All poems
ROLE MODELS
Mourning doves are Quaker ladies
Sedate, subdued and graceful,
Habited in buff and gray with sable
Accents and tapering tails.
Muslim women congregating
At the well, they softly wait
Until among the seeds a space
For feeding makes itself available.
Nodding their heads they circulate
With delicate steps, amiable
Party guests, unruffled, contained,
For simple favors grateful.
ALL HALLOWS DAY
Prizefighters, the trees, muscular and bare-
Chested, have shrugged off florescent
Dressing gowns, ready to go
Six rounds with winter, that old
Title holder. It’s the first of November.
We are out to resurrect the leaves,
Give them a new start on life
In compost piles where they will steam,
Reduce themselves to a stew chewed by hearty
Worms into a meal fit for the delicate
White fingers of April radishes.
Harvesting leaves is not like tugging out
Rocks or cutting clusters of grapes.
With wide-spread arms we hug
The feathery mounds, we press them down
Into the cart. My husband tramples them underfoot
Like hay in the barn loft, he recalls,
Dust floating up and people sneezing.
Chickadees complain. Gray squirrels
Brandish their tails. A jay keeps his distance.
Under the clouds a focal flock of geese
Shift lanes, honking for the right-of-way,
Ignored by a pair of hang-gliding hawks.
Radical tamarack candles flame
Among conservative pines and cedars,
Electing to cast all their needles off
In one annual fling rather
Than pluck them out a few at a time.
At noontime we pause. I cut pink
And maroon chrysanthemums for the table.
Bumblebees fasten themselves like pins
On the yellow stamen. I flick them off.
But that evening on the kitchen counter
A microscopic neon emerald bee-like
Creature glints on a pastel petal.
(Reutemann Road Poems, 1960-1972)
BREAKING OFF
The old bass grins with a mended lip,
A zippered gash where a hook was ripped
Across the cartilage and out,
Taking a corner of the mouth.
She chose to spew the succulent bait
Rather than swim on a leash and wait
For the dull hammer thud on the head,
The knife edge sawing through the neck.
The old wolf lopes with a missing paw
On the stubborn bone she chose to gnaw
In a long cacophony of pain
And not like a docile dog remain
In the tender clasp of talons of steel,
Starving by inches on rancid meat,
Awaiting the bullet’s swift reprieve.
The best revenge is living free.
(Reutemann Road Poems 1960-1972)
THE CATCH
Two hooks in her cheek, one in her lip,
The bass lay passive on the gravel bank
As though my fingers twisting barbs out of cartilage
Were veterinarian healing probes.
Back in the water, leashed on a stringer,
She rested in rusty bottom reeds,
Sometimes backpaddling the length of her tether
With small delicate strokes of her fins.
She’d made her protest demonstration when the pain
First snagged her face, that treacherous
Red lure. She arched my rod, launching
Herself like a rocket out of control.
I sharpened the blade for a fast scalpel cut
At the base of the head. She lay still
As a patient on an operating table. Scales scattered.
I saw her sacks of roe were full.
My father taught me how to fish, threading
The worms as casually as bacon rind
Onto the hooks, smoothing down the fins,
Enclosing the perch in his freckled hand.
(Reutemann Road Poems, 1960-1972)
EVANESCENCE
Tonight we see two moons.
One has fallen in the pond,
A fire opal clasped in prongs,
Caged in black branches.
The other moon is ringed in flames.
Knowing this moment cannot last,
We hurry to get a camera.
On our return, pale ripples
Stir the darkening water
And smoking ashes shimmer in the sky.
(Reutemann Road Poems 1960-1972)
BLACK SWANS
(A black swan is said to be an event we did not foresee, contrary to predictions)
We used to think another Hiroshima
Would be our end. But we were wrong.
We did not see the black swans coming
Round the bend: another Fukishima
Sowing seeds of deadly radiation,
Parched forests torched by lightning
Reducing us to ashes in the wind,
The choking sands of multiplying dustbowls,
The dying oceans rising to our doors.
Like lemmings we have teemed and overbred
And now are streaming headlong for the edge
Unless another black swan should arrive:
A mini ice age take us by surprise,,
Leaving a remnant to begin again.
MEMORIAL DAY IN SPAIN
The water tastes like death in the Valley of the Fallen:
Franco’s cross casts a long shadow
Between the hills. How many mothers’ sons
Are stacked like cordwood in that vast basilica
Where roses, those old deodorizers, exhale
Funereal fragrance. Here the wolf and the lion
Lie down together: brothers in blue and gray.
They choked on mule dust and blew up bridges,
Wearing the delicate stitches of machine gun
Fire. Here the Olive barons of Seville
Do penance once a year for their Contra,
Their freedom fighter: Franco the Frog, he’s called,
For all the reservoirs he built that could not
Wash the taste of death out of his mouth.
HIROSHIMA VIGIL 1987
We stand at sunset on the Mystic Bridge,
Old friends holding flowers.
For twenty-five years we have come together
To sing our prayers for peace.
Look how the fish are leaping out
Of the reddening waters, dancing
To our tune. They have a place
On the tree of life and so do we.
Christ cannot help us, he who predicted
The end of the world in his lifetime,
Nor Mohammed, exhorting the slaughter of infidels.
We must go back in time
To primitive gods who were earthy
And love the planet. We float
Our candles out on the ebbing tide,
Out of the river’s mouth
Into that element that is our element,
Invoking the spirit of the deep:
Save us Jehovah, Father Poseidon,
Preserve our holy waters.
ARMISTICE
All year long the deer evade us:
Blurry twilight bounds at the end
Of the path as the shepherd tugs at his leash,
Shadows at dawn by the pond’s outlet.
On snowshoes we cross so many tracks
Up to the meadow and down to the brook,
Briarpatch beds and mounds of pellets:
A phantom herd inhabits our acres.
This September Sunday we turn
Into the gravel drive and meet
A pair of whitetails grazing like calves,
Unhurriedly waving their flags in farewell.
An air of Glasnost has prevailed
Since the dog retired to New Hampshire.
Woodchucks browse on lettuce and beans.
A great blue heron steps high in the shallows.
SPANISH INTERLUDE
(For Pauline)
Behind us crystal curtains
Flow over royal fountains.
Madrid’s sunlight is unkind
To our aging skin, but her pixie
Style bridges the years
Since I last saw my earliest
Friend. We were spanked
For crossing streets and wheeling
Doll carriages around the block.
We whispered forbidden secrets
And played ring-o-leave-o after dark.
Now we have escaped for a week
On a trans-world getaway
From family responsibility.
Palace flags flap.
Sipping diet drinks,
We watch a gardener shaping
Boxwood towers. Having sought out
Marzipan, porcelain and damascene,
We are free to recall paella
On Fishermen’s Beach, staccato
Heels and castanets, Velasquez’
Golden glow, reflections
Of roses in Moorish pools.
Lacy arches, Don Quizote
Tilting with windmills, olive trees,
Neanderthal caves on Gibralter, and
At El Escorial the odor of mortality.
BON VOYAGE
Three burials in three months:
We socialize over your funeral coffee.
Sisters, you have left the party early,
Set your atom particles swirling
And abandoned your good books,
Flower gardens and canoe trips,
Spinning off children, husbands and pets.
And so I plan the mode of my departure:
Not to be draped in black tapestry
Inscribed with a white six-pointed star,
Or canopied in satin spattered by rainbows
Sifted through stained glass windows,
But taking a long view of the memorial
Service through the wrong end of a telescope.
My bones already oxidized and glowing,
I will pinwheel into Van Gogh’s Starry Night,
Hitching a ride to the nearest galaxy.
The coral shells I leave behind
Will fertilize another crop of beans
Or drift in sun-filtering mists
Onto the fossil seas of the White Mountains.
AN OVERDUE NOTE
(For Helene)
All right, Helene, here is a poem
About our salad days as wives
Of graduate students, housed in adjacent
Twenty-foot trailers next to the
University stadium. “On Wisconsin”
Energized our weekends. Saturday mornings
Over cups of coffee, I asked you
What it was like playing clarinet
In Phil Silver’s All Girl Orchestra,
And envied the separate vacations you
And your husband took to visit relatives.
You tried to make me read Karen
Horner, for whom I think you named
A daughter. You were the first and most
Liberated woman I’ve known. We’re talking
Now about the forties. You asked me how
I grew my hard shell. I counted all
The closed doors in my parents’ house.
When we had children, your four,
My five, your milk and affection
Flowed like sap. You were not
Strict about toilet training. You
Were as self-fulfilled as a redwood
Sheltering sprouts. They tell me when
You died of breast cancer, you made
The parting bearable for all your brood.
You were always ahead of me, Helene.