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.
