Bev Tappan

Category: Reutemann Road Poems

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

  • FAMILY: A WALK WITH A THREE-YEAR-OLD

    We stoop to look at ant hills.
    Her small finger closes the holes.

    Toting their eggs and leafbits,
    Ant workers scurry this way and that, unperturbed.

    “I break them,” she announces.
    In her other hand she holds three straggly

    Buttercups and one lupine.
    Clovers or Bouncing Bet she tosses aside.

    Tickle grass lifts her chin.
    “Let me make me laugh, Grammie.”

    I upend the stem
    To prod a hunting spider, who toad-hops

    Into poison ivy.
    Her ziplock sandals pursue a narrow

    Cement wall, a childsized
    Promenade under a hemlock. Last year’s conelets,

    Brittle and seedless, cling
    To the studs and joists of this cool dark chamber.

    Rapelling past its apertures
    On slender nylon climbing ropes swing

    Casual gypsy caterpillars.
    Bon vivants, they have littered the drive with their leavings.

    Relentless Jenny erases them,
    Stamps them into oily exclamation marks on the tartop.

  • FAMILY: WOMEN’S WORK

    Bluebirds windchiming in the Jeffrey pines
    Make background music as I hook up
    From beneath the burlap white and yellow
    Petals of lotus flowers. Conifers
    Spread green fingers in the sun.

    In Egypt, land of lotus and papyrus,
    Nomadic women day to day
    Weave goatskin pads they stitch
    Into tent sidings, one forever
    Needing replacement. But Hetup-heres,
    Daughter, wife, and mother of pharoahs,

    Rested slender fingers on graceful
    Arms of carved and gilded chairs:
    Borne above the dust by slaves
    And Hatshepsut grasped the crook and flail,
    Herself donning the pharoah’s beard.

    In 1986 Before Christ,
    A scribe advised his son, “Do not
    Become a weaver. They sit all day
    In the house at their looms unhappy as women.”
    My daughters the engineer, the supervisor and
    The shop owner are making their choices.

  • FAMILY: PHOTO OPPORTUNITY


    You are a camera who
    Freezes my picture in poses
    I never intended. “Wait!”
    I cry. “That isn”t me!”
    But you snap the shutter
    And finally mount the prints
    Forever in red leather albums
    Like flies dead in amber.

    Create me instead on videotape..
    Showcase my best or better days.
    Feature me friendly, zestful,
    Dancing or singing. Today
    The pond is a frozen mirror
    Inviting any skaters design.

  • FAMILY: BOSTON FLOWER SHOW

    Blown down the parking lot
    We have come in to a forced
    Spring. Through arches of sunny

    Acacia chains we see glimpses
    Of enchanted nooks: Mole’s
    Beloved boat moored

    Below Rat’s shore –
    Sheltered bungalow: a Victorian
    Broad-brimmed hat

    Under an arbor; Farmer
    MacGregor’s rows of lucious
    Lettuce eyed by Peter;

    Max the wild thing
    Starting a rumpus in the dark
    Forest corner; a cypress-

    Cooled Moorish patio
    Reflected in the tiled pool and
    Helicon beaks from Hawaii

    Garnishing luau fruits.
    But most alluring are jellybean
    Walks between marshmallow cauliflowers,

    A cabbage patch doll,
    Decorated carrot cakes and
    Cookie bushes inside a gingerbread

    Fence: These entrall
    The children and invalids in wheelchairs
    Propelled by aged relatives

    My mother and I, sharing
    One hundred and fifty years,
    Buy pussywillows as we leave.

  • TRAVELS: MEMORIAL DAY IN SPAIN

    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.

  • FRIENDS: SPANISH GETAWAY

    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.

  • AT THE TOMB OF THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER

    (First published in Lip Service Magazine, Spring/Fall 1987)

    Heals click like gunshots
    As the uniformed robot with shaved head
    Turns. White gloves swat
    The rifle from shoulder to shoulder, which form
    The top line of the blue trapezoid
    Based on a twenty-nine inch waist.

    He duckwalks thirty paces
    North and thirty paces south.
    Day and night he guards the grave
    Of four whom nothing can hurt anymore.

    As he salutes, his clockwork arms at five
    Minutes to midnight, he overlooks beyond
    The tomb the obelisk and dome and all
    The pillared Roman monuments to power.

    Less than forty years from now,
    They tell us, Arlington Cemetery will be full.
    Where shall we then bury our unknowns?
    They’re running a final solution contest.

    The winning missiles, swarming like asteroids,
    Will broadcast the ashes of nameless millions,
    Mingled with marble dust, throughout
    The capitol city sarcophagus
    Leaving four heat-etched silhouettes
    On billboards of government walls
    To be greeted decades later by some
    Lumbering radiation-suited sergeant
    Raising a bulky mitted hand.

  • MISSING MAGGIE

    (First published in Lip Service Magazine, Spring/Fall 1987)

    She was folding clothes when the caged bird in her chest
    Rose in a final spasm of wings
    And all was changed for her husband standing on the deck
    Cleaning the grill from the Sunday barbecue.

    Concord grapes lay on the table, a modest
    Harvest eagerly gleaned by their sons
    But scarcely enough for all the glasses of garnet
    Jelly they had prepared to put up.

    Her earliest neighbor would remember Maggie folding
    Clothes: first the diapers for the five
    Babies, later the jeans and now the sheets
    And towels of houseguests who used to be children.

    Who would bake the pies from the seventeen quarts
    Of frozen blueberries? Who would plant
    The tulips or cook Thanksgiving dinner? Who
    Would teach her seventh grade science class?

    These are the wrong questions. We should ask
    Who will feel the shower sting
    Her face in the morning? Who will watch her dogwood
    Slowly drop its white tears?

  • NEW ENGLAND: A NEW ENGLANDER REFLECTS ON THE CHALLENGER SEVEN

    In what ways did we celebrate
    The adventurous leap of our space heros
    And heroines into another dimension.
    Their giant step into eternity?

    We who watched and watched and watched again
    The cataclysmic moment of their going,
    Invested with our childhood dreams
    Died along with them, and derring-do,
    That last desperate expedition,
    Rehearsed our own inevitable end:
    Dust to stardust metamorphosis.

    Later we climbed in winter sunlight,
    Leaving bootmarks on the dust of snow
    Clambered over windsnapped oaks,
    Strolled in shadowy hemlock hallways
    Along black waters chanting, churning
    In and out of gleaming ice,
    Gazing finally toward the ocean
    Toward those ashes drifting, spiraling
    Into space and out of sight.

    At home we heard a Mozart requiem:
    Energetic strings, pulsing brass:
    A tribute played to aspirations
    Of seven spirited star sailors.
    In these ways have we mourned them
    And we still do grieve for them:
    Their happy camaradarie:
    Enthusiasts elected for excellence
    With vibrant eyes and winning smiles.