone.

    Today as an octogenarian

    It drives me wild to see

    Our maples migrating to Canada,

    Our Great Bay rank with algy.

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION

    NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION

    I have to learn to sleep alone.

    With fleece sheets to keep me warm,

    Burrowing into my memory foam ,

    I do my best to sleep alone.

    Curled around his broader form

    I felt his heart beat like my own.

    Now I must learn to sleep alone.

    For all the lonely nights to come

    We must be two: I must be one.

    I have to learn to sleep alone.

    (January 1, 2014)

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: THE LAST OF THE PEARS

    THE LAST OF THE PEARS

    The basket of pears you sent

    From Harry and David arrived

    On time on Christmas Eve.

    They’d tissued each perfect pear

    In festive and seasonal green,

    Beribboned and bedecked,

    But not yet ripe.  Each day

    I nuked a pair in raw sugar

    And rum,  and they were tasty.

    However, on New Year’s Eve

    The last of the pears called out to me,

    Blushing and chilling in the fridge.

    It yielded softly to the knife.

    Sweeter than sugar and more

    Intoxicating than rum, the juice

    Ran down my chin, and I thought,

    “What better way for an old year

    To end or for a new year to begin.”

    12/31/2013

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: THANKS

    THANKS FOR BEING YOU

    You were my Dear One,

    You rang my chimes.

    We had adventures.

    We had good times.

    No harvest moon

    Outshines your smile.

    We journeyed widely.

    We danced the miles.

    Rivers we paddled,

    Mountains we climbed

    Shine in my memories,

    Pleasure my mind.

    No better companion

    Has brightened my way.

    You lit my candle.

    You made my day.

    (RiverWoods, October 2013)

     

  • SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE: ANNIVERSARY TRIP

    After thirty years of living
    Together we have come back
    To where time passes less swiftly
    And attention is paid to the senses.

    Under a Spanish arch
    Old friends embrace us.
    Street greetings are familial.
    Here a hug is not distrusted.

    With Mexican chillies we warm
    Our mouths, and mango juice
    Drips down our fingers.
    We sip Salubrious tea of manzanilla.

    Minstrels seranade under balconies
    Draped with flags of bougainvilla.
    Across the street in the cantina
    A jukebox plays us to sleep.

    Crossing the old courtyard
    Of an abandoned chapel fragrant
    With luminous cups of gold,
    We are not ashamed to hold hands.

  • REUTEMANN ROAD: THE CATCH

    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)

  • MEMORIES: LILLIE

    COMPLIANCE

    (for Grandma Lillie)

    White and wispy as spun sugar, her hair

    Is still damp from the rollers, our arrival

    Taking her by surprise.  She sits on her porch

    In the only aluminum chair left, her doll

    Legs dangling.  Gravity has collapsed her

    One inch for each calcium-starved disc.

    Now she says she has no neck and cannot

    Wear the gemstone pendants we have given her.

    She hadn’t thought it would come to this, her porch

    Bare of furniture and philodendron,

    Her plants twisting heart-shaped leaves for the neighbors.

    Her sister says the nursing home is pleasant.

    She doesn’t know what to expect.  She’ll take an African

    Violet with her and a rocking chair.

    She’ll try to bloom where she is planted.  Her voice

    Is thin as the top note on a harpsichord.

  • REUTEMANN ROAD POEMS: FAMILY HEIRLOOMS

    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.

  • REUTEMANN ROAD POEMS: THE RINK

    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.

  • NORWICH YEARS: EGYPTIAN STATUETTE

    EGYPTIAN STATUETTE

    (for Jennifer)

    The swimming child is as slim

    As the stem of a daisy.

    Who carved her eased the knife

    In a sharp caress

    That shaped her slender thighs

    And outstretched arms,

    Prenubile breasts and tiny

    Waist.  Her hair

    Is gathered at the side –

    A young girl’s style.

    Her toes are dancer’s points.

    She may have held

    A fish between her hands.

    The golden foil

    Of bracelets and broad collar

    Have left their marks.

    She was not a commoner.

    I want to buy

    Her replica and give her

    To my granddaughter,

    Who only last week swam

    To me as straight,

    As juvenile

    And as ephemeral.

  • REFLECTIONS: CONSTRAINTS

    Songs in the car, my mother’s mellow contralto
    The white fringe of birches framing Lake Chocorua
    Her trudge up the Jewell Trail wearing a dress:
    Calling out blazes on granite slabs
    Spying the next cairn, the misty channel
    Marker – or so I like to recall although
    In truth my father may have been ahead.

    How I resented the leash that reined me to them
    After my toddler’s wobble toward the road
    Where Model T’s jolted like windup toys.
    The clothesline pulley ran me like a dog.
    I was the bass my father trolled for what
    Seemed hours in lucid lakes of northern Maine.
    “You are all we’ve got, ” he often said
    Spanking me whenever I crossed the street.

    Today my mother came home from the hospital
    Short of breath, unsure of the order of pills.
    I cooked and laundered, fetched her water and kleenex
    And snapped at the choke chain tightening on my neck
    The way our shepherd balks at the door of the pen
    Until we looked at curling photographs:
    Her home-made lacy graduation dress
    The boy with his bicycle twenty-five miles from home.