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.

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)

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.

(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.

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.

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.

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.