Poems from 2001
EPIPHANY
Veiled by thickly falling snow,
Winter robins come and go.
From my window I can see
Them flocking in the tall pear tree.
Startled by the passing plow,
Scattering in a frantic cloud,
Flitting, fluttering, never still,
They seldom pause to eat their fill.
Off the roof a sudden gust
Convinces them they’ve had enough.
I wish them luck, I wish, “God Speed!”
I hope they find sustaining seed.
I’m glad I’ve had this chance to know
Winter robins in the snow.
(January 2, 2014)
NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION
I have to learn to sleep alone.
With fleece sheets to keep me warm,
Burrowing into my memory foam ,
I do my best to sleep alone.
Curled around his broader form
I felt his heart beat like my own.
Now I must learn to sleep alone.
For all the lonely nights to come
We must be two: I must be one.
I have to learn to sleep alone.
(January 1, 2014)
THE LAST OF THE PEARS
The basket of pears you sent
From Harry and David arrived
On time on Christmas Eve.
They’d tissued each perfect pear
In festive and seasonal green,
Beribboned and bedecked,
But not yet ripe. Each day
I nuked a pair in raw sugar
And rum, and they were tasty.
However, on New Year’s Eve
The last of the pears called out to me,
Blushing and chilling in the fridge.
It yielded softly to the knife.
Sweeter than sugar and more
Intoxicating than rum, the juice
Ran down my chin, and I thought,
“What better way for an old year
To end or for a new year to begin.”
12/31/2013
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.
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.
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.
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)
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
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)
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.
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.