Bev Tappan

Category: Riverwoods Poems

Poems from 2001

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: END OF SUMMER THOUGHTS

    END OF SUMMER THOUGHTS

    The sun was bright, the surf was high

    As my daughter and her wife and I

    Drove slowly along the New Hampshire shore

    Among cyclers and bikers and pedestrians, more

    Traffic and cars at the curb than I

    Could remember seeing in days gone by

    No doubt because it was Labor Day

    And everyone wanted the summer to stay.

    At Orient Point we took to a trail

    And watched some distant yachtsmen sail.

    We saw the cormorants flex their wings

    While gulls pursued their wanderings.

    The Isles of Shoals seemed beckoning.

    I thought about that old time inn

    Whose porch I once sat happily on

    With a dear love who now was gone.

  • NEW ENGLAND WEATHER

    Mother’s Day weekend and snow blasts
    Are pelting the tulips while sudden gusts
    Of wind beset the flowering trees.
    A polar vortex surely seems
    To have us in it’s icy grip.
    What kind of greeting card is this
    To usher in a Mother’s Day?
    It mocks the merry month of May.
    Blasting violets and anemones
    Giving us the annual tease.
    Memorial Day could bring a frost
    We’ll wait ’til June to set out crops.

  • 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)

  • 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.

     

     

  • 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.

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: FREAK SHOW

    Why do we sit in our circus seats

    Watching a shaggy yellow-haired ape

    Swagger and strut his pompous stuff?

    Hear all the dissonant noise he makes!

    Does he mean us harm?  Is that a stick

    Of dynamite or is it sugar cane?

    And is that a cigarette lighter

    His other hand points and waves

    At us?  Why don’t we boo and hiss

    Until they drag him off the stage?

    We like to play with fire.  We love

    To tempt the bull, wave the red cape,

    Run our outdated nuclear reactors,

    Ignore the winds of a blackening hurricane.

      

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: SPRING FEVER

    SPRING FEVER

     

    What a beneficent day this is:

    Sumer is icumen in,

    Lilacs at the door now bloom,

    Our time for flowering has come.

    Toss the cumbrous coats aside.

    Light and lithesome is our style.

    We’ll be darkly cloaked no more.

    Warmth has reached our northern shores.

    From our caverns we’ll emerge,

    For frolicking we feel the urge.

    Setting out plants and pulling weeds

    With gardening fervor we are seized

    Old bones step out with vigor and vim

    And all the world is young again.