Dog at the Funeral

For Dave Willey (1947-2008)

I didn’t see him when two planes did a fly-by,

one on the right peeling off in missing-man formation.

Not until I saw his picture with Dave and Dave’s family —

a big lug of a dog, a Great Dane, but smaller, a Doberman,

but ears cupped, long tail, bright eyes, and an open mouth.

He walked through the door as we sat, looking around

Autumn

Dear Crickets, doomed to die,

Bless you, for so am I.

How bravely your song of Autumn

Accepts without remorse

The ordaining of Winter.

Hidden in the hearth,

faith of future generations

Beyond the snow, beyond death:

’Tis humble your chirrup

And full of courage

As we too might be

If we could but see

Welcome. We’re here today to get approval to leave this place. To be told that we’re done, al fin, la fine. But if we were to place this summer, right here, on a timeline of the things that our class will create, the ideas that our class will manifest, the places that our class will go, you would find that we, the class of 2008, are not done.

Leaving

How can I bear to leave this place,

take the next boat out into the harbor,

pass the buoy, toss

a penny into the water for a return?

How can I bear leaving after 39 years —

built my own house, planted my garden,

tall-trees design, skylight to watch the evening sky,

see the night flight plane lights

blinking their way across the sea.

I Remember Jerry best at work

Two drawknives

A peavey

And an ax

A tractor trailer load

Of spiles

Oak trees

From up north

We’d bark

Me a teenage

Local kid

Him a father

Fresh from San Miguel

He came with Bernadette

And the girls

Work for Manuel Santos

In the cemetery

Yardwork

In June my sister, Carole Cowan Dunscombe, died at the age of 51. My parents survived her as no parent should have to do. The timeliness of the Children’s Memorial at Edgartown Light couldn’t have been any better and my parents were able to have a stone placed there in her memory. Carole couldn’t get down to the lighthouse due to her wheelchair, however she spent many days looking out on the light from Memorial Wharf.

What if you wrote you are God’s elect, self-chosen

to bring order into a “new world,”

settled by natives seen as stray commas,

or apostrophes, in illiterate forests, a wilderness

hostile to your godly virtues of order and control,

a wilderness whose trees you fell to make

your home?

What if the few who traveled on the “sweet ship”

Mayflower,

Nancy died in seventy-three

She was only twenty-three

She was a gamer

She was a good one

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

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.