Category / Poetry

by John

Breakfast In New Hampshire

A multiple exposure Christmas photograph I took during a 1960 visit to my grandparents’ home in Concord, NH

Childhood memories
still linger
as family ghosts
at two-seventy-six North Main
where, in the dark half light
of winter’s morning,
a sound awakes me.
Is it the snapping crack
of ice-encrusted elms
or rattle of storm windows
in the wind
or just the creaking floorboards 
as my grandmother descends
the dark back stairs
into the cold kitchen?
I listen carefully now
and hear the poker-prodding sounds
of wood shifting on the andirons
as she stokes last night’s embers
into hopeful flickers
in the old colonial hearth.
The smell of coffee
draws me down,
the first awake,
to join her in the warming kitchen,
my place set with fresh toast,
and with her
catch the sunrise over snow
in this our special time.

by John

Of Mules and Music

Saturday mornings as a kid

I saw him sitting on the sidewalk

in front of Woolworths

with his wind-up record player.

He had no arms.


Today, Moroccan “mule ladies” strain

under loads lashed to their backs

at the barbed wire fence

that separates Europe’s wealth

from Africa’s despair.


He had no arms, but it was amazing

what he could do with his feet and toes.

We watched with fascination

not understanding why mother whispered

‘move on’.


The bundles on their backs

are as big as washing machines

though this they do not know

never having had one

in their five-dollar-a-day world.


He would take a record

his ring toe and his pinky

and place it on the turntable

while with the other foot

he would crank the handle.


“Yes, the bundles they are heavy,

heavier than each woman, 

but to close the border

would leave them destitute.” 

So said the official from Melilla, Spain.


Then he would gently move the arm

with his first toe and the second,

softly settling the needle in the groove,

and the record rasped

as if clearing its throat before the song.


 

They carry the pain of the world,

bending under its weight

because they have to live. 

And the tears of the white man

are as dry as desert dust.


And the music floated from the gramophone:

Sammy Kaye singing Harbor Lights,

and I nearly wept,

not for the person with no arms,

but for the music, and myself.

by John

Red Tomato

I can say only what I saw:

A migrant, black, dust-laden,

With a basket in the store.

He’d picked out bread

Then looked at the tomatoes

Ripe, plump and red.

He didn’t take the freshest

From the stack, but reached

Behind the juiciest to the back

For the tomato with a blemish,

A spot of rot where once

A splinter in the wooden box

Had snagged its silk smooth skin.

He turned it over in his hand,

Squeezing gently, then placed it

In his basket with the bread


I watched him at the counter

When his turn came round.

Pointing to the tomato,

As if it were a treasure found,

He asked, “How much?”

The cashier set it on a scale.

“43 cents,” she said, “on sale.”

The laborer checked his change,

Shook his head and mumbled

He’d just take the bread.

I saw him leave the store

With only half-a-loaf

And watched the red tomato

As it was tossed into the trash.

by John

Among the Trees

In the style of Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees
especially the acacia and mesquite,
the cottonwood and willow,
in the bosque beside the desert wash,
silently welcomed home –
a family member after a long absence,
shedding the fictions of my other self,
the painfully sustained deceit…
It has been so long, though only yesterday:
Home again with these old friends,
sharing their breathing space,
standing in the intensity of the moment
beside the softly bending winter grass
under the welcoming arms
of gnarled old branches that reach out
in a gesture of embrace.
Words take flight like the startled hawk
flycatcher, finch, or sparrow,
alarmed at my footfall,
who flutter away leaving a silence
where the giant granite boulder lies,
unmoved for a hundred years or more
since tumbling down the mountainside
to settle in among the agave and saguaro
for me to lean on, rooted as we are
in this place.

by John

Confucian Poets Never Knew

 

 

Confucian poets

never knew the

gentle jacaranda

never basked

in the amethyst shade

of its springtime

branches

never sang of its

fragrant blossoms

soft as mulberry silk

floating in the breeze

never tried to capture

its illusive hue                                    

purple gently poised               

somewhere between               

violet and magenta                             

not quite blue.

by John

You Should Sit Under A Jacaranda

You should sit
under a jacaranda tree
in late spring
when dappled light
dances on bare arms
and the violet mantilla
draped loosely overhead
ripples softly in the breeze
shaking off spent blossoms
that float down
covering the earth
in a miracle sprinkling 
like spring-time snow             
indigo-tinged flakes
bathed in hues of twilight blue
flowers even as they die
holding us in their clasp
pungent as damp moss
and sweetly fragrant
sweet as honey from the bees
that in the lattice lace overhead
still buzz vibrato
their universal hum.
In this place where you sit
suspended between effulgence and decay
patiently between birth and death
there is for this moment
no space for fear regret or pain