Beginnings

At the far end of the hall, bending

around the gym, a stage, and the cafeteria

of the West Bath Elementary School, 1960, September,

we began in Mrs. DePalmer’s room, first grade’s beginnings,

colors and shapes and sense forming into Dick

and Jane and Sally, and new words, transforming

sound onto paper, triple lined, blue and red and rough,

lines and loops expressing themselves in the silence

of her classroom as we worked, diligently and carefully,

sitting there in our little desks, neatly rowed and assigned,

legs a-dangle, swinging, even as we grasped our pencils,

yellow and new, in our tiny hands, tracing letters

dashed in outline, learning our As and Bs and Cs,

As and Bs and Cs, in turn, becoming words,

“cat” and “dog” and “mom” and “dad” leaping from a page

into sentences, action set in motion, doing,

like us, something, us sitting in our little desks,

neatly rowed and assigned, tracing lines, carefully connecting

the dots that would lead us onward, move us upward,

across the hall and into the second grade.

I Dream of Paris

I dream of Paris,

though I’ve never been there,

not yet, but perhaps …

la Seine and la Tour Eiffel,

des Champs-Élysée, le Musée du Louvre,

and coffee at a little French café,

“un café noire, s’il vous plaît,”

across from a young Parisian woman,

too young, but pretty company,

teaching me a little French, un peu,

bringing back what little I once learned

in a high school class, passed and mostly forgotten,

bringing it back from the long ago dreams

that never came true in leaving youth behind,

the girl I never married, the things I didn’t do,

didn’t see, choosing instead to dream of Paris,

la Seine, des Champs-Élysée, a little French café

and a pretty companion teaching me French

over a cup of coffee, un café noire,

just sitting here dreaming, the years slipping by  

while youth peeks out from the recesses of memory.

Just Gram

She was always just Gram, white-

haired, Wing-stout and sturdy

shoes on her feet, apron-clad

and freshly floured from molasses

cookies baked, soft and warm,

dusted, filling, then, an old cookie

jar on the kitchen’s side-board,

easily opened and pawed

by eager grandchildren, thirty

hands and thirty cookies,

and one for herself, her own brood

of six, paired and mated,

parents now themselves, families gathering

for a Sunday holiday of cousins, aunts, and uncles

here at the farm where she lived;

but an old black-and-white photo, recently found,

a photo framed in a cardboard folder tucked

away with forgotten mementos, faded pictures

of unknown faces looking out from another time,

an old black-and-white photo portrays a young woman

with her beau, her husband, my grandfather,

a lucky man for this woman at his side

those fifty-eight years, ‘till death did they part,

this dark haired girl, beautiful, in this picture found,

looking so much younger, so different, at seventeen

than any memory of mine from holidays spent at the farm,

two hands pawing the old cookie jar,

easily opened, filled with molasses cookies,

freshly baked and dusted, apron-clad, 

soft and warm, loved, just Gram.

                          

Doris Lucy Hardy Wing (Jan 20, 1900 - 16 Apr 1987)

I stopped to pick up a bagel

I stopped to pick up a bagel at the corner deli,

a thick slab of cream cheese sandwiched, crushed

between two toasted halves, and coffee,

rich and dark, bitter that morning, caffeine laden,

feeding my belief of needing it

to start my sluggish body,

even more my sluggish brain,

and took myself to the river’s edge

and a bench still wet with dew

facing the early morning water, muddied and brown,

rushing, like humanity, toward a bigger ocean

to crash and roar and tear away that gentler shore,

rushing ever onward, crashing, roaring, tearing away,

while I sit here watching, in no hurry,

content on a dew-wet bench at the river’s edge,

rich coffee, dark and bitter, caffeine laden,

and a bagel, a thick slab of cream cheese sandwiched,

crushed between two toasted halves,

contented, watching the world rush by. 

Winter Dreaming

              'T is not too late to seek a newer world. 

              … To sail beyond the sunset, 

              … and tho' / We are not now that strength which in old days 

              Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are, -- 

              One equal temper of heroic hearts 

              Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will 

              To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.     

                                                                        (Ulysses, Alfred Lord Tennyson)

Orion walks across the night sky

in the clear cold of winter’s darkness,

when the air bites through layers

of wool and down and tears well up

in my eyes and freeze there,

burning as I watch him walk away, westward,

circumnavigating this earth, my own desires

left behind in silence, frozen in my standing here,

dreaming of other places I’ve yet to see,

other lives I’ve yet to live.