Day 1
Your Birthday
for Richard Wilbur,
on the occasion of his 92nd
Bees are asleep still underground,
Drowse yet in borrowed nests in trees.
Wait for the signaled day to sound
The flowers from their winter freeze.
Some say the maple sap is brash
Enough to wake the buzzing hoarde,
Urge them awake, the sleeping masque:
Workers to serve the queen her board.
The sun its zenith seeks above;
Light’s longer in the sky today.
Listen through the birthday love
For cheering sounds of birds at play.
92 is just a number,
Slow fire lights o’er your pages yet.
Life goes onward to its embers
With po’ms that we won’t soon forget.
Here’s my wish: felicitations
Of this day and more days to be.
I’ll raise a glass, celebration
of a life well writ with poetry.
Day 2 (March)
Utterance
If a child is murdered, a boy
or girl, someone’s baby
once upon a time, it is not stuff
of fairy tale or make-believe —
nor is the finding of the body
in a nearby woods
or in a schoolroom
a cause of action by the press
to sell papers, advance
the reputation of reporters.
It is the gasp of the fly
on the wall, his green foil eye
terrible with the sight,
it is the business of the owl
on the branch calling
forth some kind of shudder.
All natural things
mourn these lost ones, for all
are murdered just a little then.
Decorum should turn us
speechless, until the poet
comes along to show us
our own violence,
our own dark retinas
where the color
of bruise and congealed blood
is somehow a fashion.
In one moment
we are in the dock, hung
in shame for our own failure.
One heartbeat from empathy
not close enough for us
to protect these ones
we say we love beyond all else.
The poet utters what we cannot,
the images too sharp that it might one day
be a boy or girl of ours, leaving us speechless.
Day 3
Found Boy Poem
He was found in the woods, covered with leaves
and alone. The medical examiner wouldn’t tell
his mother about the maggots or the nest
of hornets in his hair. It would sting too much.
Better to let him be her perfect un-murdered boy,
clean him for viewing, wash his hair, sew
his eyelids shut to hide that his baby blues
had been pecked out by marauding crows and ravens.
Mothers know the way their boys’ eyes flicker a little
just before sleep. Whatever his eyes saw
in those woods she can never know. Even now
her dreams play scenes of picnics and ant farms
and games of hide and seek in the birches:
You’re it! Catch me if you can.
Catch me if you can;
All-ee all-ee ox-in free.
Hanging
in your office closet, garlic cloves;
temperature and humidity perfect
secret for keeping vampires away.
No hats or scarves or gloves
but these aromatic secrets,
hanging in your office closet: garlic cloves.
No boxes of letters from lost loves
photos or romantic trinkets,
the secret for keeping vampires away
hangs here in mesh bags above
the stacks of paper for your ink jet;
hanging in your office closet, garlic cloves.
No cooing of sweet mourning doves,
no Hitchcock birds to make you sweat.
Hanging in your office closet, garlic cloves
swinging from the closet bar, love.
Your preservation tip most will not get:
Hanging in your office closet, garlic cloves,
the secret for keeping vampires away.
Day 5
Umbrella
Bumper shoot, bumble shoot, brolly.
Wind squalls the alleys
and upends the ribs, sucks rain
into my face and hair.
He pulls his trench coat tight
around me, smooths wet hair
from my forehead. A glance.
What use is this invention if not
to keep me dry
to keep us hidden?
Day 6
Church Boy, Town Girl
At the edge of town,
behind the Baptist Church,
behind the church bus they smoke, inhale
unfiltered camels. Church boy
wearing Jesus Saves tees, town girl
in a yellow sun dress,. He presses her hard
for a kiss; she blows smoke circles
with her eyes closed. She knows what’s next,
like her mama told. Watch out for them
churchy boys, they’s the devil. They take
what they want and let you go.
Still as a broken clock, she waits.
Inside the church, singing:
and the walls came a-tumbling down.
Day 7
NOTE: This poem is written (respectfully) in old South dialect
Selma Freedom Day
Sunday —hot as pepper,
humid as wet wool,
no one cares about they feet.
Big ole blisters, a price so small
it’s no care, no care.
Mama and Pap, they brung they little chile
so he gonna see it all, see Doctor King
and all them folks, hear ‘em singin’
all along the way, singing a freedom days
and such when that chile can go anyways
he please. Mama and Pap, they canna
wait t’ see it too, see them folks
and hear that song a freedom. All gussied
up in Sunday best, all tall and prideful
walkin’ and singin‘ — they gonna be free,
they gonna be free like the birds and the grass
that grows wayever it wanna grow. No mo’
I tell, no mo’ pushin’ and shovin’ to the back,
no mo’ callin’ him boy. That chile gonna be
Mistah, you heah? He ain’t gonna be no mo’ boy.
Sunday, hot as pepper, humid as wet wool.
And nobody’s gonna ever bring out no hosses
to run us down no, suh. Not never again.
Nobody’s a-gonna put them dogs on us, no suh.
Sundays, we gonna sit in church and sing. We
sure gonna sing that freedom we got that day.
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