These Teeth

These teeth would require stout boots

If you wanted to traverse them

Just for sport or perhaps in search

Of the living language that lies 

In the darker cavern just behind.

These teeth don’t take rollerskates

The ones that the frozen lake teeth 

Of the great blond cheerleaders 

Advertise for triumphant swoops

Across their perfectly icy surfaces.

These teeth were made on wellwater

Still hold shades of the grey granite

That still sets the underground tone

Of the New England woods I walked

Thinking about anything but teeth.

These teeth take on new colors

Every year, off-whites of crowns

Browns of coffee, darkening lights

Of red wines Nebbiolos and Cabernets

And Pinots that make the blood sing.

These teeth resemble my father’s

On his last day, gray ruins running

North forever like the stone walls

Of my boyhood woods leading me

Always into country I do not know.

These teeth are the only bones

That show, even though the others

Wait just below the skin 

Or sheath of muscle fascia

To reveal the last white silence.

These teeth are the last barricade

Of good judgment before words

I cannot take back fly forth

To build walls just as invisible

As the loneliness they inflame.

These teeth need something to bite into

Something that feeds the flame

In the soft center of this hard shell

Some food not found on the shelves

Of the store aisles we wander all day.

© Bill Prindle, 2016

Stone wall and bridge; Tolland County, Connecticut
Photo by Ken Holm
Library of Congress
from Wikimedia Commons

With Friends on the Blue Ridge Many Years Ago

On the mellow mountain my friends and I

Wooed tricky streams and felt up trees.

Each strange leaf honored and many kissed,

We sipped perfect water and pissed in peace.

Insects embroidered music; light was an animal

Little but not weak that played hide-and-seek.

We pretended to argue and were almost sincere

Or more than sincere in bartering praise.

It is unchangeable fact that air adored our lungs—

And awed on a tall but considerate stone

We were instructed by color, the costume of the sky.

Since then our brains like acrobats,

Trained in secret, in gaudy caves

Have sometimes been loyal, have sometimes betrayed;

Our flesh sometimes failed; fear turned expert.

Death or shame is a judge who won’t forget;

Who insists on a decision though we soar from jail

In recklessly innocent, half-honest joy.

Despite the crime of our clumsiness,

We remember the silver,

The purity of delight,

Synesthesia and sinlessness,

The unstained yearning

Of our voices sustained

By undeceived inconceivable

Blessable air.

In the mystical mistiness

Of our blue mellow mountain

We yet track the trickiness

Of streams green as grass.

We still follow the untreacherous

Unfailing glow of air.

Does cruelty rule? Have our hearts changed to ash?

But the tall altar stands! The music remains!

       © Stephen Margulies, 2016

Blue Ridge Mountains
Photo by Jürgen Nagel
from Wikimedia Commons

For When You Are Sick In Bed

When you are sick in bed

With an array of wrinkled pillows ’round your head

It’s like “get through another day.”

“Get through another night.”

But nights aren’t really that bad

When you can watch the sunrise 

Lighting your window

Or contemplate the world outside.

You can choose to have visits

From each of your children

As they come to you in multi stages

Of their young lives, laughing or

    skipping rope.

There in the dark their smiles greet you

They may even be up to old antics

But all is fair

As you make it through

    another night.

© Shelly Sitzer, 2016

Mrs. John Webb, being nursed when sick in bed
Engraving by M. Burghers, ca. 1700
from Wikimedia Commons

Absently-mindedly Mowing My Lawn

A minor puzzle: that childhood riddle

about the brown cow who eats green grass

and gives white milk, but any farm boy knows

there’s a greater: how, in early spring, 

wild onions begin to flavor

that milk as no grass ever can.

Milk smelled only like itself

until the cows found wild onions,

and then the odor emerged from the teat,

hung heavy over the pail,

the taste sometimes so tainted 

that we fed it to the pigs.

No longer on a farm,

I buy mine from the store

and seldom think about the dairy’s pasture land.

Only rarely—like today, 

riding my mower over four acres

of spring grass with tufts of onions here and yon—

do I wonder where they grow, and why—

how it is that seasons, 

adorned with colors and sounds, 

are likewise rich in tastes and smells,

and think how this clean plastic jug 

I bring home from the store

bears nothing but milk, for which, 

coming from some distant place

and tamed though it is,

thanks must, nevertheless, be said.

            © David Black, 2016

Jersey cow in field
Photo by Jamain from Wikimedia Commons