2013 Anthology

Poems

from the Shepherd’s Center

Winter—Spring 2013

This short collection is the sixth by our Shepherd’s Center Poetry Group.

These pages are meant to be a memento of our weeks together during the winter and spring of 2013, which I believe have emboldened us to find and affirm the poet in ourselves and others. Thank you again for sharing your talent and insight with the group.—Bob Demaree

Dumas, pere

Cynthia Schaub

Cognac brown, soft, consoling,

I tilt the decanter to the glass,

the heavy one with the scene of downtown Baltimore

etched in black and real gold,

probably 24 carat.

Not to be put into the dishwasher,

though I do.

A golden bourbon in an exquisite glass.

I stand before the bookcase,

urbane, sophisticated, like a writer,

though the books not so urbane,

paperbacks.

I’m not ashamed, just

frugal.

But behind glass, leather-bound books,

a special occasion.

Before I even know the title, I open it,

smell and riffle the pages.

It sounds like bourbon, poured from the decanter.

Alexander Dumas, one of my dad’s favorites,

The Three Musketeers,

Athos, Porthos, not D’Artagnan. Who is the

third?

He would be disappointed that I could name only

two.

I return to my chair, sit,

book and bourbon in hand,

to read, to find the third musketeer’s

name.

New Garden Cemetery

Kathy Coe

For a long, lean while

I came to the cemetery because

that was the one spot where my little dog

would walk -- walk, that is, until

a strange human appeared along the path

or an intruding car slowed at a nearby gravestone,

and then, in alarm, he would freeze.

It was not as I would wish. 

I'd used to walk there unencumbered

by leash or noise or fear.

Then I marched alone past unknown graves --

Inmon, Worth, Cummings, Bowles, Baker,

others I never knew --

hoping to raise the heartbeat, calm the mind.

But over time I learned

the real dividend of my brisk routine:

that -- like a child’s toy

whose silver balls fall

into neat columns --

as I strode along

the mind-thrashing thoughts

that first drove me

to the cemetery now, too, filtered down

into columns perhaps not neat,

but finding home.

Yes.

Of course.

That is how it is.

And so now I breeze out the door,

past my little dog’s pleading eyes,

and escape once more to the graveyard,

where, attended by silent neighbors,

I trace an invisible thread,

uncovering unseen patterns,

readying for the moment when,

back home at my desk,

I will pick up the pen yet again.

For Harvey Shapiro

Martha Golensky

I feel I should apologize.

I didn’t know you or your work

until I read the obit in the Times.

I said, “He could be my older brother,”

the sensitive one who preferred books

to baseball, to Dad’s chagrin.

Or the guy I started talking to

in a New York coffee shop

because I noticed he had a copy

of Elizabeth Bishop’s poems.

We spoke of metaphor, of assonance, 

but I never caught his name.

Or the guy I saw on the subway,

bent over, nose wrinkling, scribbling

in a beat-up tan notebook, oblivious

to the boom box of life around him—

intent on transferring thought to paper

before it escaped through the open window.

Now I’ve sampled your spare verse,

enjoyed a walk through a gallery of cityscapes

reeking of smoked whitefish and pastrami.

I’ve observed you observing your son,

swaying with his newborn as if in prayer.

Harvey Shapiro, I wish I’d met you sooner.

At Uncle Ott’s

Elmer Billman

A coal fire glowed in the grate.

A bowl of peanuts in the shell and

a jar of horehound candy graced the fireside table.

“I want to see the eagle,” I would say.

I followed Uncle Ott to the stairs, and ascended, one  step behind. As we approached the halfway landing

I was filled with dread, but was irresistibly drawn upward.

At the landing, from his permanent perch,

the eagle glared at me with his glass eye.

I scampered down the stairs.

Deenie Out in Front

Lee McCusick

She scampered up the rock,

my line in hand,

dragging a three-pound bass

which I had hooked but failed to land.

That was Deenie, always out in front;

she was the first to the raspberry patch

first to water ski and first the choose the spot

where we would fish for perch by night on Sebec.

We boys, in groups of two or three or four,

would follow her to do her bidding

because she knew where the fun would be,

not for fear that she was a beauty.

Comely she was not, so we grew apart.

I felt uneasy realizing she wished for me to be

a beau not buddy, a fella not a friend;

no longer could I follow where she wished to go

This chasm now cannot be spanned

for as of old she is eternally out in front,

no more boats to row, no more cliffs to climb;

now in December I long for July and Deenie out in front.

Watch Out for Things

Dave Upstill

Inanimate objects seem benign

but that is just opaque design

to hide malevolent intent

of devious mishaps they invent

else why would shoe laces part

and trusted cars refuse to start

always at the most untimely times

unless planned by rebellious minds

to make us sentient beings understand

it’s they who have the upper hand.

  

Piano Lessons

Bob Demaree

My lesson was before school.

My father waited in the car,

Smoke from his Lucky Strike

Clouding the windshield of our ’48 Plymouth,

Against a gray January sky

In Pennsylvania—

We did not know to call it the Rust Belt then.

My spinster teacher walked about

Her Victorian row house,

Checking on an invalid mother

And calling out to me,

“I hear wrong notes.”

The house smelled of cooked vegetables,

Even at 7:30

When Teddi Kalakos came for her lesson.

She and I played a duet once,

One of the Bachs, perhaps.

Her family ran a restaurant;

She may have inherited it—I don’t know,

One of many threads of the plot

Lost over time.

Once a year Miss Edna would take us

Into Philadelphia, the Reading Railroad

More than a Monopoly card,

Elegant iron horse, cold coal-smoke dawn,

Dutch trainmen in shiny blue suits

Calling out the station stops:

Royersford, Conshohocken.

She let us shop at Gimbel’s,

Have lunch at Bookbinder’s,

Wasted on 12-year-olds,

And took us to the Academy of Music,

The children’s concert,

Peter and the Wolf, no doubt.

Years, years later

My mother asked if I remembered

Seeing Ormandy conduct.

Members of the Shepherd’s Center Poetry Group, present and past, won awards in the 2013 contests of the Burlington Writers Club: Dave Upstill, first place, Light Poetry; Mary Vick, second place, Adult Poetry; Sandra Redding, first place fiction; Bob Demaree, first place, Adult Poetry; Cynthia Schaub, honorable mention.

Our next Shepherd's Center term will begin Thursday, January 16, 2014.