Bev Tappan

Category: Riverwoods Poems

Poems from 2001

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: HOW SOON WE FORGET

    HOW SOON WE FORGET

    Rising at dawn to join the long

    Check-in lines, lost baggage,

    Missed connections, luggage

    Seized by porters speaking

    In foreign tongues, on-board

    Plastic snacks, and on arrival

    Montezuma’s upsetting revenge,

    Altitude headaches, the swing

    And sway of undulating waves

    As we lie in our bunks, unsoothed

    By the whining winch and the engine’s drone.

    On shore the cobbled streets

    And unexpected steps slick

    With rain, lintels too low

    To duck and then the cough

    Bestowed by our plane’s tainted

    Air.  All these blessings we vow

    Never to risk again, But then

    The brochures beckon and wea

    Recall the friendships, sunrise

    On seastacks, sunsets on glacial

    Peaks, discovery’s shock of surprise,

    Eye-opening, mind-waking and

    We begin to plan again.

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: THE CUP

    The loons call out to me, circling below the rim

    (As only loons can swim, proudly and gracefully)

    At the top of the Leishman cup.  I hear their querulous cry

    As I raise the cup to my expectant and willing lips,

    On the perfectly tapered rim from which no drop will fall

    As the curving handle will softly cushion my thumb.

    So does the Potter mold a marriage of utility

    With art in quiet harmony: the clay then turns to gold.

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: ADVICE TO A YOUNG POET

    ADVICE TO A YOUNG POET

    Sarah, I was pleased to meet your snowman. 

    He reminded me of others I have known

    And other precious moments with grandparents

    Or play with childhood friends who’ve long been gone.

     

    We’re riding high speed trains into the future.

    We know we want these memories to last.

    But snapping blurry pictures can be futile.

    A poem can be a postcard from the past.

     

    So if and when your train stops at a station,

    Put down your I phone, take a good long look.

    Breathe in the scene, then write an encryptation

    To be decoded in your memory book.

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: LAST WORDS

    LAST WORDS

    (from Dr. Ira Byock’s book, “The Four Things That Matter Most”)

    “Please forgive me.  I forgive you.

    Thank you.  I love you.”

    “The end of life makes Bhuddists of us all.”

    We once approached St. Peter’s gate

    In fear and trepidation:

    Would he let us in?

    Or sought the Holy Church’s blessing

    The Open Sesame

    To Heaven’s bliss,

    Or carried coin to hire Charon

    To ferry us across

    The River Styx.

    But now we can elect the manner

    Of our dying

    If not the moment,

    And we can tell our loved ones

    That we loved them

    The best we could,

    And they in turn can tell us if

    For all our failings,

    We did some good.

    (RiverWoods, November, 2013)

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: SPACE LITTER

    SPACE LITTER

    (This morning on PBS I  heard that the Kepler telescope has recorded pictures of billions of earth-like planets)

    The Kepler telescope reveals

    To our horizon-seeking eyes

    A multitude of habitable earths.

    So we outcasts from Eden

    May leave behind our trashed

    And plundered planet

    Without a backward glance,

    Set out for new frontiers

    As spaceship pioneers

    Ready to sow invasive seeds

    Across an expanding universe,

    Unless we find pollution worse

    Than ours preceded us:

    A trail of uninhabitable husks.

    November 2013

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: THANKS

    THANKS FOR BEING YOU

    You were my Dear One,

    You rang my chimes.

    We had adventures.

    We had good times.

    No harvest moon

    Outshines your smile.

    We journeyed widely.

    We danced the miles.

    Rivers we paddled,

    Mountains we climbed

    Shine in my memories,

    Pleasure my mind.

    No better companion

    Has brightened my way.

    You lit my candle.

    You made my day.

    (RiverWoods, October 2013)

     

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: A SNAPSHOT

    A SNAPSHOT IN TIME

    From the bend of the river

    We look back at town,

    Our eyes first drawn

    To the fall-colored copse

    Of maples and oaks

    Beyond the boathouse

    Of the post-colonial

    Academy and below

    The cupolas of the

    Briefly colonial capitol’s

    Church and town hall.

    Across the tumbling outflow

    From the crumbling Great Dam

    Rise mustard-colored walls

    Of once-dockside warehouses

    A mill run apart from

    The towering smokestacks

    Of one-time mills.   And

    Then a fluttering flag

    Marks the brick powder house

    Whose contents were fired

    At the Battle of Bunker Hill.

    So much we see as we

    Look back before we

    Turn to go down the river.

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: WINTER

    WINTER MAGIC

    Every year we fall for it again:

    The first white flakes, ski tracks on

    Virgin snow, the new moon shine

    On ice-encrusted lakes, rime-

    Frosted lawns and shivery dawns,

    Wassail and holly and Good Saint Nick.

    We never learn that it is all a trick,

    A sleight of the Great Magician’s hand

    To hide from sight the blasted rose,

    The bony skeletons of leafless trees,

    Their piles of wilted, sere and crumbling leaves,

    Until the last soot-blackened snow patch goes.

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: OCTOBER SONNET

    OCTOBER SONNET

    Here in my 87th fall, the tree

    That I admire most of all is that

    Tall maple which is verdant still

    But flaming at the top.   its crowning

    Glory gives a last exultant shout,

    A last exuberant glowing out

    Before its embers lose their fire:

    That is the tree I most admire.  But

    Since I cannot be a tree or emulate

    Its majesty, my only role must be

    To celebrate and drink a toast to constancy.

    So here’s to beauty, here’s to reaching out

    While standing still, here’s to blooming

    In one’s place, here’s to saying yes to fate.

    (October, 2013)

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: BLACK SWANS

    BLACK SWANS

    (A black swan is said to be an event we did not foresee, contrary to predictions)

    We used to think another Hiroshima

    Would be our end.  But we were wrong.

    We did not see the black swans coming

    Round the bend: another Fukishima

    Sowing seeds of deadly radiation,

    Parched forests torched by lightning

    Reducing us to ashes in the wind,

    The choking sands of multiplying dustbowls,

    The dying oceans rising to our doors.

    Like lemmings we have teemed and overbred

    And now are streaming headlong for the edge

    Unless another black swan should arrive:

    A mini ice age take us by surprise,,

    Leaving a remnant to begin again.

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: A PAUSE BY A POND

    A PAUSE BY A POND

    We stop to sit awhile beside

    Our pond, the asters to admire

    (The royal purple, not the white)

    And note the scarlet-turning sumac,

    Hoping we may hear the flap

    Of slow-descending heron wings

    Or hasty mallard putting on the brakes

    And ruffling up the water, though

    We know our watering hole’s too small,

    And yearly getting smaller, to attract

    A southbound flyer not at all

    Deluded by our wooden replicas.

    At least we may sight the shifting V’s

    And hear the goodbye calls of geese.

    The fall migration’s underway

    And only we must opt to stay.

  • RIVERWOODS POEMS: BUYER BEWARE

    BUYER BEWARE

    I marvel how the trunks of dead and dying trees

    Are garlanded in fall with poison ivy leaves

    Gladdening the eye and asking to be gathered

    To deck a table for a feast in autumn.

    As coral snakes beguile like harmless cousins,

    Just so were ancient reefs adorned with sirens,

    Caskets with resurrection lilies beautified,

    And cereals with powdered sugar iced,

    And no-down-payment mortgages entice.

    Glittering like gold is worthless pyrite.

    Caveat emptor still is good advice.