JUST LIKE MOTHER USED TO MAKE

Winter’s first snow

lay as thick

as my mother’s meringue


all whippy

and curliqued

fluffy yet firm

I would never eat

the snow on my driveway



I would never eat
my mother’s meringue
either

WINTER

　

Winter

is a dead man’s game

north wind bellowing insults

cutting

stinging

anvil-like solidity

beneath stiffening toes

hunched over like a drunken climber

dodging a glacier’s vengeance

Breath

in vaporous gulps

stammering in January dialect

iron landscapes

severed flatland carcass

spires of ice

hard-shell rapidity

over sun flecked roofs

serrated crescents of frost

marking the windows

sparrows skidding

across crusted canyons

dissected by diagonal planks

of waning light



light starved voices

wailing against the entombment of the season

THE ARTISAN in the HILLS

She is steeped in the Smoky Mountains,

tucked in the bodice of Appalachia,

under the spidery arms of pines and firs

stoically linked together to form a jade lace



I saw her in a craft shop,

surrounded by shelves heaving with her creations,

the ceramics and pottery willed into pieces of art

as distinctive as the carpet of fallen leaves

matting the floor of the hills



This artisan sat at the rear of the shop,

her wistful fingers nodding and prodding

the pliant canvas of clay.

As she worked, her long silver hair

framed her fiftyish face

and highlighted her beatific smile

that absently crossed her face

like a breeze sweeping the desert sand.



A lilting Nancy Griffifth ballad drifted through the shop

as effortlessly as incense, and while she worked

she hummed along with its sanguine cadence

absorbed in her own sublime universe,

snippets of sunlight pinging off the enamel skin

of the pots and vases, like opaque knats.



And as I studied this sketch of creative serenity

I envied her life in the back of the shop

tucked in the green bodice of Appalachia

WEDDING IN THE SMOKIES (12-99)

Outside the chapel

of cedar and pine

the fir and spruce trees

sway in the early December wind

like lovers locked in the reverie

of the evening’s last slow dance



Inside the chapel

there is an unexpected sterility

a house of worship unblemished

by icons and symbols

as though one worships

only what is in one’s heart



On either side of the center aisle

sit four pews

lightly populated by family and friends

who, with the whir and click of cameras

record the ceremony

within the rough-hewn simplicity

framed by four walls of Appalchian pine

so rustically built that drops of sunlight

like prying, curious eyes

spiral through the cracks



On this pristine Saturday morning

a bond is being forged

by two people in love

embarking on their own frontier

with vows taken and rings exchanged



And as a waterfall drizzles down the hillside

and a light breeze lassoes

the stubborn fir branches

two lovers step outside

their loved sealed and nestled

in the bosom of the Smoky Mountains

TIS THE SEASON…AGAIN AND AGAIN

　

Every December

my wife scurries about like a hungry mouse

in the storage space beneath the hall stairs

One by one she retrieves the boxes

as if they were delicate artifacts

exhumed from ancient Egyptian tombs

Inside the boxes

rest the glittering ornaments and miniature houses

muffled with snow, her practiced hands

lovingly directing them to their preordained positions

in her annual tableau

She decorates the tree with all the care

of a mother dressing her newborn,

while carols careen through the yuletide ether

of our living room

It is the same dance every year,

as circumscribed as winter frost on kitchen windows,

and every year her giddiness is like a carousel

that spins me back to childhood holidays,

so that for a few hours I am a boy again,

my blood bubbling with the rapture of Christmas wonderment.

CRYSTAL FALLS

Morning mist over the lake

the frosty breath of the northwoods

rolling like a sigh over the water

chilled and quiescent, eagles overhead

gliding in curlique patterns

over the treetops, the birches



as tall and trim as totems, their ashen trunks

staunchly defying Canadian winds.

Only the drone of motorboats

squander the stillness, fishermen,

poles in hand, heave lines into the snapping air,



eyes fixed on the water, their minds

clear as the sky, wait patiently for the kiss

of northern pike upon their lures.

To the west, faintly, like a

growling stomach, storm clouds

gather and groan, delineating one more chapter

in the saga of Crystal Falls.

CHRISTMAS CARD FOR A FRIEND

　

Sent a Christmas card to an old friend

whom I hadn’t seen in years.

Ours was that magical relationship called

boyhood buddies, the ones who share private jokes

and laugh at the world like a pair of haughty outsiders;

the ones who confessed

their most secret experiences to one another

like patient to doctor, sinner to priest.

Together we scaled adolescence

and beat off adulthood, reciting our personal mysteries

in V-8 cars, beers gulped to unknown hours of unseen days

as we listened to rock “n” roll on the AM radio,

fending off a world ready to snap us up

like cheap garments at a flea market.

Eventually we did what boys turning to men do:

marriage, fatherhood, army, jobs.

And before we knew it, all the secrets had been told,

the mysteries solved and forgotten,

and virginal boys became stubbly faced men

with fewer private jokes to share.

He was forced to move out of state,

bumping along the ties of a railroad job.

Even before he left there were lean stretches of silence

when the phone didn’t ring, beers were unopened

and sinewy conversations went unspoken.

He never told me he was leaving.

A mutual friend broke the news,

and for several years only Christmas cards

kept us tethered to our eroding base of friendship.

Then one year my Christmas card was returned

with a rude yellow label on the envelope that read:






Moved. Forwarding order expired.

Nor did I receive a card from him.

After thirty years we were cut loose and floating apart,

like satellites escaping the pull of gravity.

I have lost his grip and his whereabouts

as he freefalls through space,

and the envelope with the yellow label

sits unopened on the table,

one last private joke sealed inside.