Category: Reutemann Road

PAW PRINTS

My hand recalls the hard curve

Of his skull and the pull of the wire brush

Through his coarse tail.  Big Mick

Was a rock hound who nosed up

Smooth stones to cradle in his jaws.

 

He swam endless laps in the pond

Towing a small boy.  He barked

Into the water to scare the fish.

His wolf eyes beamed us down the drive.

He danced his welcome up the steps.

 

Vacuum cleaners were fair game.

New ice at the edge of the outlet

Shattered under his paws.  Snow frosted

His muzzle.  His tracks in the woods, enlarged

Like Big Foot’s, soon will be melted.

(Reutemann Road poems 1960-1972)

GIVING THANKS

Meandering out of the village the car

Shudders and stops short

To let a bronze native turkey

Hurtle across the tar-top

Almost under the wheels, desperate,

Floundering into the furze.

The sacrificial victim flees

The carnage.  One wants to cheer

As when Canadian geese last week

Gleaned in Farmer Burdick’s

Cornfield, undisturbed by chattering

Guns or barking curs.

(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)

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)

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)

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.

ASPIRATIONS

How we long to excise peasant fat

As Gloucester fishermen slice the cod,

Lifting flesh cleanly off the bone,

Sculpting ourselves to aristocratic

Skeletons: ballet dancers under the skin.

And wear our heart lines open to view

Like silk-embroidered Persian shields

Or manzanitas whose bronze branches,

Coated with smooth-meshed capillaries,

Have cast off the armor of bark.

We dive into surf to be tossed and  tumbled

By breakers and scoured on washboard sand:

Bottles and granite together giving up

The cutting edge, the obdurate mass,

Emerging as sea glass and luminous gemstones.

LOVE WITH OPEN ARMS

Isn’t that the song the sweet birds sing,

Leaving empty nests like fruit on barren

Winter trees?  Forget the crib and playpen,

College choices and careers.  Feed

Voracious appetites.  Push the young

Off the edge.  Share the joy of soaring.

As soon as you have seen them catch an updraft,

Veer to the south.  Aspire!  Aspire!  Vacate

Arboreal condos felled by passing winds,

And leave the marble halls to earthbound types.

Be vocal on the wing in wide migrations,

Flying point or following with the flock.

Our homes are fragile thatch.  Be briefly tenant.

The air, the buoyant air, is our only element.