He came, sent by a neighbor,
to see if I could use his help.
For thirteen years I’d mowed this land myself,
but now, it seemed others saw
what I could not yet see.
“He told me not to come if I’d been drinking,”
he said, then later, after I told him his fee
was not enough, he looked at me and asked,
“Have you been drinking?”
JDG
Still morning and children
sleep. Nothing is asked. Mist
sweeps across the pond, then
softly lifts, lightened by
sun’s slowly widening
smile. I smile too.
Seated, I start to write.
JDG
This poem is written in Pleiades, a verse form invented in 1999 by Craig Tigerman. The title is always only one word and the poem consists of 7 lines, the first word of which begins with the same first letter as the title. Hortensia Anderson. a haiku and tanka poet, added the requirement that each line contain 6 syllables. You can read about this verse form and many others at shadowpoetry.com.
Crows squawk as rabbits
stir and deer retreat. Though still
hidden, the sun will
shortly rise as two young girls
stay wrapped in sleep. Across
the pond a family wakes to
grief. Neighbors will soon
come bringing food and presence.
“Ultimately,” Ram
Dass says, ” we’re all just walking
each other home.”… Morning comes.
JDG
The grandkids have named the pond Martin. Why
I do not know.
Dominion
is not
their
claim. I
suspect it’s
deep affection
for what’s brought them joy and deserves a name.
JDG
It’s not so much what
happens, it’s what we make of
it. Like Bartleby, Melville’s
scrivener, sometimes
we turn our heads to the wall
and say, “I prefer
not to.” On other days we
turn to the world, and,
like Molly Bloom, hold out our
arms and cry, “Yes, yes, oh yes!”
JDG
Though way past ripe, at
seventy I still have some
maturing to do.
Three times now the grandchildren
have said as much as
they looked at me with patient
understanding or
just plain shock. Perhaps it would
be best to say I’m pre-rot.
JDG
The heart of our small
village has been put up for
sale, but some things can’t
be bought. Buildings? Yes, even
the land, but its heart
remains in the safekeeping
of all our remembering.
JDG
“Practice radical inefficiency,”
she said and I
began right
then. Now
time
stands still,
folds around
me like a shawl.
I wrap myself in its sufficiency.
JDG
Another dead deer
beside the road, its life cut
short by entering
a domain once his, but which
we now claim. Questions
of territory lie at
the heart of so much
pain. Would that we could find a
place for all life’s offerings.
JDG
Proudly they showed me
their big haul, forty-two pounds
in all, of big red
apples they’d just picked. Their work
done, their minds were filled
with rows of cooling apple
pies, apple dumplings,
apple crisp, apple that and
apple this. But as
for me, all I can see are
days of work ahead
of me. An apple a day
might keep the doctor
away, but this great big haul
is quite another matter.
JDG
