Category: Riverwoods Poems

MELTDOWN

This morning we woke to a black and white world:

Cars and rooftops, walks and road

Frosted in white.  Every deciduous

Twig and branch, every needled bough

Of pine and hemlock coated in snow

Which the sunset last night gave a rosy glow.

Midmorning the drops began to fall.

Drooping pines again stood tall.

Our windows were streaked with watery streams.

Sunstruck icicles softened and gleamed.

By noon the parking lot was bare.

Winter was retreating here.

We can’t yet call it an early spring:

Let’s see what next week’s weather will bring.

THE WINTER THAT WASN’T

On February first the wind

Leapt up in my face and opened

My jacket, which I did not mind

So balmy and soft was the air.

It felt like the first day of March

Roaring in, dissolving the snow,

Summoning vultures whose harsh

Cries raised my eyes to the sky.

And so they continue, these warm

Days with cold nights which cause

Our maple tree owners alarm

Lest their syrup season founder.

Behind us the two warmest years

On record and now a foreshortened

Winter: it surely appears

Our New England climate has altered.

Moon Memories

How many moons did we gaze at

From that first one in Craftsbury’s skies

That shone on the cross-country ski trails,

Showed the love light in your eyes:

On the banks of the Allagash River,

At our tent in the Everglades,

In the Lake Huron island campsite

Where our food bag was rifled by bears,

At a midsummer fest in Denmark,

In Aruba’s phosphorescent sea

And Saint John’s coral reefs.

Tonight when I looked at the moon

I yearned for the days that are gone.

TREES

In years past I’ve laid my hand

On many a smooth-barked tree

On many a mountain trail

And looked up to shallow-rooted

Pines standing stately and tall.

Like Rob Frost I’ve envied the birches

That bend under burdens of snow

In graceful compliant submission,

Then rise up again in the spring

To shake their new leaves in the sun.

Now it’s limb-lopped but upright

Old skeletal trees that I notice

On country roads or in paintings,

Woodpecker raddled and ravaged

By age that I chiefly admire.

Our Last Adventure

We took the icebreaker out of St. John

With her Russian crew and Canadian chefs

To explore the rocky coast of Labrador

And mingle with the friendly Inuits.

In Just spring on the tundra in late July

The alpine meadows were in full flower.

Polar bears were easy to spy

And black bears lolling on grassy shores.

We bounced on kodiaks into the shallows.

Our guides carried rifles and went ahead.

This far north there were no more roads:

Villagers kayaked by sea instead.

Mission churches, schools, meeting houses,

Doctor Grenfell’s famous clinic,

Hopes for renewable tidal power,

Gemstones and carvings in the markets,

You with your daughter, still able to hike,

Relishing views from the sea-sprayed deck:

I cherish these pictures in my mind

Years after our Inuit plane flew us back.

FALLING LEAVES

They lift and pirouette in the pulsing breeze,

These brown and desiccated maple leaves,

Dancing and leaping and twisting, a phantom crowd,

Surrounding me and my car in a thickening cloud.

They seem to have some message they want to convey;

They seem to want me to stop while they have their say.

I will slow my pace but I will not come to a halt,

Whatever these autumn messengers foretell.

Bare branches offer an unimpeded view

Allowing the splendor of sunsets to come through.

Snow-dusted branches also have their charm:

Who strides on snowshoes easily keeps warm.

At any time of the year I’ll keep journeying.

The day has not yet come for tamely sitting.

THE ECLIPSE

Three oldsters sit on a wall to watch

The super moon’s eclipse, a sight

They will not live to see again.

The stars shine faint in the ebony night

As a shadow darkens the moon’s left rim.

This moon that bathes our faces with light

And spotlights the jet plane streaking west

In olden times would have filled with fright

Our primitive ancestors’ childish hearts.

A monstrous mouth they would have thought

Was eating their beacon amidst the gloom.

It is not without some dread we watch

The red cloak spread across the moon.

When barely a sliver of silver shows

We rise and repair to our separate quarters.

The next night we welcome the cheering glow

Of an only slightly diminished goddess

Who yet protects us from the dark.

SEPTEMBER MORNING ON THE EXETER

In the river today the trees

Mirror themselves.  As we paddle

Our kayaks we see double:

Two trunks, two thatches of branches,

Two patches of reeds, two blossoms

Of pickerel weed, two bushes

Of orange-bespotted jewelweed,

Two bare and barren wood-peckered

Skeletal hulks with bony limbs.

From the dark woods a hoot owl

Invites us to come on in, come on in.

Bluejays flit across our bows.

Wild ducks practice flight patterns.

The heron is no longer present.

STARTING FROM SCRATCH

Bits and pieces, odds and ends,

The Found Art sculptor rescues them

From long discarded bowling pins

Or Chinese combs or beaded etuis.

Just so from stardust, we are told,

From random protons and electrons,

Were fashioned creatures new and old

As chance and whimsy brought them forward 

Jigsaw puzzles, each of us,

Put together by Found Art,

Disassembled for new purpose,

Recreated part by part.

THERE IS A TIDE

The tide was high when we put in

At Chapman’s Landing halfway down

The Squamscott, and there was no wind.

We thought the fisherman’s advice was sound

To head downstream toward the Great Bay

So when the tide began to ebb

We’d be assisted on our way.

We watched the heron overhead,

Admired the osprey nest on shore

And came in sight of the railroad bridge

Through which the current was moving more

Forcefully on its leading edge.

While turning around to look behind

One paddler broadsided the flow

And we were suddenly shocked to find

That she was swimming outside her boat,

Her kayak firmly pinned in place

Against two randomly rooted posts,

Nailed by the current’s relentless pace,

Weighed down by the water’s steady flow.

Then it was that we recognized

What tidal power held  us fast,

That there would be no compromise

Until we reached the sea at last.