Bev Tappan

Category: Poems

All poems

  • Bev reads at ESOM – 1/22

    Ellen Schmidt Open Mic January 17, 2022

    • hosted by Dan Tappan
    • The Woods in Winter
    • Trees

    Ellen Schmidt Open Mike January 3, 2022

    • hosted by Dan Tappan
    • A Christmas Lament

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: A CHRISTMAS LAMENT

    When it’s raining in December

    We know climate change is here

    And we hardly can remember

    When the snow brought Christmas cheer.

    Then the sleigh bells all were jingling

    As we coasted over the snow

    And our voices all were mingling

    In the carols we still know.

    Now alas the gray rain’s falling

    On the streets so wet and bare.

    It is really quite appalling

    That there’s not a snowflake there.

    And the lakes are all unfrozen.

    We’ve forgotten how to ski.

    Oh we never should have chosen

    To enact this tragedy.

    (RiverWoods Poems, Dec. 2021)

  • Bev reads at ESOM – 11/21

    Ellen Schmidt Open Mike on November 15, 2021

    • hosted by Dan Tappan
    • Eclipse Moment (A Sonnet For Sarah and Mark)
    • Cold Weather Friends

    Ellen Schmidt Open Mike – November 1, 2021

    • hosted by Dan Tappan
    • All Hallow’s Day
    • Buyer Beware

  • Bev reads at ESOM – 10/21

    Ellen Schmidt Open Mike on October 18, 2021.

    • hosted by Dan Tappan
    • White Mountain Art
    • A Show Of Colors (Autumn 2016)
    • On October 12th

    Ellen Schmidt Open Mike on October 4, 2021

    • Dan Tappan host
    • A Recollection
    • My Grandfather’s House

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: EVE’S FRUIT

    WHEN WE ARE YOUNG

    WE GNAW THE APPLE GREEDILY

    WIPE THE JUICES FROM OUR CHIN

    AND THROW THE CORE AWAY.

    IN MIDDLE AGE

    WE SLICE THE APPLE

    INTO DECOROUS FOURTHS

    TO BE CHEWED DELIBERATELY.

    AND IN OUR FINAL YEARS

    THE APPLE MUST BE STEWED,

    SUGARED AND SPICED

    TO SWEETEN ITS SOUR TASTE.

  • HOUSEWORK

    Here he is high on a ladder
    Painting my condo’s window sash
    Brown skin and black mustache
    Minimum wage immigrants:
    Those we need for all those tasks
    Too toilsome for our middle class.
    Oh I, too once stood on ladders
    Nailing cedar logs to beams
    Helping my husband shape our dreams.
    But we were salaried entrepreneurs
    White, entitled, college grads
    Blind to what privilege we had.

  • THE RIGHT PLACE AT THE RIGHT TIME

    The woods in winter:
    The peeling bark, the skeletal trees.
    The blood-red berries blinking bright,
    The tracks of squirrels in the snow,
    The sere brown leaves of beech and oak
    So loth to let go.

    You can see
    The sun through arboreal traceries,
    And flocks of twittering birds
    Flutter and flit from tree to tree,
    Then rise in a soaring cloud
    And swim away.

    The woods in winter
    Are not dense or menacing or dark
    As are the woods in summer.
    You see what roots and rocks
    To step around, what handholds
    Will support you.

    It is a joy
    To walk the woods in winter,
    To breathe the crisp cold air,
    To clear the cluttered mind
    To calm the troubled soul.
    My place is there.

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: CALL TO THE COLORS

    CALL TO THE COLORS

    (An Ode to Racists)

    How dispiriting are all-white bouquets

    Compared to colorful flower displays.

    How unappealing the all-white plate

    (Of cauliflower, rice and fish) to our palates.

    Albino animals we don’t think pretty.

    We consider them odd; they excite our pity.

    Why then do we struggle and plot and connive

    To be an all-white, pasty-faced, anemic tribe?

    I put this query to ardent racists

    Who hate the sight of different faces

    And want an exclusive society

    With no interesting variety.

    Let’s chord the song, let’s add new notes.

    Who knows?  We might even like these folks.

     

     

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: HAND ME DOWNS

                        Hand Me Downs

    My husband was a small town Indiana boy

    Who heard the lonely whistle of the train

    Just down the street and watched the glowworms

    Dance above the seas of cornfields lapping

    At his door.  The eldest son, at the age of twelve

    He drove a tractor on his uncle’s farm.

    In the village school his father was the principal.

    His mother put small stitches into quilts

    And watered African violets with her tears.

    Chickens, bees and gardens fed them for the year

    Along with fallen fruit and Uncle Paul’s

    Pork and goat milk.  Nothing went to waste.

    So when a research scientist, he built a woodland

    House, cleared trails and planted raised-bed 

    Gardens fertilized by red worm-generated compost.

    Gardens and chickens were carried on by his son

    An engineer who felt the family heritage was worth

    Preserving and perhaps even passing on.

     

     

  • Mini-Set at Ellen Schmidt’s Open Mic – 4/19

    April 29, 2019

    Bev’s poetry turned to song – with Izzy Td

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: THOUGHTS IN WINTER

    WINTRY THOUGHTS

    I wish that once more we could walk

    Across a wintry parking lot

    And I could feel your ungloved hand.

    We reveled in a northern land,

    Planted our skis on snow-packed trails

    And snow-shoe’d over hills and dales.

    I wish we could be comrades again.

    When pines with snowy mounds are bent

    And ice shards crackle underfoot

    And overhead a raven croaks

    Then I imagine I can see

    Your ski tracks up ahead of me.

     

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: OUR LADY

    Our Lady of Liberty, cover your eyes.

    Your huddled masses do not breathe free.

    They cower in cells, they molder in sties.

    Of liberty this is a mockery.

    Our Lady of Liberty, cover your ears.

    Terrified children torn from families

    Are not what you would have wanted to hear.

    What justifies these atrocities?

    Our Lady of Liberty, what has become

    Of our founding fathers’ noble ideals?

    We can no longer be rightly known

    As the home of the brave and the land of the free.

    These are the evils of slavery

    Enforced by the power of tyranny.