Bev Tappan

Category: Memories Poems

Recollection poems

  • 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)

  • 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.

  • MEMORIES: PINE HILL

    UP AND DOWN PINE HILL

    Face down on the Flexible Flyer,

    Runners tuning up, a

    Conveyer of tire-treaded snow

    Trembling into motion,

    My watery eyes slitted by wind

    Singeing my nose and chin,

    At the curve I slid onto unresisting air,

    Exhilerated as a sky diver,

    And thumped, breathless, onto the virgin drifts

    Of a neighbor’s sunken garden.

    In spring we wound on roller skates,

    Turning butterfly keys until

    Clamps tightened on shoe soles,

    Tenacious as bulldogs. Then,

    Head down and arms swinging, we

    Herringboned up the sidewalk

    And schussed down, knees bent,

    Locomotive wheels clacking,

    Hedges blurring past, decelerating

    At last to a leisurely standstill.

    Summers we stood on bicycle pedals,

    Weaving drunkenly uphill.

    Fall was leaves whispering underfoot as,

    Schoolbags slung over shoulders,

    We slogged through fungal fragrance

    While peach and violet sunsets

    Silhouetted the limbs of lindens.

    I still love scrambling and

    Panting up precipitous trails

    Or jogging on snowshoes down.

  • MEMORIES: WALES

    GHOST TOWNS IN NORTH WALES

    We walk in upland dales past roofless towns.

    The wind off glowering crags is

    Muffled by slate fence rows: mansized

    Slabs ragged from edge to edge,

    Planted in soil too thin to bury the dead.

    These blue-black panels, weathering grey,

    Echo the softly slurring gutterals

    Of short and sturdy dark-haired Celts:

    Miners who with their wives and children

    Walked these paths some forty years ago.

    Their boys at twelve did not join boy scout

    Troops but took their futile candles

    And six-foot iron drill rods

    To brave the brimstone depths they’d

    Long been warned about by chapel preachers.

    Each night they hurried out for a wash

    And supper and choir practice, that

    Other world that kept them sane and literate

    Along with lunchtime meetings where

    Roberts’ Rules governed debates.

    Empty now are the slate caverns.  Vandalized

    Is the manager’s house in the grove.

    Open to wind and hail, the miners’ homes

    Welcome the chimney swifts while

    Waiting for men who never returned from war.

    We point binoculars at hardy sheep

    Cropping the mountain meadows:

    Their lambs are radioactive since Chernoble.

    A wagtail showers himself

    In acid rainfall blown here from New York.

  • REUTEMANN ROAD: PAW PRINTS

    PAW PRINTS

    My hand recalls the hard curve

    Of his skull and the pull of the wire brush

    Through his coarse tail.  Big Mick

    Was a rock hound who nosed up

    Smooth stones to cradle in his jaws.

     

    He swam endless laps in the pond

    Towing a small boy.  He barked

    Into the water to scare the fish.

    His wolf eyes beamed us down the drive.

    He danced his welcome up the steps.

     

    Vacuum cleaners were fair game.

    New ice at the edge of the outlet

    Shattered under his paws.  Snow frosted

    His muzzle.  His tracks in the woods, enlarged

    Like Big Foot’s, soon will be melted.

    (Reutemann Road poems 1960-1972)

  • 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: WILD GEESE

    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.

  • 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.

  • 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.