QUAKER BLOSSOMS

 

                    I

 

A Friend was Richard Galloway,

But Samuel, his great grandson,

Built Tulip Hill on the slave trade—

Estate so proudly Georgian.

 

Nearby, upon the burial ground,

George Fox proclaimed the Inner Light

To those whose shriveled corpses now

Lie vacant where his words took flight.

 

                    II

 

Ten thousand years or more ago,

The first Algonquin settled here

Beside the sprawling Bay we know,

With glaciers melting on their heels.

 

They signed a pact with colonists,

Beneath a spreading Tulip Tree—

Today where Saint John’s College lists

The World’s Great Books for us to read.

 

                    III

 

In childhood I explored the hill

My father built our home upon;

Where Tulip Poplars’ flowers filled

Their boughs and dropped across the lawn.

 

How sweet it was to contemplate

Their petals cupped and yellow-green,

With red and orange glowing faint,

Like passions fading from past scenes!

 

                    IV

 

Employed to search out, sort and track

Old records at your next request,

I browsed an Archives’ moldered stacks

Of rags and wood to pages pressed.

 

Without direction, like sere leaves

That tumble through autumnal fields,

I turned life’s pages uselessly—

What harvest could such idling yield?

 

                    V

 

From what I read between the lines

Of Quaker Records, I will quote

The whispers of the wind that winds

Its circuits through old Poplar groves:

 

What does it mean? A child squats low,

And lifts one fallen flower to view

Its pigments in the dew drops’ glow,

Reflecting vistas strange and new.

 

SOME SECRET GARDEN

  

To us the winter’s end is signified

By Hylas croaking from the budding trees,

Their song like sleigh bells, after having climbed

From hibernation underneath the leaves

And broken branches toward the sunny heights,

Their vocal sacs swelled up with evening air.

Their chorus chants of such romantic nights

As you and I remember, when our care

Was for some secret garden and embrace,

Where what we took to be our hearts and minds

Succumbed to Nature and pursued a trace

Of fleeting passion as we pulsed through time.

We dreamed it in the ice of our repose,

Our sleigh bells frozen underneath the snow.

 

CREME-FILLED DONUTS

  

Did you and I finally

have a truce when we ate

the last two creme-filled donuts?

 

Or was it a moment’s relapse,

into what we thought we knew

before we thought we knew each other?

 

Our little chat alone,

with an empty box between us,

at a crumb-sprinkled table in the lunchroom.

 

How long will the taste

of those pastries be with us,

once our tongues are free to disagree?

 ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL DAY

  

He read her diary after she passed on,

Her name recorded in the Book of Life,

And started writing where she had left off.

 

He wrote what had occurred from day to day,

As though she too were reading, starting with

“Another beautiful day”—her usual words,

Regardless of the weather.

                                           He would note

The visits from the children or from friends,

The gossip from the church, or little things

Only they two might know; for sixty years

Of married life beholds a world to share

In every mundane scene.

                                        He wrote, “Today,

The daffodils are nodding in the yard.

My darling, they are blooming just for you.”

 

A PEDESTRIAN PAUSES ON THE PAVEMENT IN REVERIE

 

 This morning a heavy, heavy thought

seems to be weighing down on me.

 

I took it for a walk in a plastic bag,

and everyone I met seemed to feel it too.

 

I said to them, apropos of nothing:

“Forgive me, I’m not myself today.”

 

We presuppose a massive solidity

above us, below us:

 

Concrete slabs covering dirt and clay,

The waters of the firmament there in the Bible. 

 

You have often walked on this street before,

but the pavement never fell beneath your feet before.

 

How many times must one look down

before one can see the sky?

 

We live our lives spontaneously anyway,

even at the risk of plagiary.

 

But is it theft to breath a breath of air,

like everyone else does?

 

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,

maybe you shouldn’t be so quick to take me to court!

 

And maybe I shouldn’t jump to conclusions

about my supposed creativity.

 

It’s all done with mirrors, you see.

There was no beginning, and this is the end.

 

Forgive me, I’m not myself today—

I’m nothing but my own reflection.

 

PRELUDE TO PRELUDE

  

What paradox! What irony!

That piece at which you toiled away

For most of your career,

Postponing, revising,

Meticulously assessing

In light of what you planned—

That prelude to your masterpiece

Turned out to be the very thing

For which you were preparing!

And so it is that every life

Is prelude to itself:

Every death the publication

Of ones magnum opus.

This is the human condition.

 

     SECRET SHOPPER

  

I browse in antique shops but never buy.

I’m always searching there for something old,

But seldom find what’s old enough to try.

 

Neglect, patina, ambiance I crave, —

The sense of things that were so modern once,

And now are untold stories in the grave.

 

You won’t catch me shoplifting and emboldened.

Too slick for that, I stash goods in my mind:

My head’s chock full of oddities unstolen.

 

Antique myself I find it suits my ways

To gravitate toward things Sub specie

Aeternitatis, as the Ancients say.

 

So when you stop me on my way back out,

Don’t think you’ll nail me with the loot in hand.

Feel free to frisk me if you’ve any doubt.

 

I’m your best patron, take my word or not!

Though should you meet another who’s like me,

He’ll tell you what I’ve told you, on the spot.