MOTHERING

Right over there, last month,
we came upon a turkey hen
with her five chicks. She
regarded us, rightly so, as
intruders. This wood was world
to her. We were aliens.
She clucked her innocent
brood across the clearing, herded
them into the brush. All but
one obeyed. He wandered well
away from safety, not knowing
where or when to turn.
We moved on, helpless to help,
knowing better than to try.
Half an hour on, we could still
hear the hen's repeated cry:
    Where did you go?
    Where are you now?
    Come here.

GRANDPA DIVULGES THE SECRET OF WISDOM

I'm not going to tell you
about all the dumb
things I did when I was
your age.

They would embarrass you
to hear them even more
than it would embarrass me to
tell them.

People my age are supposed
to be wise and maybe we are,
at least wiser than we used
to be.

Point is: the way we got to
be wise was doing all those dumb
things we aren't going to tell
you about.

PHOTOGRAPH

The day was hot, sultry,
the lawn large,
the mower loud and clunky.
At the corner of the house
I saw her, our pre-school pixie,
leaping through the waving shower
the sprinkler was bestowing on the grass.
I stopped, went inside for the camera.
Coming up behind her,
I clicked and froze
the moment.

        And now,
here in my hand, she stands,
forever holding her bowed head
over the spray, her eyes closed,
the smile on her face beatific,
the tug on my heart
bittersweet.

TURNIPS

Why? my brother asked when I told
him I was growing turnips.
I didn't have an answer.
It occurs to me now that I haven't
eaten a turnip since . . .
truth is I can't remember.
I think I did once,
or maybe twice, years ago.
But here they are in my garden, their
tops a lovely emerald green,
swaying gently to a melody
the wind is apparently playing.

Maybe I grew them because once,
more than half a century ago,
Danny Frey persuaded me to help
him gather turnips in the corn field.
We took some old buckets, went out,
and pulled them up, mottled
purple bulbs clotted with brown
soil we brushed away.
The wind was that nippy late
October wind that presages
icicles. We filled the buckets,
headed for the barn, the warm.
It's a good memory.

I like turnips because their beauty
is both above ground and below,
seldom seen, rarely praised.
I may not eat my turnips.
Who will know?

FANTASY FOOTBALL: 1950'S VERSION*

It was easier, then, to have heroes.
Take, for example, Steve Van Buren,
who lugged the pigskin
(that's how sportswriters wrote
back in the fifties) for the Philadelphia
Eagles. There were no pre or
post game interviews to expose
the ignorance of the
inarticulate. For all I knew
Steve Van Buren was a paragon
of wisdom and virtue. If you
had asked me, I'd have told
you he was, of course he was.

I never saw him play. It never
occurred to me to ask my father
to take me to a game. I do not
recall ever seeing a photograph
of Steve Van Buren. But when
the radio announcer screamed
that he was dashing down the side
line like he had a Roman candle
on his tail, I could see it as
truly as if I had a seat
on the fifty yard line. If you
had asked me: what, exactly, is
a Roman candle? I would have told
you I had no idea.

*Some time after writing this poem, I learned that Mr. Van Buren is a resident at the retirement community where my brother lives. We visited him and I gave him a copy of the poem. He thanked me and told me he liked what I had written.

DINAH'S DARING DIP

Old dogs, even the ones
with a generous dousing from
the Labrador Retriever gene pool,
are not likely, on a cold, early
April hike in the woods, to hurl
themselves into a lake like some
impetuous puppy. At least you
wouldn't think so. Not with
the kind of arthritic bones
the vet diagnosed on the last visit.

Age compensates with Wisdom.
It's as true for canines as for
their owners. Wisdom and Caution.

Which was what we tried to explain
to Dinah when, post-plunge,
she emerged, shook herself,
looked at us and laughed.
Or at least seemed to.

STORY TIME -- II

Trip Trap
    Trip Trap
        Trip Trap

It's the three Billy Goats Gruff
trotting once again
over that plank bridge
that is roof to the home
of that wicked, wicked troll.

And it is my father's voice
roaring once again:
"Who's that trip-trapping
across my bridge?"

And it is one of the three
Billys who answer:
"It is I, the first
Billy Goat Gruff" (or the second
or the third).

And it is I, the four-year-old
who, shivering with dread and
delight, sits perched on my father's
lap on the big chair next
to the front door.

And thirty years later,
that four-year-old is the father,
telling to his daughter,
the once-again tale of
goats gruff and
wicked, wicked troll.