Man vs. nature
I woke up one morning with the expression “bumps in the road” in my head. So I designed a poem around it. This was written for a friend of mine who was getting married. The moral: You may trip up along the way, but just keep heading down the path together.
Winding through the brilliant wood,
Where lovers amble berry-fed,
Runs a narrow earthen aisle —
Irksome hurdles in its pebbled tread.
With maples tow’ring to the sky,
Lining ev’ry random crook,
It only follows that about the way,
Vie cords of interruptive root.
Along the shadowed leafy course,
O’er which the owl muses tranquil,
Slumberous stones spring coldly forth,
Commingling with unwitting ankles.
Bobbing between root and stone,
Like some angry nest a-swarming,
Tufts of grasses yellow-green,
Confuse the path without warning.
And fallen from the arms above,
Lie blackened limbs and nodeless branches,
Whose fingered webs of tangle twigs,
Outstretch before all advances.
Ah, the corridor does not exist,
Of forest floor unabated;
The trick is to accept sudden missteps,
And pursue the road nature created,
Like a set of vines forever braided.
Swimming was never one of my strengths growing up. Still isn’t.
When swimming in a pool underground,
In shallow water is where I am found,
Trying to resist, with eyes fixed,
The still and silent lure, of
The deep end coaxing me toward,
The opposite cement shore.
Saw an old photograph in a magazine of a guy sitting atop a stump in the middle of a river. There were trunks and limbs everywhere — a massive logjam. If that happened during the fall months back in the 1800s, you were out of luck until Spring.
When his back was at its broadest,
And his means were at their most modest,
He shouldered his neck of the land,
With a muley saw gripped in hand,
That shrilled lead in a tree-splitting chorus.
All autumn he labored in good employ, —
Thru the pain his bones ached to avoid; and
After the clearing had sapped all his strength,
He bucked the timber to market’s length, then
Pointed the mules to’ard the chilly St. Croix.
To the mill his kill he dutifully skid
Downstream, as it lazily slid,
But when the water became o’erwhelmed,
By the lumb’ring white pines he had felled,
He feared himself a stuck river pig.
Like brothers-in-arms, the limbs banded first,
Then leant on each other for added support,
And when reinforcements shored up the rear,
His heart filled up with heavy despair, for
The backwoods refused to march forward!
Its current now past, ‘twas a sure lock,
It would take thirty days to unblock —
Far too long at this time of year, in
The unforgiving Midwestern air;
The river beneath would soon turn to rock.
Atop a stump he paused to critique,
The nature of his calamity:
Until next April’s next faraway thaw,
He must surrender to an icy stall,
Constructed by boards and planks to be.
Sometimes, in the bleak of winter, I pine to get out of the house and abuse my body. Shoveling the driveway always does the trick.
Shoveling a driveway full of wet snow;
Nothing to do but bend, thrust, lift and throw,
Over and over and over again.
It’s a chance in the drear of winter to lose intellect,
To lose self.
No higher consciousness,
No considering.
Just muscle and fat and bone, and my heavy panting —
All in the solitude of a bitter cold
New England night.
You know the panting.
It’s the type that sounds like you’re breathing
In slow motion, with your ears plugged full —
Loud and measured and very, very natural;
A reminder that oxygen, not food or water,
Is our foremost essential sustenance.
There are other things at play, too —
Other things that make you forget your intellect.
There’s the sound of the thwap
As I toss the snow over a rising bank of white.
And the dull concussion of my leaden boots
As I tromp around slow and mindless.
And the buzzing of the power lines overhead,
That sounds like the sun baking a desolate savannah.
And then there’s the weight of the snow,
Sitting there like a lump on the end of my shovel;
So heavy, it easily crooks my back in two,
Like a fat child on the end of the seesaw.
It’s all so refreshingly mindless:
The panting.
The thwap.
The concussion.
The buzz.
The weight.
The solitude.
Nothing to do but bend, thrust, lift and throw.
Over and over and over again.
When the warmer weather finally comes,
I think I’ll head out back and dig me a hole.
Oftentimes the anticipation of an event is more memorable than the event itself. In this case, a slow-approaching summer storm. One of my first free-verse poems.
[With each minute that passes by,
The air grows heavy,
And heavier still.]
At dusk the sky is leaden overhead,
The clouds fathoms deep and rudderless,
Moving aft, beckoning;
Peering out my window,
My hands scale the screen for first dew, —
The lawn in checkered view,
Breathes with swirling leaves,
Marshaled by a brutal upcreeping wind.
To the east, the birds rally and dive,
And sing a melancholy strain, trying
To outflank the widening thunder
That barrels hollow across the sky.
Then all at once, it arrives:
A precipitation of glory!
Silent quasars release o’er yon,
Beacons of the advancing march, then
Great gouts of rain crackle the ground,
Splashing my elbows on the sill.
In the distance, an old man slogs outside
To batten the doors of his shop;
From his hand a single ray of light
Pierces the dark, and bounces
Along the mud-splattered ground.
Forget that crick in your knee. As a kid, this was how you truly knew Old Man Winter was on his last legs.
With each roll of April snow,
My statue’s head and body grow;
But tracks of green in arrears,
Coincidentally appear,
Reminding me that Spring is here.
In the dry, blistering days of summer, a farmer’s only hope is prayer. One of the best photos I’ve ever snapped with words.
His time like money wisely spent,
A farmer’s tendered one lament —
To wring his brow in the trembling air,
While his yoke unflummoxed blankly stare;
Then like his blade chevron-shaped,
Touch his hands to singly pray,
For a faraway black overcast,
To thresh him free from the chaff.
Nature
Sometimes it feels so good to just feel the breeze. When it hits you right, it seems like everything’s okay with the world. Dipped into Greek mythology for this one.
O’, long-winded Zephyrus —
Author of sweet, springtime breaths —
With a faint expansion of thy chest,
And a subtle rearing of thy neck,
Exhale and set thy billow free
Across the western skies to me;
So it might tease my flaccid hair,
Tickle the skin I have bared
(And like a good Elysian breeze),
Reprieve my earthliest of cares, —
Now, and for all taciturnity!
Inspired by Thoreau’s "A Winter and Spring Scene." Thought this style looked real easy to write. There’s even a reference to HDT in it.
Birches are bowed;
North winds do blow;
Snowdrifts do grow,
In purest Thoreau.
Bodies are chilled;
Hares do mill;
Ice sheets a-build,
O’er gasping rills.
Pond scum is froze;
Flowers do fold; lo,
The ferret knows,
Progress is slowed.
Industry is dulled;
Solitude is mulled;
Hibernations are lulled,
By spirits above,
Who evenly yield,
A quiet so real,
O’er the fields,
To peacefully heal.
A stroll through an imaginary garden, which I use here to describe a beautiful woman. I’m fairly sure this poem was triggered by the word “bespangled.” I remember seeing it in a newspaper one day (a tennis column by Bud Collins in the Boston Globe, of all places) and thinking, “I’ve got to use that somewhere.”
Lissome is my lily, who
Midst a patch bespangled with pansies,
Willows aloft the violets and whites,
Of Queen Anne’s Lace, so delightfully frilly.
* * *
Fancy is my foxglove, who
Sweet William brightly beside,
Weaves jaunt’ly from tea cart to trellis,
Whilst my heart flits airily above.
* * *
Boundless is her bloom, which
In all its Morning Glory,
Fills the bee with smothered hum,
And like the rose, the wind with perfume.
If you squint just right, a mountainside of evergreen trees, from afar, looks like a massive work of needlepoint. Try it sometime. (I love the play on words in the title.)
If the knotted trunk of a five-needled pine,
Seamlessly knits earth & sky
(Like the ornate hilt of an ancient blade
That catches the sun’s fiery cascade),
Then a mountainside of selfsame trees,
Is a more complex sylvan weave, —
A naturally sown tapestry, of
One million and one
Stitches in time.
An eloquent way of expressing a common act: skipping a stone in a pond. I used pieces of King Arthur’s tale throughout.
Of all the fair landscapes I have seen,
None compared to the one I gleaned,
When I strode upon a Somerset tarn,
And found my way through
The cinnamon fern.
A water-flea circus peppered its surface,
Which kept the trees in perfect reverse; lo,
A mirror so deep it could conjure the stare,
Of a long-legged parched,
Arthurian mare.
With a sleepless full moon still out of its bed,
A childish thought beguiled my head:
Why not present what’s clearly absent —
A phonograph of ripples
To duly ornament.
Over forth I doubled for a rock at my feet,
Smooth and light and flat as a sheet;
With a crooked elbow I sidearm flung it,
And watch it five times,
Resist its plummet!
O’er the water it skipped like a pelican’s run,
And five circles it left where once there were none;
Ever widening the cirques did slowly connect,
Like an enchanter’s steel rings
With invisible clefts.
Whom do I owe for this priv’leged rite,
Of peeping a stone in gravitational spite,
And the union of wimples laid in its wake?
Is it you fair Vivien,
M’Lady of the Lake?
My first conscious attempt to write like poet laureate Billy Collins — a rather large departure for me. Just write what you see and feel, and worry about the poetry aspect later. No muss, no fuss, very little rhyming. I found it incredibly freeing … and it kick-started an entire new catalog of works.
As I strolled past my bedroom window,
I couldn’t help but notice a
Wide band of pink off in the horizon,
Swaddling the white sky like
A felt swath might surround a fedora,
Or maybe a derby, or a top hat —
(Nevertheless, the point is that the pink
And the white quietly coalesced).
Then, as I stooped down to
Expand the view afforded me
By the window’s pane,
I spied a black, spindly web
Rising high above my neighbor’s fence
And into the upper sky.
Bare limbs and branches,
Twigs tipped with snow,
Darted in all conceivable directions
In a truly haphazard array,
Claiming ownership of all that lie beneath,
Like an open umbrella
Whose fabric had been ripped away
By a most violent gush of wind.
But this umbrella was more magnificent
Without its fabric.
In fact, it had a certain naked elegance,
A skeletal elegance, to be exact —
Or, maybe a “skelegance,”
If you’ll allow me a little latitude.
Yes, the trees displayed a definite skelegance.
(I like the sound of that, I do.)
But now, just moments
after I stopped to peer,
The pink band in the sky …
Why, it up and disappeared!
It was the very thing that attracted me to
The window in the first place, yet
I hardly noticed its freefall
Below my neighbor’s fence.
Perhaps I was too busy staring up
At the treetop silhouette,
Inventing the word skelegance.
A tribute to the orange tree. I found it ironic that a tree that bears such sweet fruit is known to have the hardest wood.
Hail to thee, orange tree,
Unflapping in the Florid’ wind;
Thy trunk of stone the envy of,
Locust to persimmon.
From thy meat man has hewn,
Railway ties that bind,
And flexile bows tautly drawn,
By Chickasaws with closed eye.
Yet this wood petrified,
Is bearer of a pleasing brood,
When whitish, waxy flowers,
Mature on leafy shoots
And summer rays incubate,
Fragrant bulbs of citrus wine —
Navel flesh and pulpy blood,
Sweet until the bitter rind.
My friend Kenny and I were hanging out one gray December day and the snow started to fall — first snow of the year. For some reason, it stopped us both dead in our tracks as we peered out the window. All we could do was stare in awe ... we were imprisoned by the sight.
From the higher regions it falls,
A lazy flurry of icy fleece.
Forseen with bated wintry breath,
And leaping hearts —
Feathery is the offering on its maiden voyage.
* * *
Like a refreshing shower from a puffy otherworld,
Full of soft, fancy flakes;
Drifting, it heaps against the bare and forgotten,
A punctured pillow —
That colors the world cott’ny white.
* * *
A cleansing squall circling the upper air.
All’s calmed upon its arresting descent,
Whirling, it sheets the slate-grey sky entire,
Shackling the eye —
Then … breathless … we peacefully surrender.
Objects
On the morning of my sister’s wedding, my brother, mother and I watched a fleet of hot-air balloons ascend over Napa Valley. I remember thinking, “If only I had a camera.” This will have to do.
From the half-light inside the dell,
And Napa’s early morning chill,
Dirigibles with wicker rims,
O’ershadowed by quilted Harlequin,
Enter the thick, obscuring mist
As fumarolic pillows
Flecked with amethyst.
Then like celestial orbs off course
From their accustomed universe,
Above the fogbank they protrude —
Darkened by the altitude.
Still the expanding helium,
Uplifts them to the upper wind,
Where higher yet they ascend …
Floating,
Floating,
Till on the ground a child’s thumb,
Can full eclipse all but the sun.
There’s nothing quite like blueberry pancakes on a Sunday morning. The expression “mountain caviar” actually came to me in a dream.
Two pours of batter,
tipped by a steady hand,
round into perfect plump circles,
yet still they demand
a fistful of hand-picked,
mountain caviar —
tiny black dots scooped and sprinkled,
from six inches afar.
I was flipping through the dictionary one night, through the P’s, and I saw a picture of a “lacquered paper parasol” in the left-hand margin. I thought it really rolled off the tongue nicely. Presto! "Overarching Beauty" was born.
Never did I imagine,
An object that could enthrall,
Like the keeper of the inn’s,
Lacquered paper parasol.
With intersecting lines,
And subtle traceries,
‘Twas more a Gothic window,
Than human canopy!
Yet when the sun came beating,
Its rays were still displaced, by
The overarching beauty,
Composed upon its face.
Oh, and when she twirled it,
When she flickt her supple wrist,
Could a more hypnotic top,
In the world ever exist?—
A kaleidoscope of colors,
In symmetrical design,
Revolved with blazing speed,
Above her dainty glide.
Absolutely love this title … but it just as easily could’ve been called, “Ode to the Signmaker.” It’s a tribute to the artists we all appreciate on a daily basis.
The art that I appreciate on a daily basis
isn’t found in a museum or painted on a cathedral wall.
It doesn’t come from the hand of Cezanne.
It isn’t a cloudless night immortalized by Van Gogh.
And it most certainly isn’t a monstrous Italian fresco,
paying homage to some 12th century recluse.
Nope, the art that I appreciate on a daily basis
is far more mundane, and its maker far more boring.
He doesn’t live a hermit’s life.
He’s not repulsed by the sins of rampant vice.
And his confidence doesn’t sag
when inspiration fails to swing by for tea.
He is the signmaker: King of Digits, Lord of Letters.
And his art is the roadside marker tipped in royal blue,
announcing the presence of a stuccoed insurance building.
My favorite is a bright white sign at 76 State Street.
The numbers are so full of life, so regal.
The seven’s post, strappingly tall,
angles ever-so-slightly and broadens at the bottom
to provide a more dependable base
for its top-heavy, unbalanced brim.
And the six, undeniably female,
with all her curves and loops,
swoops back around deep into herself, then
tries to brush her backside against the
object of her affection, pining for a little love.
But the seven just looks stoically away,
shunning her advances.
Of course, he’s no fool: His act only ensures
the flirtation will continue long into the night,
long after all the headlights have whizzed by.
To this day, every time I drive by that sign —
and it must be going on two hundred times now —
I still look at those two,
still playing their games on their polyvinyl chloride canvas,
and wonder if the signmaker knows he
created something far more emotional to me
than a giant monk on a wall.
Back in 1987, I entered the annual poetry contest at Merrimack College … first prize: $50. I had no interest in poetry, but I needed the money, so I wrote this poem. While my motives weren’t pure, my strategy was a success. (Think I spent the $50 on a couple of KISS albums.)
I want a white shirt,
Baggy,
With buttons down the front.
Pinched at the waist,
It casts off shadows,
Into a natural splendor of impossible angles.
I want a white shirt,
Clean,
With an upright collar hidden by hair.
Illuminating in the light,
It smells like a rose,
Picked by a girl in May.
It takes X-ray eyes
To find a real white shirt
In this world of designer clothes.
