Asides

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.

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.

THE SQUAMSCOTT BIRCH

Barrel chested and brawny armed,

The aged birch still stands

Incongruous on the riverbank.

They have fenced it in

With posts and a metal chain

To ward off scrambling kids.

How many years did it take

To put out all those limbs,

One torn off by lightning

Or by wind: the scar remains.

It’s younger than the pines

That sheltered shell diggers,

But did it watch the big-sailed

Gundalows barging bricks?

It could not in its salad days

Arrow skyward slimly straight

But branched and branched again

For what was near at hand.

Hugely ugly, it calls

Out to me.  It haunts my

Memory.  It’s begging to be

Made into a poem.