D.C. in the I.C.U.

 Mother Nature is a bitch,

the kind that gently tongues each little pup all over,

like an overextended lover,

then eats the one or two

she thinks can’t make it through.

Here’s the rant.  It’s over young ideas

of how things should have gone.

Instead, it was the scalpel seams,

breathing machines,

and intake-output plastic hoses

in and out of noses

and other places no one naturally goes,

each smeared with iodine, sewn with a tight stitch,

and wires attached to everything between.

 

(All this had us pretty fried.

because, of course, you could have died.)

 

Natural nature isn’t fair.

trying to snatch you anywhere

else but here and now but for

some ambulance and heliport,

parades of people, including wife,

calling you back each day to life,

interstating back and forth

far south from even farther north.

 

Lines of people who couldn’t get in

betting on whether you’d lose or win

a home place sitting empty, warm

and helpers shoveling after the storm

and chickens laying a lonesome egg

(sometimes two, but who’s to beg

for more when all the hens know something’s off?)

and cat that hides then sneaks and stuffs

herself too full without enough

games to keep her occupied.

 

(Then there came that stretched and silly smile--

that photo of you sent round just in time.)

 

Mama Natura beat you up a bit

and you lay there and took the hit

smirking as if to advertise

you had ‘er by her velvet tongue

and with unnatural assistance,

proved it’s more about the persistence

humans use confronting dung--

collecting it to fertilize our paradise.

Everything is artifice, my friend,

as we persist from end to end.

 

                    31 December 2020

 

Tell the old year now to go, saying

do not leave like tired men, dragging, playing

hooky with the clock, late and swaying

like drunks without desire or will.

 

Instead insist, make time

deliberate, strain against the uphill climb,

match the pace, ignoring pantomime

of cold runners hoping for spring.

 

Know the shock

Moses had, watching the sea unlock

for him and all his friends, then close and block

the way for deadheads in pursuit. Go slow:

 

one icicle at a time, old snow melting from the edge,

bare feet retreating foreward from the ledge.

Housecleaning

Old hairs tangled in the comb
gather in the hand.
The vacuum cleaner bristling
like a combine sucks
other broken fibers from my home.
Across the room the TV gnome
explodes: teeth too sharp
skin enameled, lips like gaskets--
scrubbed but
dirty underneath and spitting foam.


The floor has been soaked
with piss of a million long-dead dogs
unhousebroken, scrapping at the doors
to be let out.
So has it always been,
but these shed hairs of mine
won’t end up in an orange bag
dug up behind some grandkid’s home.
They're headed for compost
straight from the comb.

Does of Dawn

             (for Annie, 1921 - 2015)

“They slip through my doorway in darkness," she says,

"and they hide in my closet until I am dead

to the world, when they enter my dreams

wearing my clothes and the clothes of him

who is gone.  I  know they are coming.”

She waits by the back door in dawn-light with fruit

in a bowl and her fingers screwed into apple

skin and flesh puckered as her own,

agents of forces now weak as her sight.

“They visit as night ends and will come again.”

An apple she rolls out the doorway to bushes

in shadows of tree-trunks convulsing and bare

in the squall whipping, stripping each branch.

Another apple she rolls and another.

She’s emptied her bowl, but the deer have not come.

Then one doe en pointe with nose in the air,

smooth and slim like a girl on parade

but careful, the time being what it is

and her senses flustered, all blown numb

in the chaos of wind. She tiptoes.

Another young doe, another, another

dance into the light, mouthing the apples

with velvet lips, shedding tidbits

apple to apple until there are none.

The does have come, and the does have gone.

“They return when the buck comes along,

randy old boy courting his gals

with handsome neck and a rack of points

too many to count or remember," she says.

"He'll come by light of the winter moon.”

And he does, the stag, scarred and proud

as ancient oaks still dropping seed

though branches crumble and fall to the ground

like naked bones of those who are gone.

Around him in shadows, does of the dawn.

Asleep then, she sees them.  They come to her bed,

soft noses uplift her, princess and queen,

in the fullness of time by the light of the moon.

They carry her naked now among them,

the stag and his ladies, does of the dawn.

May There Be No Sadness Here

        (remembering Lois Alger)

May there be no sadness here.

An empty cup, an empty space,

Box of Many Connectors ( a love poem)

The single driver dropping his tackle box

never saw it bounce out from the pickup

he careened in, quick along the interstate

Sapphics for Emily D.

Cochineal and black like forbidden starched lace

Grandmother

                             I.

She came to visit as she died

Our Simple Rhyme

(for Jane, since 1966)

I am Mary,

you are Jane,

Ring a Ring o’ Rosies

(for twenty Newtown children, gunned)

no starry light dilutes the night

Joyce Mary Horner

(1903 – 1980)

Professor of English

 Mount Holyoke College

She twitted Chaucer like a little bird

Elegy

for Christine Severson (1968 – 2011)

It was all bold joke, you know:

Catch and Release

I will let you go my fish,

Motorcycle Man

                                                            Kneeling in my soft dirt,

These Mittens Are So You

(for Beth, whose hands are cold right now)

These mittens are so you:

the pattern of white pickets

What Teachers Know and Do

(for Andrea, 2002)

can’t be rightly defined

Three Lessons

for JFP

as She Leaves Vermont

for Vassar College

I.                    The Lesson of Frankie Wagtail

That stunted billy goat

How Mountains Make Women

For Daniel Webster, who said, "Up in the Mountains of New Hampshire God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men."
 

The men who named these mountains called them men.