Spring Poem in the Season of Corona
SamplerLast night, our pond reclaimed a foot from its ice.
New water winks blue-green, and blackbirds shriek
From wire and weed. It’s good to be out. Two boys
Hike by me at social distance. Each breeze-tossed leaf
Looks as crisp and twitchy…
Augury
SamplerI can’t explain, but it’s true.
At ten years old, I beheld the lemon and slate
of the slender fish, flashing below the surface.
My father told me to settle back:
my gawking over the gunwale rocked our canoe,
E.M. White Guide’s Model…
For My Wife at 64
SamplerAutumn’s at hand, and I recollect how you combed every wisp
of weed from your garden in a pair of separate Septembers, each one
for a different child’s
wedding here. Though the mess came back too soon–
pigweed, purslane, vetch–…
Mere Humans
SamplerTink shouted, “Did you hear my bad news?” I turned
from bucking up firewood and killed the engine.
How different he looked, our tough old bantam
neighbor– a rascal, but stolid as stone.
Here stood a suddenly tinier version.
No one…
Scarlet/Indigo
Sampler... strength in what remains ...
–Intimations of Immortality
By the pond, a maple
reddens already,
in middle August.
Impossible:
it still should be summer.
Fall’s upon us,
most of the grandchildren
back at their schools,
moved…
Open Questions
SamplerOn becoming my state’s poet laureate, I made it my mission to visit as many of its community libraries as I could. I paid many, many such visits, and savored each and all. Certain colleagues at the “prestige” colleges where I taught for…