Stem
Hold a short grape stem in
Hand after the grapes have been eaten.
Hold the ends, hold the middle,
Feel the empty branches,
Bare stem, bare branches,
Withered, grey brown, the green gone ….
Tractor
Finally he left the tractor.
He screamed at the mechanic-friend
That the magneto was spent.
They argued.
The mechanic changed the magneto.
The tractor, a pre World War Two Farmall,
Never moved, its small front tires turned inward,
The spiked rear ones loomed ….
Red and rusted, waiting,
In weeds, him dead, the mechanic dead.
Farmalls mark fields through the United States,
Their owners gone,
The mechanics gone ….
Toothless Hag
From literature and life,
The toothless hag,
And one appeared at the Mexican restaurant window,
While the back-from-mass eaters bent their heads
And ate, and a lone visitor did, too ….
The toothless hag, her dress torn,
Her back bent, looked through the glass
At heads down, though they looked up, briefly,
Saw her, and looked down again, to:
Food, papers, and sometimes up, away from the
Window at the TV news ….
She walks up and down the hot sidewalk.
No more window looking.
To the cathedral now to squat, beg, lean.
Coins possible, before and after another mass,
Before those breakfast plates ….
Two Months
Edgy ones, those of hope,
August to fall,
February to winter,
The August heat stays ….
The February cold stays ….
The months yield;
Fall’s shortening comes ….
Spring’s lengthening comes ….
Backpacks
The hope, the backpack color,
The sneakers, the notebooks,
The pencils, the markers,
The crayons ….
Inadequacy without them,
A non-start ….
Who demands such?
The children, yes,
The parents, more,
The hope in a backpack.
I am sad, very sad.
I know the purchase is enough.
The child says it is.
The parents say it is.
But the filling, the emptying,
The home in order,
The home in noise ….
Where does the backpack go,
Where does it go?
Wrist
The night wrist,
Below the gowned breast,
The night wrist with a thin
Thin fuzz, and the breast moves,
Under hand, slowly ….
Three Decades, Three Hills
She circles the top,
Waiting for the wobbling years
As he side-to-side pedals the hill ….
She waits, thirty years, and three hills,
With her health, her hours of gyms and spins,
And he wobbles towards her,
The impatient circler,
And the panting elder,
She anxious for more decades, hills,
He attempting a year, a hill ….
