Poems

Pears Sweet

Ripened on the branch till

They fell of their own weight

Lay in the grass like horns like

Yellow commas

Full of juice

Insects cratered

Their opulence

They couched in the sun-warm grass

Of another year passed

I take three for lunch

With a peanut butter sandwich

Startling after morning class

To open my desk

To a rush of fragrance

Returning orchard, grass, blue

Sky with crow

Winging west - and the juice

Makes sticky stains

On student papers

Woman on the Number 4

Sits between me and the conductor's locked booth, the short seat

Her ham against mine

Comforting as a warm cat

Dark blue raincoat, dark unpatterned dress

Black laced shoes

She leans away

Shoulder against the booth

Asleep

Right hand open in her lap

A pale supplication

Cast upon the dark coat

Is she a Survivor's child so careless on

This train to the Bronx

Sleep untroubled by rumbling transports to the East

Pale poppies nodding in smoke

I hear her breath calmly coming and going and think

Another time, another place

She leans like a slumbering tree

Against another in the forest

Flesh unbound warming mine

Mouth half open, without vanity or thought

Strand of dark hair across the cheek

An ordinary woman, middle aged, weary

No Anne Frank

Wakes to get off

No Angel of Death on the platform at Yankee Stadium

White glove gesturing left

Another time, I think, another place

Black Crow

lands

flicks wings

walks on the white snow

I’m

used to miniatures: chickadee

junco, titmouse

on the birdfeeder

Crow

is huge

pads the seed-scattered

snow beneath the feeder

jabs black sword

into the white cake

gobbles it all

hungry to come near the house

Three cautious brothers

bob in the maple

Ten degrees for a week

half a foot of frosting

Hard-glazed

covers the cake of earth

Inside I watch feeling

the woodstove’s hot hand on thigh backs

Crow flips and pads, stabs

alert for instant flight

I buy time in the warm kitchen

he lives in it out there

Who’s to say my advantage

is an advantage

that comfort

isn’t cold

Rainy Day

And leaves of the ginkgo

Fall

Accumulate on roof and hood

Like golden snow

Years go into a single poem

Look at the grey in my beard

Everything

Has a beginning and end

This ginkgo before the music

School

My daughter inside

Cello singing the old

Songs of Bach

The yellow leaves of ginkgo

Fall

Gather like snow

Snow will fall

Like winter leaves of ginkgo

She comes out under the trees

Cello on her back like a turtle shell

So, she says, dad, whatcha been doin?

I hand her the tiny golden fan

Remember last year, I say, how they

Fell?

She nods, dropping the leaf as we walk

It was like snow

This Afternoon we were Alive for a While

This afternoon we were alive

For a while

Glasses of wine at an outdoor cafe

Corner of 1st and 10th

The sun fluttering through translucent leaves

You said, “I like living here

The people when you see them

So amazing”

And I remembered a Walt Whitman line

You can have your Nature I’ll

Take the teeming multitudes

We had just stopped for a glass of wine

But stayed for three and oysters, olives

A delicious pasta because

It felt so good

To be alive again

If We'd Stayed

The cabin where we lived

I passed it toward evening

And remembered our life together

50 years ago

It had been everything, everything there was

Just as this moment I’m writing in

And I saw us clearly, remembered

As it had been

And thought if we’d stayed

Put roots down and stayed

We’d be there still

The cabin was there

(Oh, a second story added)

But still the brook ran below

The road went up the mountain

And if I knocked on the door

You would answer, an old woman

And over your shoulder I’d be

Putting a chunk of wood into the iron stove

The Invitation

A late October evening

Mild and calm

From where I stand

The sea looks almost flat

Waves come in in leisurely lines

Rising in glassine curls and falling

Spreading in white sheets up the strand

Seals are rolling on the crests

Black bodies reflecting the hazy moon

Twisting and vanishing

as the waves break shoreward

I walk barefoot

The warm sea covering and uncovering my feet

Watch them as they play

Rolling up on a wave

And sinking away

Cross the threshold

Naming nothing

Nor speaking

Toward the life that calls you

Moon Of Manhatta

November

Hazy moon above Stuyvesant Street

Steeple of Saint Marks

The big apartment building on Second blocking the view

Damp smells of late autumn

Not quite definable

Leaves and wax and attics

Walking home with the crowd after 6

Toward that glass of scotch

Easy chair like a catcher’s mitt

Ploof

But for a moment standing

Waiting for the light

And then the moon

Hanging pale in the haze

Stuyvesant like an arm reaching out

Oh moon of Manahatta

For me

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