Bev Tappan

Category: Reutemann Road Poems

Poems written 1962 – 72 and also 1984 – 89, in North Stonington, CT

  • REUTEMANN ROAD POEMS: OCTOBERFEST

    OCTOBERFEST

    The maples are jars of cherry-orange

    Marmalade.  I eat them with my eyes

    And then the  peach and crimson dahlias

    Flaring between cranberry candles

    In my sunlighted kitchen pass-through..

    The month of great expectations is not

    June or January but October,  the season

     When all things still are possible in the school year

    For teachers and for students.  That

    Was the month I wanted for my wedding.

    The torches of trees set my spirits on fire,

    Reflected in our pond or spread across

    The Appalachians like Indian beadwork

    Shadowed by southbound Canada geese.

    Someday I’ll make a fall journey to Japan.

    Sitting in stillness at the sea of sand

    And stone I’ll empty my inward space

    And take into myself  the plum red

    Gold embroidered hills of Kyoto.

  • REUTEMANN ROAD POEMS: THE RINK

    A THANK YOU NOTE FOR THE CAST OF “THE RINK”

    Still high, stoned on nostalgia,

    I go into the parking lot

    Humming the theme song of the play.

    Like stage scenery, the sky

    Shimmers with crystal.  The moon

    Is a glitterball on a chain

    Where any father can pull it down

    For his daughter.  Look at Arcturus,

    A Hope diamond on black velvet:

    Follow the arc of the dipper

    And you can put your finger on it.

    Music and colored lights:

    Ghetto kids have overdosed on them

    Spacing on strobe beams and

    Hard rock nuclear blasts.

    Ma and Pa have split,

    Riding roller coaster rainbows.

    They have outgrown magicians,

    Circuses, carnivals and state fairs.

    They’re outward bound for Xanadu.

    Tickets are only a dollar a minute.

    I can remember circling

    In the warm New Hampshire honey-

    Suckle -scented night,

    Skate wheels clicking like a locomotive

    On the tracks to Monterey,

    Round and round the roller rink,

    Silky in my rayon dress,

    Hoping a boy would smile at me,

    Proud of my lace collar.

    The jukebox played the Beer Barrel

    Polka round and round

    Until the lights dimmed for “Couples Only”

    And I rejoined my parents.

  • REUTEMANN ROAD POEMS: BACKYARD EROTICA

    BACKYARD EROTICA

    Rain sated, the lily quivers:

    Magenta, deep-throated

    Open since daybreak, leaning

    Into the shimmering

    Gauze curtain of water.

    An interlude of silence:

    We hear the final

    Chime on the patio stones.

    Stroked by sunlight,

    The lily arches, uplifted

    For the hummingbird’s thrust.

  • REUTEMANN ROAD POEMS: RUG HOOKING

    RUG HOOKING

    Three women, warmed by a wood stove

    And cactus blooming in springtime, handle

    Soft wool.  One thumb and finger, unseen

    Beneath the burlap, locate the next connection.

    A dowser’s stick or well bucket, the hook

    Goes down and brings up particles of water,

    Petals, greenery, clouds or sky.  A starling

    Flaps at the window, puzzled by plants in pots.

    She streaks the race and toss and curl of wave

    In wind, the sail tilting, seagulls diving.

    Medieval women weaving tapestries,

    Nuns embroidering altar cloths, or frontier

    Wives quilting Texas stars, they talk

    Of coming wars, sickness, healing herbs,

    Babies, retirement plans and children’s destinies.

    The pup, a fluffy mushroom, sniffs and sneezes.

  • REFLECTIONS: CONSTRAINTS

    Songs in the car, my mother’s mellow contralto
    The white fringe of birches framing Lake Chocorua
    Her trudge up the Jewell Trail wearing a dress:
    Calling out blazes on granite slabs
    Spying the next cairn, the misty channel
    Marker – or so I like to recall although
    In truth my father may have been ahead.

    How I resented the leash that reined me to them
    After my toddler’s wobble toward the road
    Where Model T’s jolted like windup toys.
    The clothesline pulley ran me like a dog.
    I was the bass my father trolled for what
    Seemed hours in lucid lakes of northern Maine.
    “You are all we’ve got, ” he often said
    Spanking me whenever I crossed the street.

    Today my mother came home from the hospital
    Short of breath, unsure of the order of pills.
    I cooked and laundered, fetched her water and kleenex
    And snapped at the choke chain tightening on my neck
    The way our shepherd balks at the door of the pen
    Until we looked at curling photographs:
    Her home-made lacy graduation dress
    The boy with his bicycle twenty-five miles from home.

  • REFLECTIONS: DAILY REMINDERS – MAY 28, 1989

    Unruffled sheets on half the bed
    Manure and compost piles unspread
    No woodchips on upholstered chairs
    No wads of mud on cellar stairs

    A pair of running shoes unfilled,
    The ergometer counter stilled
    Computer monitor unscribed,
    Animal carvings undefined

    The silent eight-day clock unwound,
    No need to ring the dinner gong
    No answer to the office phone,
    A truck with no commute from home

    The waxplant tolls its heavy blooms
    Their midnight scent invaded the rooms.

  • REFLECTIONS: COUNTERPOINT

    I ask myself why Baroque music
    Is the music for me
    Why not Tchaikovsky but W.A. Mozart
    Is my main man
    And not just for the horn passages
    Sweet as they are

    Stravinsky says all eighteenth century
    Music is to dance by.
    It’s true my feet prance off without me
    At the opening measure
    Of any toe-tapping tune and especially
    Contra dancing

    Where men and women take their turns
    Meet and separate
    Do their things and greet their friends
    Together and apart
    Grand right and left and swing your partner
    On equal terms.

    Baroque music is like that: two voices
    Male and female
    In animated cross-talk. The flute
    Makes a remark.
    The harpsichord agrees and amplifies

    Or the bas viol asks a question
    The violin responds
    And off they go in joyful repartee.
    If daughters could talk
    With fathers like that they’d grow up
    To be happy women.

  • REFLECTIONS: HELGA’S SONNET

    He garlands her with white arbutus in spring
    And she is Frigga, Venus of Scandinavia.
    Through drowsy summer days he paints
    Her flesh pearly and smooth as silken linings
    Of conch shells, her long limbs loose in sleep.
    But fall diminishes her. A lesser wood nymph
    Under a maple leaf, Persephone sliding
    Back into earth, she moves away from him.
    Against the black winter oak in her army
    Cape she deflects his gaze with the icy eyes
    Of Freyja, Prussian queen of slaughtered warriors.
    Over the years his drybrush explores the ripened
    Wheat of her hair, the Viking angles of her features.
    The unsmiling mouth at last defeats him.

  • REFLECTIONS: THE SUNSET YEARS

    That season of my life I now can savor
    When goldenrod on every back road border
    Ignites its solar flares, and purple asters
    Lift their wine in one last toast to summer.

    My sugar maple leaves illuminate
    The swamps where darning needles copulate.
    My milkweed pods are tightly packed to labor
    And let fly seeds on any passing vapor.

    Meteors arc across my inner spaces.
    Unblemished roses baptize me with fragrance.
    The wild geese point to south my weather vane
    This is the time for riding hurricanes

    Before the tawny grasses crystallize
    Before the long dark winter nights arrive.

  • TRAVELS: GIBRALTER

    Several months ago, the British
    Unlocked the mainland border gates.
    Workers can go freely home at night.
    Tourists cross by bus as well as boat.
    Spain has access to her own peninsula

    The taxi takes us mile by mile
    Into the garrisoned warren, the tunneled
    Ant like arsenal. Pirates, moors,
    Spanish, Germans, British and French
    Drowned in flames for this barren rock.

    Within numberless caves carved
    By wind and water, some as vast
    And domed as cathedrals, limestone pillars
    Refracting thin aeolian chimes,
    Neanderthal families gathered by their fires.

  • TRAVELS: PERUVIAN PORTRAITS

    Patrician as a Spanish grandee,
    The Andean grandfather gazes
    At llamas, alpacas and sheep
    Weighing their fleece. His mouth
    Is firm under a Roman nose.
    Long eartlaps of a knitted
    Chulpa frame angular
    Cheekbones and a gray moustache.

    He no longer plays soccer,
    Inhaling the sparse oxygen:
    His air fuel- injected
    By high-octane hemoglobin.
    His chest is now concave.
    The serape slopes over shoulders That will carry the village sheep
    At Sunday mass to the padre.

    His wife has worked up a smile
    For her grandson the artist, eyes Squinting in sunlight unshaded
    By the upright salad bowl,
    A scarlet melon slice,
    Crowning her gray hair.
    Rolled into a warm collar,
    Her blanket comforts old bones.

    She keeps her hands busy
    Pulling and twisting wool
    On a spindle. She often laughs
    With neighbors at weekly markets
    Buying potatoes and beans or
    Sipping a glass of chicha.
    She pacifies great grandbabies
    with chunks of sugar cane.

  • NEW ENGLAND: APRIL IN NORTH STONINGTON

    On Lantern Hill the shadbush blooms
    And clouds meander overhead.
    The rocks are rough beneath my boots
    The lichens stiff beneath my hand.

    A small black-suited butterfly
    Imbibes the blossoms airy mead.
    I watch the redtails hover by
    Stretch out my legs and take my ease.

    I’ve heard that when the shadbush blows
    The shadfish breast New England stream
    Their frail white petals brush my nose
    Among the still-emerging leaves.