The Oldies Station

The oldies station this morning,

60s on 6, playing the music I remember

growing up, early rock and roll

and the British Invasion, love songs and folk

songs protesting and offering a simpler life

we imagined we could live, if only ... catchy tunes

we remember from the 45s, the LPs, AM radio

and Ed Sullivan, Sunday nights on a black & white TV,

Dick Clark, and Sonny and Cher reminding me,

the beat goes on, the beat goes on ...

drums keep pounding a rhythm to the brain ...

la de da de de, la de da de da.

A Poem for Spring (5 Haiku)

Snowmelt feeds the earth,

softening winter’s hardness,

breaking open, us;

Broken open, Earth

transforms, transposes, restores:

our seasons’ cycling;

Earth’s seasons cycling,

winter to spring and autumn,

changing, Earth and us;

And changed, grown older,

Earth, restored, and us, transformed,

snow-fed, our own spring;

Our own spring rises,

lifts us, as a bird’s return,

broken open, us.

Immortality

There were people in these woods

long before I retired and settled in,

moving towards my own demise here.

I see them in my wandering, wondering,

searching for myself and, perhaps, immortality;

see them on an old dirt road, rutted and grown

over, tree bent, brush covered, brambled,

barely recognizable and navigable,

and behind the stone wall they built, collapsed now,

though there are long stretches still standing;

the rocks are crumbling, but are still piled up

like nature cannot do, nature bent on tearing down,

casting asunder what man builds up.

I see them, too, in the home that once stood here,

a young family, sheltered and housed, tilling

and toiling the land in the once-cleared field beyond.

The house is now only a shallow depression,

a stray brick and the rusted and broken

detritus of man’s attempts to claim

for himself this land as his own,

land un-claimable but by itself.

I, too, have tried, attempted,

built a home and toiled, pushed back

at nature pushing forward, pushing me out;

patient over the long haul,

nature reclaims itself, and me with it.

A gentle stream rages now, gouging

and carrying itself away to the lake,

nature continuing its course toward immortality,

and I am become but the artifacts I will leave behind,

discovered in a young man’s wanderings, wondering.

A Poet Remembering

Somewhere, in someone’s dusty attic

or maybe surviving a dank basement

is an unlabeled box of old things,

and among the books and papers and trinkets

saved from our long ago junior high days

lies an unpolished literary gem,

a golden banana, if you will,

my first poem ever published,

four lines on the lonely existence

of pine trees, at least of that one lone

pine outside the window I stared through,

day after day, seeking inspiration

for a poem to fulfill Mr. Demler's assignment

for our yet unpublished literary magazine

in the eighth grade, an assignment

I couldn’t do, didn’t want to do,

putting it off, day after day,

for my writing was “not good enough”;

that poem, rhythmic and rhyming,

confirmed it, my writing was NOT good enough,

nor was I, young and shy and alone,

but still, it was published, four lines

typed in the middle of the page, and I hope,

after all these years have passed,

that that unpolished literary gem,

that golden banana, has gone the way

of most things we did in junior high,

learning experiences, perhaps,

shaping who we are today, who

we have become, but some things are best kept

secret, buried in a box in a dusty attic

or a dank basement, lost and forgotten.

Orion’s Song

On a clear night Orion stands tall 
on the winter horizon, the moon near full
to guide us homeward; his arms are raised high 
towards the heavens, perhaps in benediction.
Listen closely and you’ll hear his song
softly sung among the trees, pianissimo, 
a song of praise whispered for the stars 
and the moon and the season passing.