Poems from 2001
COLLAGE
Pieces of our shared past
Drift softly in my mind,
Flutter like shaking aspen
Leaves in the autumn wind:
Otters on the French River,
Haleakala’s silver swords,
Sea anemones aquiver,
Beaver woodcutters at work,
Red spires in Bryce Canyon,
Deer on a frozen lake,
A herd of honking sea lions,
Phosphorescence in our wake.
Shifting images coalesce,
Merge in a misty scene:
Bright moments of our happiness
Weave in a fading dream.
ENCOUNTER
We dip our paddles stealthily.
The heron eyes us warily.
Too young to have acquired fear,
He wonders why we have come here.
Water lilies are his rug.
He elegantly gives a shrug
And makes his graceful ballet jete
To move away some fifteen feet,
Then settles down to keep a watch
On strange intruders drifting past.
We paddle onward carefully,
Happy this water nymph to see.
WISH YOU WERE HERE
I’ve gotten used to
The empty chair,
The unwrinkled pillow,
And one place at the table
Without you,
But how can I watch
The moon tangled in black branches,
The sun rise over Carter Notch,
Or the first flakes of new snowfall
Without you?
STILL MISSING YOU
I say I’ve shifted gears,
Embarked on new affairs,
Traveled to foreign ports,
Shrugged off all my cares.
But then a memory
Will catch me unaware
And I will start to weep
Because you are not here.
Because you are not here,
My love, because you are not there:
No matter where I look for you
You are not anywhere.
OUR BLACKBERRY YEAR
One year the blackberry blooms
Burgeoned so fulsome and rank,
With the weight of their fragrant fruit
The bushes bowed and bent.
We picked our fingers black
And filled our freezer full,
Then had to refer to a book
On concocting blackberry cordial.
This potent purple brew,
The perfect campfire quaff,
We transported in our canoe
For a day’s end toast and laugh.
LEAVE TAKING
The week before you left,
The ghost pear bloomed
Beyond our window. Perhaps
It beckoned to you, since
You could no longer pack
Your wetbag for the Allegash,
Guide us down the Chase Rips,
Or gaze at the Long Lake rainbow.
It pleasures me to think
That you are chasing rainbows.
(RiverWoods poems: May 11, 2014)
Was it in the Sixties that I first heard
The doorbell ring on the first of May
And found your wildflowers at the door
Of that hillside house your father girded
With cedar logs and sturdy fieldstones
To keep our family sound and safe?
Fifty years later your “Free Spirit”
Roses arrive (I love the concept)
At my apartment, accompanied
By purple and orange tulips and green
Cymbidium orchids, as always on the First
Day of May, their Andean-colored cheer
Brightening up a rainy day
And warming my heart with a memory.
This morning as I drove down our street
(No April fool!) I saw a real bald eagle
Perched high up in a leafless tree,
Feathers held close in the frosty air,
Keeping his eagle eye fixed upon
The newly black surface of Brickyard Pond
So recently rid of its lid of ice.
I’m sure he was thinking it would be nice
To spot a fishy shape moving there
Or a careless robin along the shore.
At breakfast I had been pleased to see
A house finch in the blue spruce tree
Below my window, ready to hop
Back into the sheltered nest in its top-
Most branches, last year’s nestling,
No doubt on the lookout for a mate,
Thinking of making a tentative date
As soon as the sun warms up the air
To check out the housing situation
And get some eggs ready to sit on.
At last, when I had got back home,
Ready to close the garage door,
A cardinal bugled his announcement calls:
“I’m here! I’m here! Don’t come near!”
I got the message loud and clear:
Elusive spring is finally here!
(With thanks, as always, to R. Frost)
I know how Hester must have stood,
Branded with shamed ignominy,
And why she took to the woods.
Public humiliation can be hard
To take, but on the other hand,
I have found sympathetic friends
And shared my woes with them:
“I didn’t expect to see YOU here!”
“Well you can leave if you want to!”
Their laughter dissolved my embarrassment.
I now can tell myself, “Get over it!”
(3/30/14)
This morning while the sun
Shone brightly on my breakfast,
I was surprised by one
Flake of snow, then half
A dozen in a swirl,
A billowing, a crazy maze,
A blinding white, while still
The sun lit up the haze
And shortly chased away
The errant bit of storm
Back to whatever place
It had migrated from,
Leaving me to ponder
How often the unexpected
Causes one to wonder,
Warns me to be prepared.
REFLECTIONS
In my mother’s mirror with its faux
Ivory, celluloid handle and backing,
I am looking for her, and I see some
Of her and some of my father’s face.
I ask myself why it is that I,
Their only child, should have striven
Always to differ from their prescriptives,
Always to escape their vigilant directives.
Was it the sound of my mother crying
Every Saturday night and emerging late
And red-eyed on Sunday mornings?
Or was it the summer she took the car
And we drove to her friend’s cottage in Hampton
For a week on the shore before we came back
To the boy scout camp my father directed
And they stared at each other while I watched?
Or perhaps I knew at my father’s funeral
To which his handsome, never-married waterfront
Director came, why his grief was greater
Than mine and why the siblings I longed for
Had never arrived. And so I determined
That my sons would have brothers
And my daughters would have sisters,
And their parents would be truly a pair.
So much does my mother’s mirror
Show me as I look for her face
And some of the face of my father
And find at last only my own face.
(March, 2014)