Bev Tappan

Category: Observation Poems

just some things observed

  • NEW ENGLAND: REACTION TIME

    The intersection coming into view
    Is a slow motion silent
    Moving picture. A fountain
    Of glass showers the road
    From a front headlight bounced
    Off the rear bumper of a car
    That seems to have overshot the stop sign.

    Trying to comprehend we watch
    A hit and run scenario
    Unwind. The wavering offender,
    Turn signal still blinking,
    Like a mechanized rabbit nipped
    By a racetrack greyhound, disappears.

    What will Jessica Fletcher
    Think of us for not memorizing
    The license plate? Meanwhile,
    The confused victim sits
    Stalled on the state highway.
    A flash flood of beach
    Traffic surges into sight.

    But help, we note, is at hand.
    Two women wearing aprons
    Run from the firehouse kitchen.
    One, like a French gendarme
    In the the Place de la Concorde, tames
    Stampeding vehicles to a snail’s pace.

    The other wields a pushbroom.
    As swiftly as a hockey forward
    Dribbling the puck for a goal,
    She herds the broken glass
    To the roadside, marshalling
    Into her parade the still dazed
    Driver. At last we make
    Our move, saluting the resduers
    For speed and savoir faire.

  • NEW ENGLAND: RETIREMENT PARTY

    Tiny volcanoes of citarette stubs puff
    In our faces. The saxophone player
    Wears a toupee. Everyone’s hair is
    Or would be gray if…
    The gifts, a roll-up trailer hose and cord,
    Will soon be snaking in
    And out from Florida to Texas to LA.
    Gargantuan prime ribs
    Alarm us. The salad is nondescript. A cynical
    Waitress deals out
    Slabs of gluey supermarket ice cream.
    Bubbles of jovial laughter
    Burst above beer bottles. Smiles stretch
    Tight from cheek to cheek.
    On the dance floor calves still shapely
    Fox trot gracefully but almost
    Lose control rocking on jitterbug curves
    After the plaques and fare-
    You wells, the moon blows us home
    Like shad on the spring tide.

  • AT HOME: FIELDSTONE MASONRY

    Gravel under and behind
    Will dissipate the rainfall.
    Dig the base below the frost.
    Drain with pipes a wall.

    Lime, cement and screened sand
    Lightly mix to morter.
    Color, texture vary not
    Nor increments of water.

    Green or white or dusky rose
    Choose the stones with love:
    Black or brown or mica-sprinkled
    Orange, blue or mauve.

    Place the best face to the front.
    Hose off grass nd dust.
    Chock each rock and check the level.
    Iron streaks will rust.

    Tamp the morter in the joint.
    Smooth it to each face.
    Wind and water will invade
    A rough or hollow place.

    Walls are built to stand the weather.
    Walls are built to wear.
    Form and texture and technique
    Hands must blend with care.

  • AT HOME: LE PRINTEMPS

    I

    Quacking and chattering like demented ghosts,
    Small frogs in woodland pools
    Startle us. We lift an oak leaf
    To uncover the first velvet pipsissewa.

    Onioins and pink coated peas
    Are lined up in trenches like good soldiers
    Waiting for the sun to bugle reveille.
    Chives shoulder green lances.

    Rejoice greatly, ye robins and phoebes.
    Gambol, you worms, in the compost. Our window
    Shutters make excellent nesting ledges.
    Prepare a welcome for the tree swallows.

    II

    Like a chocolate bunny
    Encircled by Easter
    Eggs, the gray
    Squirrel sits
    Among the yellow,
    White and lavender
    Crocuses eating
    Seeds under the bird
    Feeder. Suddenly
    He runs up
    The ree and clings
    Horizontally, flapping
    His beaver tail,
    A dusty rug,
    Head turning
    To eye my binoculars.

    Some people
    Hear colors.
    The cardinal’s a siren;
    His wife, Morse
    Code. In polyphony
    They peck like hens.

    Holding up
    Her red beads,
    The maple admires
    Her reflection
    In the window glass.

  • AT HOME: SUMMER FOG

    Tranquilly
    Mist drips
    From cedars
    Whose tips
    Spiders
    Have laced
    With silver.

    Invisible
    In a smoking pond
    Snow bellied
    Bass swirl
    And slap water
    Snapping
    At ephemeridae.

    Crickets
    Bleating
    Unceasingly
    Flood our heads
    With liquid
    Dribble.

  • AT HOME: JUNGLE WARFARE

    Leaning back on the mower,
    I ride the green billows
    Down the hill and around
    The pond. Blades clash and
    Leopard frogs arc
    To save their trailing legs.
    The air fizzes with a dandelion
    Blizzard. All that crunch
    And crackle of fecund weed,
    Foetid with aroma of bog,
    Spurts confetti swarms
    Of gnats, ticks, and ephemeridae
    Like killer spores of an alien
    Planet gassing the invader.

  • AT HOME: MOCK ALERT

    On my left hand, poised
    Over the control key of the word
    Processor, my forefinger
    Grew numb and then
    My thumb. I was writing a poem
    About death. Insatiable tourist
    That I am, it was a travel
    Brochure luring me to visit
    The valley of the shadow. I leaped
    Up, flexing my digits
    Above my head, and danced
    Around the living room
    To the pulsing strains of an eleison:
    Robert J’s contribution
    To post-Easter Monday.

    This could not be happening. I sat
    Down again and copied
    The poem with many a change
    Mode and saved it on the disk>
    If I were dying, at least
    That would be finished. But blood
    Was now returning to my hand.
    Taking off my robe,
    I found the elastic wrist
    Of my knitted sweatshirt nightgown
    Had been pushed too high up
    On my arm, cutting off circulation.
    Interesting as they sound, apparently
    I was not yet a candidate
    For an early death experience.

  • AT HOME: MORNING COMES TO MY LIVINGROOM

    The popup sun, plump
    As a cherry pincushion, laves
    A rosy gouache over wintry
    Webs of antlered trees
    Onto fuchsia cactus flowers
    And glossy red rimmed jade.

    Around the northwest shoulder
    Of Pitcher Mountain, the Canada
    Express, a spring cleaning
    Housewife, shakes treetop
    Dust mops and scrubs Crystal
    Patches off the blueblack pond.

    Careering down stairs, the sixfoot
    Wolfbred shepherd hairpins
    Spraying up doves and juncos.
    A cheetah hurdling furled
    Swamp cabbages, he pants
    Back to pen and biscuits.

    In golden windows aloe
    Glows. Hollyhock stairtreads
    Gleam coral. Dust
    Moats spark. Dawn
    Explodes into morning glory.
    Coffee calls me to the kitchen.

  • FRIENDS: SERMON BY OUR FAVORITE HERETIC

    Sunlight dyed crimson by the lead-limned folds
    of the master shepherd’s cloak
    Turns auburn the coiled braid of the harpist
    Leaning gently into her royal
    Instrument inlaid with vines, a Corinthian column
    At its prow. She weaves us melodies.
    The stained glass sheep listen, eyes
    Downcast or mesmerized, feet
    On apple green astroturf. HOw sweetly
    Jesus leads his flock.

    But what is this we hear? What heresy assaults
    Our ears? The seed that Origen
    Implanted ran rampant like kudzu or bittersweet when
    Rowed ashore by Murray, who was
    Blown off course and washed up in New Jersey
    Where crazy farmer Potter’s
    Chapel waited for an anti-Calvin to unbolt
    The gates of Hades and harrow
    Hell and escalate sinners to God’s coffeehouse.
    Not obedient sheep.

    But randy goats, fauns, satyrs, Pan’s
    Unspeakable obscene ilk were
    All invited to a divine live aid
    Amplified synthesized concert
    After, of course, some brief retraining in the basics of
    Remedial ethics: Miss Manners’
    Finishing school for psychopaths, terrorists and sadists
    With rehabilitation guaranteed.
    Verily he would never insult us by calling himself
    Pastor to a flock of sheep.

  • FRIENDS: SCHOOLING

    Seated at desks, our students
    Bow their heads to assignments.
    Paperwork gives the cocaine
    Dream its fatal enchantment.

    We chain Prometheus until
    He eats his heart out.
    Then Hercules stalks our streets
    Burning, raping and mugging.

    In Vienna young white horses
    Levade, courbette and capriole,
    Their coltish leaps and gambols
    Encouraged into dance steps.

    And kittens spring onto draperies,
    Laughed at and applauded,
    Or ricochet off chair arms
    Practicing rat entrapments.

    Not, like human children,
    Rebuked into passive conformity
    Which will issue in a ninety-year-
    Old silent scream.

  • FRIENDS: THE LESSON

    On the last day of classes, she and Lisa
    Came up to the desk. For our most patient
    Teacher, they began. Patient? I,
    Who at home rages at my children’s litter?
    “Wait,” said Lisa. Eleanor has made you
    Something to suggest patience: a single stalk
    Of ripened wheat finely drawn in ink
    On gray rice paper matted and bordered.

    Yesterday I snapped my fingers and laughed
    At Eleanor’s faraway blank stare during review.
    Often she came in late from art class.
    I recall her running up the stairs
    In painty smock, her champagne hair tied back.
    One day she wore a blue-green-yellow
    Batik dress dyed, patterned, cut,
    Fitted and sewn by her own hand.

    At the spring arts festival my child and I
    Watch a boy with smiling eyes insert
    Her flow-dyed filter papers in her lighted
    Viewing box. The soft colors glowed.
    Her last theme told of a girl who ran
    Out of the house to watch a spring sunrise
    And found in the meadow a second sun, a daffodil.
    This lily of the field will light up my memories.

  • FRIENDS: ON THE BEACH

    Here is an English garden of sun – and water-
    Loving annuals. Tenderfooted, we step
    Along beach towel borders enclosing clusters
    Of marigold heads, pansy, faces and petunia mouths.
    Johnny jump-ups explode in our path.
    Cockscombs posture casually alert for photographers.

    Clouds of dissonant sounds billow and swirl
    In a summer camp kitchen: a helicopter eggbeats
    Sea froth, surf launders jellyfish on the washboard
    Of the sand, voices tinkle and clatter, like a swashing
    Sinkful of enamel cups and steel utensils.
    A delivery truck beeps like a microwave oven.

    But as we wade along the shore, fog
    Like stage smoke transforms the scene from circus
    To hobbit barrens sparsely interrupted by turrets,
    Moats and bridges, earthform architecture whose small
    Engineers scurry to mound up dikes faster
    Than tidal dragon breath can melt them down.

    Venus-like vapors convince us we are treading the strand
    Of an ocean planet where alien life forms
    Sprout from the soil: two halfsize humanoids
    Rooted at the waist, a monkey face necked
    To a sanstone pyramid. But we are reassured we are still
    Earthbound by frequent gleams of video lenses.

    Reluctant to return to roles of cookery and housewifery,
    We splash on until for brief interludes
    We are the sole inhabitants of moonscape dunes.
    Then we reverse course and teleport almost
    Instantly back to the parking lot, pausing
    Only for a fortifying shot of diet soda.