Poems – Books from Graestone

Liquid Ambers

They were planted
The year I was born
And we grew there, together.
They lined the drive
Marking the path home.

In the fall, they turned
A glorious rusty red
White-grey and straight
Dressed in Amber.
And the place got buried.

But this fall,
In an old music book,
On page 370
I found a perfect leaf
Marking the memory home.

I grew up in San Dimas Canyon. Mine was an ideal childhood, but the place got buried by 75 feet of silt from a dam higher in the canyon. Find more canyon pictures here. I published a chapbook, Partway to Wolfskill, on Amazon containing this poem and other canyon poems.

Fall Morning

The day the painters came
There was frost on the roof

Of Graestone. I watched
The stillness from the GMC
As I had my tea and ate;
Red leaf and silver slate.

A Connecticut Midday

Joan and Hal stood in the pebble drive
When we came and when we went
But between was the magic of
Pen and pattern
Becoming hand and heart
While time stood still.

Joan Vayo is one of my favorite poets. She met my mother at a Midwest Writer’s Workshop. Ruth and I visited Joan and Hal one day in the fall of 2008. Joan passed away. (Parkinson’s is a hateful disease.)

Visitor

A small deer came past my eye
In my garden seat tonight.
The sun was long spent- twilight;
Tree black was upon the sky.

Away she stumbled, somehow
Slender legs yet too supple.
She wanted a green apple
That lost its grip on some bow.

She soon was fumbling in brush
Downhill from here, too clumsy
And young to move silently
In the quiet evening hush.

Too much Frost, but I can’t help it; he is just so good.

Colfax Rain

I sat in the pickup
Listening to the rain,
Drops echoing on the
Steel roof just as they
Did when I was a boy
But I didn’t think of Father.

I learned to drive his ’37 Ford
Pickup in the canyon years
Ago, but my ’37 Ford Pickup
Seems to be more part of
This world than of that
Pleasant time, long ago.

I sat in the pickup
Listening to the rain,
Drops echoing on the
Steel roof just as they
Did when I was a boy
Content to hear the rain.

Night Talk

In fire glow talking
With our son
The clock chime striking
Twelve midnight

Matters of writing
Stories done
Those in the offing
King and knight

Stopping to measure
Moments of treasure

January 16, 2022

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