All poems
SPRING FEVER
The sap is rising and the stallion rears
To clap his mighty hoofs upon the mare’s
Frisky rump, but she whisks away
As if inviting him to come and play
And he is game. Off and away they go.
It is the season that does stir the blood,
The time when every river is in flood,
And my old heart is gladdened by the show.
SIGNS OF SPRING
(with thanks to e e cummings)
Ice-melt upstream is roiling up the river
That foams and funnels under the village bridge.
Two feet of ice on Lake Winnepesaukee
Is starting to give way at the water’s edge.
Last week I heard the “cuckoo” of a phoebe
And tree frogs seeking mates with choral peeps
Along with “quarking” lately de-iced wood frogs
And redwinged blackbirds buzzing in the reeds.
Indeed it is Just spring. I also hear
The sound of children laughing in the playground,
And listening with an attentive inner ear
The goat-footed balloon man calling me.
ON THE FIRST DAY OF APRIL
As they circle and soar
In wide leisurely glides
The western sun silvers
Their wings’ undersides:
Four ebony vultures
On a springtime patrol
Back from the southlands
To clean up our roads
While a pale full moon
On the eastern horizon
Rises to bestow
A benevolent benison
And at the small pond
Two redwings chatter
To welcome the emergence
Of ice-free water.
ON THE LAST DAY OF MARCH
The wind has wielded a brush and comb
To tease the clouds in all directions
Extracting fragile transparent film,
Wafting it over an azure canvas.
Stubborn diminishing drifts of snow
Persist in sullen sordid ranks
Along the gravel encrusted roads,
Reluctant to cede their prominent place
However much we wish them gone.
Meanwhile the red capped finches have come
To check out the top of my tall blue spruce
The site of their last year’s nest and brood,
And the first two turkey vultures arrive
To circle above the neighborhood:
I will lift up mine eyes for signs of spring.
BY A BROOK IN MARCH
Our micro-spiked boots crunch
On the icy trampled-down snow
As we scramble over the drift
Thrown up by the highway plow.
We’re next to the Wonalancet
Brook which feeds the Swift.
Today it’s flowing handsomely,
So close to the coming of spring,
Around and between its rocks
And logs, all whitely domed,
All smoothly frosted, silent
Except where it chatters on shoals,
Intent on its seaward journey.
In the forest beside us loom,
Caped in regal white furs,
Majestic glacial erratics.
There beside the trail
We see the blurred old traces
Of hoof or paw or claw
Leading down to the lapping water.
We pass an ancient tree trunk
Riddled with woodpecker drills.
We’re approached by a feisty red squirrel
Who blithely bounces onward.
At the bridge we make our turn
And retrace our steps to the car.
TRANSITION
Here on the cusp of spring
The foxy Prince of Darkness
Will retreat to his lonesome lair
Leaving the fair Persephone
To soften the icy winds
And water the snowbanks down.
March has come in like a lion
And is leaving like T Rex.
Polar glaciers dissolve:
The cold descends to us.
We cheer to see the grass
Emerge from rotting snow.
The jay and the chickadee lisp
Their piece to potential mates.
But Persephone will do well
To free us from winter’s clutch.
The light at the end of the tunnel
MAY be the summer’s sun
And Persephone MAY return
To her darksome winter home.
REJUVENATION
Whenever you are near
Laughter rises up in me
Like sap in a maple tree.
Whenever you are here
Words tumble out of me
Like coins in a slot machine
When somebody hits the jackpot.
And though I know I ought
To avoid this beckoning eddy
And steer into calmer waters,
Bubbles rise in my champagne
And age no longer trammels me.
Old birds have leave to sing
However short their spring.
A PRAYER FOR OUR PLANET
He came to our UU pulpit,
A self-confessed atheist
And erudite eco-biologist,
Not to redeem our souls
But to attune our thoughts
To the awesome universe of microbes
That shape and manipulate our bodies:
Our bodies that themselves are habitats,
Complex eco-systems,
Some of which will endure,
Some of which will go extinct.
Our eco-mentor mentioned
That we are part of a larger
Biota, our region of earth,
And we are all connected
To every living thing,
Some of which may endure
Most of which will go extinct.
That is largely up to us.
Master of all universes,
Almighty Force and Source,
Guide us in our choices.
OUR DAN
I imagine him out in the pasture blowing snow
To make a space for four shelter goats
And one wool coated sheep to move and browse
Outside their shed and for impatient hens,
Too long cooped in, to strut and hunt and peck.
His Kathy may be knitting that sheep’s wool
Or weaving a shawl on one of her many looms.
And when the spring produces brightly green
Asparagus shoots on all his roadside banks
Dan will be canning them for winter soups.
He must have inherited Grandma Lillie’s genes.
They have no use for lawns. Flowering shrubs,
Rock gardens, raised beds and berry bushes
Fill up their yard. They gather eggs. Sometimes
An aging rooster transforms into a stew.
This distinguished Cisco software engineer
Has retired early to learn to play guitar
And sing his songs at friendly open mics.
When he was young Dan had an attic room
In our three-story, part-Victorian home,
And in the space next to his bedroom he hosted
Cages and cages of guinea pigs, gerbils and hamsters.
He is true to his Tappan family Yorkshire heritage
As shepherds and farmers, good stewards of the planet.
KISMET
As the cribbage game comes to an end
She wonders about Bev’s maiden name.
“What?” she exclaims. “Is that who you are?
I knew you in high school. Your friends were mine.
We often sailed on your husband’s boat.
How did I come to find you here?”
Ah, that is the mystery Kurt Vonnegut
Called “Karma”. Who does Fate arrange
To saunter in and out of our affairs?
As once we ferried down Lake Ullswater
Where Wordsworth saw his daffodils,
We saw, on landing at the ferry dock
A friendly and familiar figure calling out,
A welcome face so far from kith and kin
That last we’d seen afloat on Big Moose Lake,
A fellow paddler in the Adirondacks.
And once on a remote Montana trail
To Cracker Lake in Glacier National Park,
We recognized a couple by a rock
Who greeted us with an astonished hail:
Friends we had made on Elderhostel treks.
And how did you and I manage to meet?
On such encounters do our fortunes rest.
THE OPENING GAME
On the cribbage board your hands,
Your big and bony masculine hands,
Move your pegs, your red pegs,
And my unwomanly sturdy hands
Want my pegs to follow
But the cards do not cooperate.
Instead I tell you how my sled
Slid into the sunken garden.
You tell me your father died young
But yours was a kindly stepfather.
And now my blue pegs come up
To yours and we move in tandem.
ON SWASEY PARKWAY
The seagulls cloud around her
As she tosses the day old bread.
They swoop and dance and flutter,
Ring bills, gray and white breasted,
Clustered around open water
At the shore of the arctic expanse
Of the seldom frozen Squamscott.
She tells me they know her well,
Crowd up when she appears,
Friends with lively welcomes,
After her bakery days.
She once had a dog companion.
Now winged ones keep her company.
I tell her I will bring bread
The next time I come to the waters.