just some things observed
The loons call out to me, circling below the rim
(As only loons can swim, proudly and gracefully)
At the top of the Leishman cup. I hear their querulous cry
As I raise the cup to my expectant and willing lips,
On the perfectly tapered rim from which no drop will fall
As the curving handle will softly cushion my thumb.
So does the Potter mold a marriage of utility
With art in quiet harmony: the clay then turns to gold.
A SNAPSHOT IN TIME
From the bend of the river
We look back at town,
Our eyes first drawn
To the fall-colored copse
Of maples and oaks
Beyond the boathouse
Of the post-colonial
Academy and below
The cupolas of the
Briefly colonial capitol’s
Church and town hall.
Across the tumbling outflow
From the crumbling Great Dam
Rise mustard-colored walls
Of once-dockside warehouses
A mill run apart from
The towering smokestacks
Of one-time mills. And
Then a fluttering flag
Marks the brick powder house
Whose contents were fired
At the Battle of Bunker Hill.
So much we see as we
Look back before we
Turn to go down the river.
ASPIRATIONS
How we long to excise peasant fat
As Gloucester fishermen slice the cod,
Lifting flesh cleanly off the bone,
Sculpting ourselves to aristocratic
Skeletons: ballet dancers under the skin.
And wear our heart lines open to view
Like silk-embroidered Persian shields
Or manzanitas whose bronze branches,
Coated with smooth-meshed capillaries,
Have cast off the armor of bark.
We dive into surf to be tossed and tumbled
By breakers and scoured on washboard sand:
Bottles and granite together giving up
The cutting edge, the obdurate mass,
Emerging as sea glass and luminous gemstones.
THE CURRENT
The third week of September the beach
Is almost empty, but the tepid
Water foams around her ankles
Soothing as a jacuzzi. Sand
Rushes down between her toes.
Wading out, she lifts one knee
And then the other over the boiling
Suds that try to push her back
To shore until the viscous sea
Transports her on undulating wings.
She strokes out, watching the summer
Scene reel past like the window view
When the airplane taxis down the runway,
Until she discovers she is a passenger
Much too late to cancel her ticket.
DISCARDS
Exquisite crystal starts as potash,
Lead, the whitest sand, and cullet:
(Broken glass from previous batches
That helps the raw ingredients blend.)
Ballooning slantwise on the iron,
Molded with a crooked handle,
Flocked with air bubbles, the glass
Without regret will be pulverized.
Engravers paint with unforgiving
Wheels, smooth and refine designs,
Their hands remembering all the angles.
One slip and the bowl is back in the cullet.
I like to look up at the chandelier
That glorifies the dome of the mall
And think of the hands that did not slip
And the fragments resurrected there.
He garlands her with white arbutus in spring
And she is Frigga, Venus of Scandinavia.
Through drowsy summer days he paints
Her flesh pearly and smooth as silken linings
Of conch shells, her long limbs loose in sleep.
But fall diminishes her. A lesser wood nymph
Under a maple leaf, Persephone sliding
Back into earth, she moves away from him.
Against the black winter oak in her army
Cape she deflects his gaze with the icy eyes
Of Freyja, Prussian queen of slaughtered warriors.
Over the years his drybrush explores the ripened
Wheat of her hair, the Viking angles of her features.
The unsmiling mouth at last defeats him.
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.
John Muir danced over glaciers. He
Hunkered down to chat with new
Acquaintances among the plant people and
Grieved when they drowned in damned reservoirs.
Coatless, he bedded under bent boughs,
Warmed by climate-changing campfires.
Emerson missed his invitation to breathe
The star-spangled midnight air.
Thoreau would have leaped onto the ledge
Behind the waterfall to view the moon bow.
“Hang on,” John tells us. “Jam your fist
In the crack. Scrabble for toeholds.
Sway in the storm, rooted in wildness Eat apples and look at the larkspur, ” As his mother advised. Above all,
“Savor the taste of good bread. “
The windy hills New England farmers took.
Along with slamming doors and rattling panes
And blasts of blizzards off Laurentian plains,
For a broad and various, free, egregious outlook.
No stifling hollows air for high land lovers.
A hill borne, clear keen wind the chest unbands.
Roots and fruits rot in unstirred low- land damps.
The soul also, closed in, molders and smothers.
Site seekers on the ridge roads envy the views
These many-windowed farm homes gleam to behold
At dusk they eastward gaze to find the gold
Of childhood dreams mirrored in glassy hues.
Que paseo! What a ramble!
Six lightning-zigzagged poppies:
Peonies and dahlias waft in gentle Dignity down the valley, silent Between bursts of hot gas.
Cars stop and faces lift
Washed with early morning delight.
Straight up I photograph the basket
Beneath the blossom passing the moon.
In the evening we walk to the village green
To watch a huge purple tulip
Held captive by nylon vines
Rise and descend like an elevator.
Suddenly wind ruffles the petals.
A hefty, passenger dismounts in vain.
The silken tower sways and topples,
Pants and heaves on the ground like a sulky
Elephant. Men shout and tug
Out the last whisper of air.
Then like a tiny spaceship launching
Out of trees, a child’s helium
Balloon escapes into the darkening sky.
We watch until it winks out of sight.
Homegrown New Hampshire hybrids,
They wheel casually into box seats
At the curbstone, enthroning themselves of glistening red
Motorcycles to enjoy the Fourth of July
Fireworks. Her hair is tightly permed
And slightly gray. His beard boasts
He will live free. Both with vigorous
Bites relish their pizza slices,
Uninhibited by diet or fitness prescriptions.
She leans down to flick off
An invisible speck from the chrome pedal,
Admiring her windshield and rearview mirrors.
As magnesium mortars detonate in rainbow
Cascades, two comrade cyclists arrive
And lift off helmets from snow white hair.
From the grass where we sit, a toddler
Runs to hug her cruising grandparents.
Creatures of the bottom of the sky:
Lobsters crawling the floor
Of an ocean of air remembering
Foetal seas, ancestral
Swimmers, tidal waves
Towering , like cliffs before
Hurling us landward, we
Can appreciate potential force:
The eye of the hurricane, redwoods
Poised to topple, hovering
Tornadoes, smoking volcanos or
These two hundred feet
Of water turned to blue
Crystals being crunched by crampons,
Impaled by pitons, and looped
With nylon spider webs.
Immobile marble columns
of water vaulted by cobalt with
Cloudships jetting overhead:
We crouch below them soft
In our unshelled flesh on rocks
April torrents will drown
Pausing to film that image:
The buddha face of god.