All poems
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.
Why do I spend my weekends in the Whites?
I find some consolation in their heights
To blunt the grief that haunts my lowland days,
Inspire me to set out on new assays.
Those alabaster presidential peaks
Outshine a million cities’ neon gleams.
Chocorua’s guardian ridge and craggy brow
Look down benevolently on our town.
Not far from here I loved and was well loved
And in these parts my ancestors once throve.
Since childhood I have trekked these beckoning hills.
Something there is that calls me to them still.
When I no longer reach the summit views,
Walks on these valley trails will also do.
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.
THE WEIGHT OF WINTER
The spruce is still bowed down by snow
Below my north-facing window. Its limbs
Droop sadly, unable to bear the load
Of yesterday’s twenty-four hour storm.
Yet across the road the pines have risen
Branch by branch, shaking off their burdens
As sun and breeze set them free until
They stand tall again, undiminished,
Proud to have weathered another of winter’s
Relentless assaults, green and regal.
I think how much difference a little sunlight,
A little warmth, can make in a life.
THREE HIKERS AND A DOG
A flash of orange bounds across our snowshoes.
Checker, the black and white Australian shepherd,
Wearing his lustrous “Hunters, don’t shoot me!” coat,
Checks up on us as we crunch along White Lake’s shore.
We watch him tree a saucy squirrel not at all
Fazed by his leaps and sharp impatient barks.
Our eyes are drawn to jagged cavities drilled
In the trunks of pines by woodpeckers after bugs.
We hear a raven’s hoarse foreboding croak
And note the jumbled prints of skittering voles.
Here where the track accesses the shore we take
A shortcut over the lake. Checker says “Hey!”
To an angler who’s driven his truck and fish shack
Onto the ice but reports, “No dice!” for a catch.
Halfway around we reach the beeches. Our poles
Break free of entangling brush whose name we can’t
Recall. We learn the dog has a checkered past:
Rejected by his siblings, he was the outcast,
The runt about to be dispatched, but love
Has prevailed. He’s now a lively obedient rover.
Nearing our cars we are brought to a halt. A mountain
Bike with snow tires stops our forward momentum.
We understand Checker’s anxious barks. We feel
These forest paths were meant to be trodden by feet.
Out of the west a wall of darkness dispatches
The sun and a wintry wind assaults our backs.
We are just in time to retreat to Rosie’s for lunch,
Safe from the blast of a fast moving polar vortex.
Checker curls up for a nap in the back of the van.
It’s time for next week’s outing to be planned.
OUR JON
Our first born son was tolerant of
His sister, born just fifteen months
His junior, but he teased his younger
Brother, who followed two years later.
And yet, he helped Dan land his first
Big bass, jaws locked on the lure
Of a toy fishing rod, and he took
The punishment for an annoying noise
That Dan, not he, had made. Jon set
A high standard for high school grades
And he got handy with Tandy in time to manage
Data banks before computer classes were taught.
Jon’s first puppy love was Sprite, his beagle,
And later he loved three winsome collies
And Becky, their owner, as well as his tall
Dark-haired daughter, who shares his love
Of all things and customs Japanese:
He critiques animes, practices Shin Buddha
Meditation, savors sakes, sleeps well
On futons, kneels gracefully at tea tables
And wields his chopsticks with skillful ease.
AS PLAIN AS BLACK AND WHITE
Except when the next polar vortex
Launches its ice shafts from the Arctic
The winters in northern Maine ain’t
What they used to be. Our partially frozen
Lakes no longer hold up our trucks
And fishing shacks. Our skis skid
On glazed and glistening worn-down snow.
On this first day of the new year
The Androscoggin still flows free
From Gorham east to Rumford, where
Another dam delays it long enough
For icy platelets to collect and merge
Into almost-circles of white on black,
An abstract Escher-like design or pattern
That seems to hold some urgent message
For those with eyes wide open to see.
COLD COMFORT
I heard that flannel nightgowns
Are no longer to be found
In Target or in Wal-Mart
So I looked to Amazon
And luckily they still offer
In every size and color
A plethora of nighties.
From autumn into spring I
Snuggle into scarlet flannel
Bedecked with caroling cats
Worn over lycra tights.
Nothing there is more comforting
On cold and cheerless nights.