For Nancy Fischer: 1949-1973
Arnie Fisher

Nancy died in seventy-three

She was only twenty-three

She was a gamer

She was a good one

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To a Shucker
Steve Ewing

Green side up Knife goes in Cut it clean Top shell off Thumb on guts One smooth swipe

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Preparing Oneself for Dying

Preparing Oneself for Dying

Compulsively,

I strive to find a method

for a confrontation with what must be done

to save my children from the task of doing it when I die.

Make lists.

Make lists.

I sharpen pencils with an out-damn-spot intensity.

In shaded rooms,

on yellow pads,

I hide myself from sun

to settle my affairs:

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Budding

Budding

In our neighborhood the Russian Olive

Is first to extrude its buds.

Along its slender branches, and at their tips,

Ten thousand tiny commas and apostrophes

Suddenly appear in March.

Within them,

Deep down,

Are ten thousand unborn berries

That burst out in tart profusion

For me to gather on a September stroll,

To make my lips pucker in delight.

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A Toast to Rabbie

A Toast to Rabbie

If a Scot be ripe for toastin’,

If a Scot be fit for praise,

If a Scot stands high above the rest

For the way he spent his days,

Let’s raise a cup now, all about,

And celebrate the cheer

That Rabbie Burns has brought to the world

Now for two hundred, fifty years.

Nay, no poet was ’ere as fecund or fine

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Quansoo Forest

Quansoo Forest

Spiraled, twisted, screwed and swirled,

Knobbed and gnarled, hunched and burled,

Oaken shapes grotesquely curled,

Ever-howling wind has whirled.

From the stump and toward the sky,

Aged sprouts for sunlight vie,

Grapplings limbs are arching high,

Arms of wooden octopi.

Briny gale the ocean blows,

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Take This Poem

Take This Poem

Take this poem. No. Really

take it. It belongs to you.

Like anything you read.

It belongs. Like Hawaii’s

swaying palms, weighted

coconuts, rungs tying

the trunk of the tree. All.

Yours for free.

What did you think

your first grade teacher

was giving to you? Letters,

words, a dog with spots,

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The Ballad Of Boomin’ Ben

Note: The  Heath Hen, once a plentiful bird throughout New England, was last seen by James Green in West Tisbury on March 11, 1932.

The Ballad Of Boomin’ Ben

(The Tragic Tale of the Last Heath Hen)

I looked for my lady,

hoped she was near

playing “hard-to-get” games

in the Spring of that year.

I searched and I searched 

under brush, by the sea;

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Memorial Day

Memorial Day

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Day’s End on Eel Pond
Mary Stewart Hammond

Day’s End on Eel Pond

Sunlight falls through holes in the clouds

spotlighting the marsh grass here and not there,

whitening a sail out on the water, leaving

others in shadow, shining the transom

of the moored cat boat, its bow disappearing.

The bobwhite calls its name without knowing it.

Sparrows and swallows, fussing and twittering.

line up like deacons on the deck railing,

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