Social Justice and Democracy Poems – Bev Tappan

RIVERWOODS POEMS: CALL TO THE COLORS

Bev Tappan — Sat, 08 Jun 2019 16:17:50 +0000

CALL TO THE COLORS

(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.

RIVERWOODS POEMS: FREAK SHOW

Bev Tappan — Fri, 29 Jun 2018 21:50:52 +0000

Why do we sit in our circus seats

Watching a shaggy yellow-haired ape

Swagger and strut his pompous stuff?

Hear all the dissonant noise he makes!

Does he mean us harm? Is that a stick

Of dynamite or is it sugar cane?

And is that a cigarette lighter

His other hand points and waves

At us? Why don’t we boo and hiss

Until they drag him off the stage?

We like to play with fire. We love

To tempt the bull, wave the red cape,

Run our outdated nuclear reactors,

Ignore the winds of a blackening hurricane.

RIVERWOODS POEMS: KING KONG

Bev Tappan — Mon, 09 Oct 2017 17:28:10 +0000

KING KONG

A killer ape is loose

On the Capitol steps.

He pounds his chest and hoots

Enigmatical threats

As yet no one dares to cage

This hysterical beast

Who seems determined to wage

Full scale war in the East.

We are mesmerized by his show

Of hyperbolic menace,

Too lacking in foresight to know

We may later do penance

When millions of lives are consumed

In nuclear blasts

And our habitat is ruined

By radiant aftermath.

RIVERWOODS POEMS: AT THE ACADEMY CONCERT

Bev Tappan — Thu, 02 Jun 2016 20:27:18 +0000

AT THE ACADEMY CONCERT

Last night we heard Beethoven’s

“War and Peace” sonata

(Or so I choose to call it):

Brief interludes of harmony

Give way to the clash of arms.

And then the “Blitzkrieg Waltz”

(Though he himself denies it):

The dimly heard Valse by Ravel

Drowned out by war’s alarums.

It seems this new generation

Of promising high school students

Does not expect peace in their time.

And those of us in our nineties

Suspect that they are right.

RIVERWOODS POEMS: THE PILLARS

Bev Tappan — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 12:02:40 +0000

THE PILLARS

(ON A PROPOSED LOBBY RENOVATION)

THE PILLARS ARE APPALLING:

SIGHT-IMPEDING,

WALK-BLOCKING,

TALK-DEFEATING,

SPACE-CONSUMING,

HOTEL-LOOKING,

STRICT AND LOOMING,

IF THERE’S ONE THING WE DON’T NEED,

IT’S THINGS THAT COME BETWEEN.

AT HOME: A GIFT OF LAND

Bev Tappan — Fri, 12 Jun 1987 20:01:00 +0000

Olof, the hale old Swede who cleared this hill,
Tossing an avalanche of fieldstones down the draw
When these tall cedar trees were bluegray berries,
Cut wagonloads of black birch to be milled
For wintergreen to oil less supple joints,
Pastured his dairy cows where we now play
At carpenter and mason after work,
Gathered snowy mounds of princess ppine
For Ingrid his wife to weave in yuletime weaths
And picking marigolds for marshy salads
Paced on glacier droppings over wetlands
He rightly guessed could be gouged to a pond,
Rode with us to scan a gravel bank
For gleanings of choice rainwashed building stones.

We asked the owner what she’d take for them.
She said she’d be obliged if we would come
And help ourselves to what were hard to move.
Rocks, being common, were as free as air.
Her mother was an Indian, said Olof
When we thanked her. Came from Signal Hill.
Her father was a white, her husband too
And only one of her six kids was Indian.
That one’s a teacher now, a real nice girl.
No Indians are left now on the reservation.
You have to be full blooded to live there.

We did not speak but thought, the town
Has finally become desegregated, then,
And Asiatic faces, warm brown skins
Have mingled with us northern Europeans.
You do not seem to mind and yet you sat
One recent evening scowling over coffee
Indignant at some legislative pup
Who dared propose that blacks should dwell near whites
If they could pay the price, dollars being green.
“They all smell bad,” you said, “and I’d not want
My daughters to get near them nor would I.
They’ll buy a house and fill it full of kith
And kin whose kids will overrun the neighborhood
And all the houses will be sold to them.”

We wonder, Olof, what you’d say if you
Were living now, twenty years later when
It begins to look as though the Reservation
Will soon outgrow the town. With government grants
The Indians have built new houses, purchased land,
Bought out a restaurant, developed a gravel mine,
And opened up a high stakes bingo hall.
Meanwhile, the blacks are still not numerous among us.
What is the difference whether the skins of neighbors
Are black or brown or white except for the guilt
That we once took their lands away from the Indians
And from their lands we took away the Africans.

FAMILY: WOMEN’S WORK

Bev Tappan — Fri, 12 Jun 1987 19:33:00 +0000

Bluebirds windchiming in the Jeffrey pines
Make background music as I hook up
From beneath the burlap white and yellow
Petals of lotus flowers. Conifers
Spread green fingers in the sun.

In Egypt, land of lotus and papyrus,
Nomadic women day to day
Weave goatskin pads they stitch
Into tent sidings, one forever
Needing replacement. But Hetup-heres,
Daughter, wife, and mother of pharoahs,

Rested slender fingers on graceful
Arms of carved and gilded chairs:
Borne above the dust by slaves
And Hatshepsut grasped the crook and flail,
Herself donning the pharoah’s beard.

In 1986 Before Christ,
A scribe advised his son, “Do not
Become a weaver. They sit all day
In the house at their looms unhappy as women.”
My daughters the engineer, the supervisor and
The shop owner are making their choices.