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,

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;

Memorial Day

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,

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:

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.

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

Farewell Sunday on Martha’s Vineyard

Martha’s Vineyard rested quietly in the golden haze of her warmth,

Her sandy thighs cooling in the wide blue-white wash of the sea.

The passions of the night had wearied her,

But her rest was peaceful and she glowed,

Like burnished gold in the late morning, easy warming,

Sun of this so fine a Sunday.

A grey dorsal cut the crest of a Katama bound roller,

Rather, it is in the shorter history of America,

not England, not Italy, that we find ourselves

in the perfect middle of a rainy, summer afternoon

inside a 1930s shingled boathouse long since

beached on a low hill out of water’s reach,

and plumbed and electrified for habitation.

No effort has been made to hide its origins.

Old masts and spars wait in the overhead rafters.

Blocks and tackle, coiled in figure eight knots,

Requiem for Little Guy

Love’s embrace

Held thee

A short while — almost weightless.

Fly away

Little Soul

On butterfly wings.

Frail veil

Of human life

Slipped through love’s fingers — voiceless.

Fly high

Little Guy

On angel’s wings — all breathless.