by Fitz | Aug 8, 2014 | Journal, Poetry
It’s not like a poem
to come curl by my feet
on this morning too beautiful
to describe,
though I am looking
and listening
and waiting:
A rooster crows
above the low hum
of morning traffic;
the trash truck
spills air from brakes
and rattles empties into bins;
my neighbor hammers
his endless projects
with meticulous efficiency,
so I try to do the same:
Slowly sipping coffee
from an old mug
with a broken handle
I cast a trusted lure
into a familiar hole
and pull these few drops
of dark, still waters
into my boat.
by Fitz | Aug 8, 2014 | Journal, Poetry
Somewhere locked
in this choke of weeds
spread like a mangy carpet
is the hardened vine
of Pipo’s Concord Grape
he planted in an eager spring
three years ago.
Gasping for air and sun and water
perhaps it has found some way
to hide from my flailing hoe
and the bitterness of my neglect.
Maybe it has buried itself
below the transient roots
of witch grass, sow thistle,
and cockleburr
and can only wait
for another spring
bursting forth
from fresher ground.
by Fitz | Jul 30, 2014 | Poetry
I am surprised sometimes
by the suddenness of November:
beauty abruptly shed
to a common nakedness–
grasses deadened
by hoarfrost,
persistent memories
of people I’ve lost.
It is left to those of us
dressed in the hard
barky skin of experience
to insist on a decorum
that rises to the greatness
of a true Thanksgiving.
This is not a game,
against a badly scheduled team,
an uneven match on an uneven pitch.
This is life
This is life
This is life
Not politely mumbled phrases,
murmured with a practiced and meticulous earnestness.
Thanksgiving was born a breech-birth,
a screaming appreciation for being alive–
for not being one of the many
who didn’t make it–
who couldn’t moil through
another hardscrabble year
on tubers and scarce fowl.
Thanksgiving is for being you.
There are no thanks without you.
You are the power of hopeful promise;
you are the balky soil turning upon itself;
you are bursting forth in your experience.
You are not the person next to you–
not an image or an expectation.
You are the infinite and eternal you–
blessed, and loved, and consoled
by the utter commonness
and community of our souls.
We cry and we’re held.
We love and we hold.
We are the harvest of God,
constantly renewed,
constantly awakened,
to a new thanksgiving.
by Fitz | Jul 14, 2014 | Poetry, Raccoon
There is a soldier dressed
in ancient English wool guarding
the entrance to the inn.
He is lucky for this cool night
awaiting the pomp
of the out of town
wedding party.
He is paid to be unmoved
by the bride’s stunning beauty
or her train
of lesser escorts.
He will not notice
this small stone
set across the square;
His eyes will not glisten
when he hears
that two brothers
fell here,
picked out
of disciplined lines
beating
a hot and hasty retreat
back to Boston.
He will not
chasten his comrades
for leaving them
in foreign dust—
the dull and whistling holes
torn into soft
and homesick wool.
He betrays nothing.
Inscrutable—
he collects his check
and drives home.
~The Colonial Inn
Concord, MA.
by Fitz | Jul 14, 2014 | Poetry, Raccoon
*God casts the die, not the dice.
~Alfred Einstein
I am cold down the neck,
turtling my head
to showers of ice
that fall
dancing and skidding
on skins of crusted snow.
I hold my breath when I step,
inflating hopes of a weightlessness,
and so be undetected
to the play of gods
who froze the night’s rain,
and set up this morning
full
of shining and busting—
gambling on rolls,
and chance patterns,
only their joy can see.
by Fitz | Jul 14, 2014 | Poetry, Raccoon
I stutter for normality
across the river
from black men fishing
for kibbers
and horned pout.
Barefoot children rounded
bellies curled
navels stalk the turtle
sunning on a log.
lonely in the field grass
lonely on the curbstones
I stutter for normality.
Not a mother
whose breasts are dry,
whose child doesn’t cry,
who sleep
on a cot
in a tent.
~The Concord River
1981
