Jon Wolston's Poetry Archive

Crunching wet gravel,
three yellow bitches chase sticks.
The rain starts again.

Leading an ox team,
Ms Elderly New Hampshire
graces Old Home Day.

She stitched her own
Uncle Sam costume
at four score and six years of age.

After the parade:
The Odyssey, on cassette—
library discard.

My buddy Kelley,
another Quaker poet,
shares her lawn and light.

Out in the blue rain
two loons sail past each other
as if not speaking.

It dawned on me
she was a piece of work.
My neck fell asleep
and woke up tingling again.
Outside automobiles
huffed and puffed in the streets.

There you have it,
I said to myself,
pure and simple.

Surly jets cruised the skies
fracturing layers of cold air.
It’s all too much, the world, I thought.

I mean try counting all the bricks on Manhattan Island.
Let God take care of it.

Just let me be a poet, mom.
I’ll write a few about Lake Squam.
You’ll be proud one day I hope.
Sorry. I am such a dope.

I’ve toughened up my Buddha abs
to fend your not-so-subtle jabs.
The way you died just broke my heart.
You put the hearse before the cart.

I was born to a broken heart.
My brother dead, you fell apart.
He would have suffered all his life
so you were glad you said one night.

Aren’t you glad I cleared this up
in time to drain this bitter cup?
So I no longer live in fear
that suddenly I’ll disappear.

Troy leaps off the rocks
into the swirling black lake,
barking in the spray.

The wind blows tattoos.
Two puppies watch then race
along the gray shore.

Soon three labs paddle
in unison around the raft—
two yellows, one black,

each media-blind.

Diving for sunfish
above the stone jetty:
ten merganser ducks.

Six split off, coast north
the wind behind them,
four more soon following,
their necks glinting red in the sun
through the trees over Red Hill.

Not so choppy today,
the waves clucking on the rocks,
the wind barely audible.

Stop all this nonsense!
The white lake melts every year…
broken by the spring.

As the breeze picks up,
whop! an acorn on the roof…
the green lights glide north
toward Sandwich Bay.
Dusk in August is so still.
The red lights drift south.

(from Paradise Root-stock, Stonington Publishers, 2008)

So far as I know
the only gents in the world
with brick outhouses
were Tom Jefferson
of Poplar Forest, VA,
a sitting president
(who had two of them—one for each term)
and novelist Henry James
on his Rye estate
in England, near the Channel.

Now don’t all you others
step forward at once.