Each of the following poems is a reaction to reading another poet.
Looking for Metaphor on the Beach
strewn with seaweed this morning
that’s not really like the golden rind
peeled from some exotic fruit,
and doesn’t remind me
of the trombone player in the last row
of the symphony or the one
at the crow walk with his dashing
blasts and flights and flaps,
or even of the jazz trumpeter
offering gold on the street corner.
The tide is what brought these yellow strands,
still coming in around them
with its slap and thud, its intricacy
and immensity along the shoreline
and beyond beyond.
That’s the music
that surrounds me on this morning walk,
and the sight is a man and dog
staring across the tall grass at the pond’s
edge while over them
four indistinguishable birds
sink down to the water behind them;
the season subdued to gold
and come in to roost.
strewn with seaweed this morning
that’s not really like the golden rind
peeled from some exotic fruit,
and doesn’t remind me
of the trombone player in the last row
of the symphony or the one
at the crow walk with his dashing
blasts and flights and flaps,
or even of the jazz trumpeter
offering gold on the street corner.
The tide is what brought these yellow strands,
still coming in around them
with its slap and thud, its intricacy
and immensity along the shoreline
and beyond beyond.
That’s the music
that surrounds me on this morning walk,
and the sight is a man and dog
staring across the tall grass at the pond’s
edge while over them
four indistinguishable birds
sink down to the water behind them;
the season subdued to gold
and come in to roost.
Making
Sitting at my desk while trucks pass
I’m looking for inspiration to come by.
Oh, silly word, such braying brass,
As if I’m looking for something to come down from on high.
That’s not the source, it’s in my life
And what I’ve seen and heard, and almost thought,
Mix it all up, with one of those big slotted spoons (not a knife)
And then, see what you’ve got.
It’s that big spoon that comes to mind
And the kitchen at Albion where my grandmother baked
Weekly loaves of bread and buns, and cookies of various kinds,
And pies of various kinds and blueberry cakes
From the berries we picked in the back field up Jack’s Road
Where there was a deserted house and a field grown up,
Up through our own tended fields on the tractor road,
Mixing the flour and milk and sugar and berries, two cups.
My favorite, I still make it. It reminds me of being a child
And of letting a child help stir and measure,
Seeing how totally beguiled
They are as the disparate ingredients turn into treasure,
Cookies cooling on a rack. My own particular invention
Were Mud Balls, dough rolled into the round
And then into a cocoa and sugar formulation
Wonderfully, I thought, sweetened and browned.
What did they taste like? I have no idea.
It was the making that mattered, the power
to create with my own hands the perfect sphere,
from nothing to heaven inside an hour.
Sitting at my desk while trucks pass
I’m looking for inspiration to come by.
Oh, silly word, such braying brass,
As if I’m looking for something to come down from on high.
That’s not the source, it’s in my life
And what I’ve seen and heard, and almost thought,
Mix it all up, with one of those big slotted spoons (not a knife)
And then, see what you’ve got.
It’s that big spoon that comes to mind
And the kitchen at Albion where my grandmother baked
Weekly loaves of bread and buns, and cookies of various kinds,
And pies of various kinds and blueberry cakes
From the berries we picked in the back field up Jack’s Road
Where there was a deserted house and a field grown up,
Up through our own tended fields on the tractor road,
Mixing the flour and milk and sugar and berries, two cups.
My favorite, I still make it. It reminds me of being a child
And of letting a child help stir and measure,
Seeing how totally beguiled
They are as the disparate ingredients turn into treasure,
Cookies cooling on a rack. My own particular invention
Were Mud Balls, dough rolled into the round
And then into a cocoa and sugar formulation
Wonderfully, I thought, sweetened and browned.
What did they taste like? I have no idea.
It was the making that mattered, the power
to create with my own hands the perfect sphere,
from nothing to heaven inside an hour.
Reading poets
Reading some poets I have to search
for our point of connection.
Is it what they see or how they say it?
But there are a few I read and think
no need to study this one up at all.
Just go for my morning walk with David
and with Star, or close the evening out
with the harvest moon sailing and sailed on.
And there are the others who might
walk with me, stand on that shore,
that path, in those woods, with those
connections, human and otherwise,
just stand, quietly, saying nothing.
And the poem is that silence.
Reading some poets I have to search
for our point of connection.
Is it what they see or how they say it?
But there are a few I read and think
no need to study this one up at all.
Just go for my morning walk with David
and with Star, or close the evening out
with the harvest moon sailing and sailed on.
And there are the others who might
walk with me, stand on that shore,
that path, in those woods, with those
connections, human and otherwise,
just stand, quietly, saying nothing.
And the poem is that silence.