Bev Tappan

Category: Memories Poems

Recollection poems

  • 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.

  • FAMILY: CONFESSION

    Like a koala bear on eucalyptus, she clings to her mother’s
    Leg, howling. Her father plucks her loose
    And carries her to bed. He says nothing. Enough
    Words have steamed the air from the pressure cooker
    Of the long day’s doings from nursery school
    To carnival. I recall, if he does not,
    A time when he too cried unconsolably
    All the way to the doctor’s office and back
    Because a new and tired mother slapped
    A toddler who had thrown her glasses on the floor. The
    prescription
    Issued by an annoyed pediatrician was aspirin for her
    And more tolerance for him. I tell this tale
    To my daughter-in-law, who is sponging magic marker
    From the carpet with regret for the scolding she has given my
    grandchild.

  • FRIENDS: SPANISH GETAWAY

    SPANISH INTERLUDE

    (For Pauline)

    Behind us crystal curtains

    Flow over royal fountains.

    Madrid’s sunlight is unkind

    To our aging skin, but her pixie

    Style bridges the years

    Since I last saw my earliest

    Friend.  We were spanked

    For crossing streets and wheeling

    Doll carriages around the block.

    We whispered forbidden secrets

    And played ring-o-leave-o after dark.

    Now we have escaped for a week

    On a trans-world getaway

    From family responsibility.

    Palace flags flap.

    Sipping diet drinks,

    We watch a gardener shaping

    Boxwood towers.  Having sought out

    Marzipan, porcelain and damascene,

    We are free to recall paella

    On Fishermen’s Beach, staccato

    Heels and castanets, Velasquez’

    Golden glow, reflections

    Of roses in Moorish pools.

    Lacy arches, Don Quizote

    Tilting with windmills, olive trees,

    Neanderthal caves on Gibralter, and

    At El Escorial the odor of mortality.