I want to share this poem before July melts its way into the history books.  It was begun in July of 2011, and two years later I've added the finishing touches.
     I was sitting in the shade on a hot, dry Sunday in July, trying to write but lulled into listening to the steady drone of my neighbor's saw.  It was a pleasant sound and as I listened I began to consider the differences in the work in which we were both engaged; the different ways we build the things we do; other definitions of work.  The resulting poem follows.

Men at Work

 

The rhythmic buzz of my neighbor's saw

eating through hardwood thick July weeks -

arid days I saturate with ink -

reinforces what I've come to know:

we are both the tools we have chosen

to create our handmade monuments.

He constructs well-crafted additions

to his home while I build line on line,

composing verse on such minutiae

as nighthawks circling my son's yard at

twilight, working on his laboring

illusion that all wings at sunset

belong, no doubt, to myth building bats.

 

 

 

 

 

     Recently, I've noticed a number of spider tents strewn across my lawn in the early morning.  They make me cringe.  I (take your pick) detest...abhor...loathe spiders.  As far as I'm concerned, there are two things to remember about spiders: 1) there is no such thing as a small spider, 2) there is absolutely no reason for spiders to exist on this earth.  I read once that spiders are so numerous that we are never more than 3 feet away from one of them.  Let that sink in and then take a good look around your present location.  I'm beginning to itch.
     So, two spider stories before today's poem.  The first concerns that childhood classic, Charlotte's Web.  One weekend when my daughter was much younger, we stumbled upon the animated version of Charlotte's Web while searching the myriad television stations for something decent to watch.  I had neither read the book nor seen the movie, so when she asked to watch it I agreed, which was no small gesture on my part given my arachnophobia.  (The things we do for our children...)  Anyway, I was actually enjoying the movie when I was taken completely by surprise by (spoiler alert) Charlotte's death.  I had grown quite fond of her and I simply sat there, stunned, with tears in my eyes.  I turned to my daughter and asked, accusingly, why she hadn't warned me of this.  Her reply?
"Dad, you hate spiders."
     To this day, I have not read the book, nor will I, and I will never watch that movie again.
     Second story.  My friend/neighbor works in a prison warehouse.  One summer day in 1985 he came to me carrying a Styrofoam cup and stating he had something he wanted me to see.  He turned the cup so I could see into it.  There was plastic wrap sealing the top of the cup.  Clinging to the wrap was a jet black spider with a red hourglass on its abdomen.  I was looking at a Black Widow Spider, which to my knowledge was not indigenous to Pennsylvania.  Strangely enough, it was at once strikingly beautiful and hideously monstrous.  I asked him where had found it.  He told me it was in a shipment of goods coming from Louisiana. 
     Who knows how many of those things are currently roaming Pennsylvania?

Black Widow

(on First Seeing a Live Black Widow Spider, 8/18/05)

 

 

That this deadliest,

sleek, terrible beauty

should be of one possessed

whose only duty

would seem draining the life from all who pass,

depends on your end of the hourglass.

 

 

Humorous aside:  After reading this poem to and discussing it and other poems with an 11th grade English class, the teacher admitted to me that she thought I was writing about a woman.  Not a bad idea.

 

 

      Today's poem is not the piece I originally wanted to post.  However, after reading my first choice for the hundredth time I found something I did not like.  Such is the life, I suppose.  I'll work on that and offer it at a later date.
     One of my favorite things to do is sit beneath the shady canopy of my large maple tree and read, write, or simply watch and listen.  The following poem came from listening.

 

 

Eavesdropping...

 

...in my yard, I hear fragments

of cardinals calling children home for night;

domino dogs barking along the length

of the alley, one by one dropping word

of some important news; two trains passing

from opposite ends of parallel tracks,

their mournful laments echoing of rain.

Trains always sound like rain,

                                                 and a flurry

of red gathers high in the tall hemlock.

A boy I don't know, walking his black lab,

turns my corner as we feel the first drops.

The kids are home.  The dogs and trains were right.