A Poem Vines

I wrote this when I was teaching at the Darrow School in New Lebanon, New York. Under thirty and new to the classroom, I had a lot of enthusiasm and quite a few reservations. This shape poem expresses some of them.

Lake View: A Poem About Growing Old

I once overheard a conversation about people killing trees to get a better view of the water from their summer houses. I once spent a perfect weekend on Squam Lake. I saw loons and thought of Thoreau. I am not an old person, but some day I will be old.

 

Lake View

 

There is a town ordinance against cutting

down trees, so the locals drive metal spikes

into the heartwood and let time work,

 

let slow poison leech into fragile memory

through rings and snowdrifts and windstorms back

to when winter thaws brought a kind of hope

 

and cold snaps drew privates tight with fear,

a delirious icy fear that limbs

would fail and this one would be the last.

 

The gods stared down jealous then. Who

could be so alive, so vibrant with hidden life, so

bold with the power of supple wood?

 

But arms become weary and branches

drop. The lake grows and the mind addles.

We are an ancient relative always in the way,

 

means well, but sighs and trembles, forgets where

he is supposed to be and has stopped searching

for the pain, that searing in the lower back

 

that radiates through a body like hot iron

and is forgotten as a pair of loons

glide slowly across the cold grey water.

Land and Sea: A Poem About My Body

…my body.

Apparently, I complain about my aches and pains a little too much. Well, here’s a poem that takes a more lighthearted look at the topic.

 

Land and Sea

 

Scarred retina. Torn rotator cuff and

Labrum. Compressed disks. Runners knee.

Broken tibia. Achilles tendonosis.

Two well-healed stress fractures.

I am a map, a cartographers dream

Each new venture brings an

Undiscovered kingdom

A land of palm trees and savages

A fountain of youth and silver mines.

I may nurture my own disease

Stagger through the tropics of a

Mosquito infested imagination

But I am also trekking from the

Unknown and comfortable into a

State of wonder. In the dark heart

Of this El Dorado, I take no

Prisoners and harbor no delusions.

I am riding an old horse, a twitchy

Horse that farts and bites, that will not

Eat from my hand but will take my

Food and my blanket. I am sailing an old boat,

A leaky boat with foul bilge and fearless rats,

But my vigilance at the helm will be rewarded

When I stop at a shimmering caravanserai,

And find a jewel for my bride, a trinket

for my noisy children, a treasure

For the aging parents who gave me this

Imperfect fragile body and sent me

Over land and sea to discover its worth.