FEBRUARY
I remember early thaws
shirtsleeves and kites
despite lakes still frozen or half frozen
and cut-out Valentines taped to the window
my grandfather died in February one bleak year
and our very old cat followed
many decades later, all that
long ago now
I remember when we drew
our pictures of George Washington
who could not tell a lie scribbling
round red cherries in a felled tree
and the birthday of Abraham Lincoln
whose anguish carved crevices in his face
and how we gave each his day of honor
learned their stories, their lessons
I remember the ice slides my father made
pouring water over heaps of shoveled snow
one layer to the next until the slope
was smooth and slick and some years
he made a small lumpy rink as well
under the clotheslines holding idle until spring
my father with his buckets of water
making a small lumpy rink we barely used
I remember staying outside longer each day
marching high on six-foot banks until
the horizon shifted from afternoon gray
to what we called suppertime
THE VIEW AS IT IS
I won’t say it’s cluttered, though all factors overlap –
just as I won’t say it’s wanting (I can, after all, see the sky)
but it’s only a city backyard
with few inhabitants, such as
the rabbits that live mysteriously underground, such as
one monogamous pair of cardinals in all seasons
and their offspring which come and go
(as offspring do) such as
chipmunks that eat my tomatoes with wild abandon
never finishing the meal, scattering their leftovers
like yesterday’s picnic, not to mention
the broadtail hawk that swoops down now and then
just to see what is what here amidst the clutter and want
In its own way it’s a grand view
out the dark French windows handmade new to look old
the roof of my daughter’s abandoned playhouse
with its Paris Pink floorboards and curtained windows
the crooked Serbian spruce lurching skyward
and, of course, this cherry tree planted decades ago by a lonesome Southerner
now without cherries but rampant and ancient
which is what I mean by grand, the dark wood
these branches in all directions, winds now and then
the sun coming and going (as the sun does)
and as we do and the seasons and whims of light in those seasons: all vagrant as the backyard creatures who seem to disappear just when we would like them to stay
Your Kitchen Like A Poem
Because surprises abound, a drape of white fabric
crisp as a verb across the doorway
and the see-through refrigerator door
not clear but illusory and almost clear and next to that
the window out to a tangle of garden, trays of wispy seedlings
like little similes, beginnings, the new season and all
and from the ceiling your long row of hanging pots
copper and tin, old and seasoned, the subject of every line
about cooking, those pots hanging in their long row,
and three mixers standing as girls at the dance
awaiting their turn, their full flagrant moment to perform
and all this life, layered like a cake
and reading like a poem, not a taut haiku
in numbered syllables, but a rambling, raucous poem
of love and travel and the rumble of heat when the water boils and how the disorderly order of that has meaning
and ultimately begs us to read it all over again
Happy Birthday to Me
You might think the years would be a cold stone
pressing us flat to the ground
a burden of one loss after another
certainly no one is left to remember
the day I was born, except my old dad
who is very busy today and old
which truthfully does not matter so much
because the years hold their own in the oddest way,
nothing like a burden
more like tiny birds,
kinglet and nuthatch type birds,
with their knowing eyes and light touch,
with their hop hop from branch to branch
seeking something
finding, oh maybe, maybe not,
and we are the gnarly tree
that supports all that commotion,
all that seeking and finding that goes on
from one season to the next
the way you think you’re not up for it again
and then –
the miniscule heart begins to beat
and the eyes find you
and you’re lost in the life you’ve grown into
how you happened to follow this sun and not that
or let one ripping wind break you and not another,
and that’s what it means, the birds are trying to say,
find a seed and nibble it down,
then, here’s the thing, find another.
RESILIENCE
My mother’s shamrock plant lived for decades
in a painted ceramic pot hung by macramé
from a hook in the back entry
where she kept all her plants until she died
and my father’s care killed most of them
and my Uncle Charlie advised walling in
one whole side to bring down the heating bill
but blocking the kindliest light such that
only the shamrock survived
keeping company with vases of fake flowers
that women liked to give my father in those days
when he was an attractive widower
who loved to dance and putter in his own house
all by himself for the first time in eighty-some years
that sadly charmed era when my mother’s shamrock
lived on no matter what, it’s roots woven tighter
than the macramé all around it
which was all before my father had his stroke
not final like my mother’s but trouble nonetheless
and we moved him far from his home
but close to ours
in the way that well-meaning offspring do
and in the taking of this and that
from one home to the next
I rescued the shamrock
and gave it new soil in a larger clay pot with ruffled edges
placed it on an antique blue and white plate from England
and set it near a southern window where it blooms
in constant tiny white flowers amidst dark green leaves
that do what shamrock leaves are meant to do:
that is to open and close
and open again.
Found Poem 1
Xiphias Gladious
You’ve never seen
a color blue on land
like the color of a swordfish.
If you ever met a girl
with eyes the color
of a swordfish
You’d leave
whoever you were with
and go to her.
Fishing captain in Nova Scotia
Nature Conservatory Magazine
Found Poem 2
Surveying the Room of World War II Veterans
My 91-Year-Old Father Says:
They’re all old.