Interpoetry



BARNACLES

 

Get up / Get out of bed /

Fetch the paper from the driveway /

Feed the dog / Take an English muffin

out of the freezer / Open windows

and the front door / Put the dog out /

Turn the water on to the lawn sprinklers

in the back yard / Rinse the dishes

in the sink / Stick them in the dishwasher /

Toast and butter and eat my English muffin /

Put a letter out in the mailbox /

Check email / Water the plants in my library . . .

so much fun being home from work,

looking after things at home, wondering when,

oh when will my beloved wife return.

Endless tasks, the whole day

a collection of endless tasks

like barnacles stuck and sucking

against a ship’s rusting old hull.

 

 

When the Rain Stops

 

Long gray day

melting

into an off-white, rainy-wet night.

 

A window-box is overflowing

with little

purple-faced flowers,

 

wet railroad tracks

reflect yellow street lights

like in an old black and white movie.

 

A woman trying to make herself smaller

beneath an umbrella, the rain

splashing off it like

 

in that famous Gene Kelly scene in

Singin’ in the Rain.

But then suddenly

 

like the face of Mary

appearing beneath a rainbow

in the clouds,

 

I see Aunt Mary Jean and my father-in-law

who both died this year,

leaving a heavy

 

burdensome emptiness,

an emptiness that the rain seems

to be trying to fill,

 

the water, calm and warm, but

still anxious and uncertain,

urging

 

me to cry, but I don’t, I don’t.

I’ll cry later, perhaps,

when the rain stops.

 

 

a melancholy afternoon

 
Normally when I

walk along the tracks

and see or hear a train coming

I rush off into

the woods to watch

the monster unseen,

feel its vibrations rumbling,

smell its oily metal

and smoky wake,

while remaining quiet and still

as a bush or a tree or a rock.

But today I don’t feel much

like playing this childish game.

I’m feeling strangely older

and weary-worn of life.

I even neglected

to put the pennies on the tracks

like I always do.

 

 

sticks and straw
 

The poised green frog

in Pat’s garden pond has left,

hopped its way through the woods

beneath the trees and bushes and weeds

to the amiable stream down in back.

It was fun seeing him sitting there

on his rock motionless as moonlight,

quiet as the moon, stiff and still

as a gargoyle. And now, today,

in the afternoon light, he’s gone.

But I’m not completely sad

because the Robin is back, built her nest

in the same spot again as last summer,

halfway down the stairs from the deck,

on the landing right in the middle

of Pat’s huge, sprawling climbing Hydrangea.

If you walk really slowly and careful

you can get close without her flying away,

squirting off her nest of sticks and straw

disappearing into the cool green trees beyond.

 

 

Drinking a Pepsi
 

Sometimes I listen to the rain

and wonder, like Newton and Socrates

and Goethe must’ve wondered,

about life. For some reason

the rain does that -

flushes philosophical queries

out from the murk and the shadows

into the light.

Someone at work died this week.

I didn’t know him.

I knew of him, knew who he was,

but we never spoke, never even said hello;

not because I didn’t like him,

I didn’t even know him.

But a couple months ago I saw him

sitting in the cafeteria,

alive as rain, drinking a Pepsi.

And now today - he’s dead,

just like that, he’s dead.

Gives you something to think about,

whether you want to or not.