POEM OF THE WEEK
This webpage contains poems by Richard Greene. Poems are posted to the page weekly. The poem for the current week appears first followed by previously posted poems .
Poem for This Week
February 5-12, 2012
The Theater Is Closed
I mourn the Yiddish theater,
already in decline
before I,
California born,
was even aware it existed.
I learned of it
when we moved to New York
and I went with my mother
to the Lower East Side
for pastrami, corned beef, lox
and other deli delights.
I’d see the marquee signs for plays
(with Jacob Adler, Boris Tomashevsky, Molly Picon)
alien to me as Chinese opera,
I who know little Yiddish,
a smattering of words and phrases
pungent but quaint.
I mourn that stewpot of emotions
simmering off stage as on,
those old world theater people,
with their soap opera lives,
aspiring to higher art,
the audiences with their old-country minds
devoted to simpler fare,
seeing their unmoored lives reflected
in the shimmering pool of stage,
all those for whom that theater
was real as life.
Poems for Previous Weeks
January 29 – February 5, 2012
Confession
I’m a serial poet.
Many times I’ve committed poetry,
taken an image, a feeling, a thought, a phrase
and manhandled it into a poem.
I plead in mitigation
that it’s a crime of passion.
Or is it temporary insanity?
January 22-29, 2012
Snow Days
I used to root for snow
wanting more and more to fall,
inchoate memories of sledding
swirling in my head
like snow in one of those old glass globes,
but now in my ninth decade
I grimace when snow begins
and the memories that form
are of shoveling, slipping and slush.
Yet along with those are memories
of days when school was closed
or I had a day off from work,
and I don’t know whether to grimace or grin.
January 15-22, 2012
Poetry in the Suburbs
Sure, there’s poetry in the country
with its fields and woods
and hills and waters
and welcoming sky,
and in the city
with its multitudes
its landmarks
its storied neighborhoods.
But in the suburbs,
among the frantic highways,
strip malls,
office parks,
overly neat subdivisions
and other conformities?
It’s there.
You just have to catch it
out of the corner of your eye.
January 8-15, 2012
The Hunger Artist
Often when I get up in the morning
the light on the valley we see from our window
or on the hills beyond
or in the sky
is doing something interesting
and I feel compelled
to write a poem about it
before sitting down to breakfast.
January 1-8, 2012
Nothing New
Tonight a year ends.
Some will see it out tooting and hollering.
Not us.
My wife’s already in bed
and I’ll join her soon.
Were it not for this poem
I’d be in my armchair reading
my eyelids succumbing to gravity,
and my head may still be on its pillow
before the clamorous hour.
Why all the fuss?
The planet goes round its star
and after a certain time
passes the point
where it’s arbitrarily said
to have started,
whereupon, all over Earth,
waves of humans bellow
and hug their fellows,
as if this carousel
hadn’t gone around
a few billion times before.
December 25, 2011 – January 1, 2012
Goldfinches in the Snow
Though dawn has come and gone
you might think the sun hadn’t risen,
the snow so heavy
you can’t see houses down the block,
but two goldfinches are at the feeder
shrugging off the flakes.
These birds, so yellow in summer,
now seem out of place
for though they wear drab winter coats,
I think of them as the color of sunshine
and am always surprised to see them
these gray and frigid days.
December 18-25, 2011
Solstice
The sky is clear this morning,
that light, early morning blue,
a few feathery clouds
like sandbars in a shallow sea.
It reminds me of that Eakins painting
of a single scull on the Schuylkill
under a sky like this
nearly a century and a half ago.
I note where the sun rises,
near its southernmost point,
south of that tall Douglas fir
someone brought
from the far edge of the continent
about the time I was born,
rising over those old mountains
just south of here
as it has
for two hundred million years.
I ask myself
how many more years I’ll have
to watch it rise.
December 11-18, 2011
Lost in Space
We cannot see the Milky Way
that disk of countless stars
one of which is ours.
We are electrified.
We have cities that shine in the night.
Our messages move fast as light.
We can travel as far in an hour
as our ancestors could in days.
We have countless libraries with more books
than that once matchless one at Alexandria.
We know what matter is made of
and many of the secrets of life.
But we cannot see the Milky Way.
December 4-11, 2011
Nightscapes
I
I was struck by the night
and saw stars.
The immensity of space
hit me between the eyes.
It was soft as velvet
but there was so much of it
my senses reeled,
standing here
on this small planet,
less than a speck of dust
in our universe.
II
along the empty road
alone in night’s expanse
suspended
in a cloud of stars
November 27 – December 4, 2011
November 20-27, 2011
That’s Amore
The moon can be seen
from our front window
rising this very moment
from the hilltops across the valley.
We see it so only this time of year
when the leaves are gone
and our satellite
is in the right quarter.
It’s full tonight
a perfect disk
for our delectation,
yellow, as it is
when low in the sky,
looking, it’s true,
like a big cheese,
one of those wheels
I used to see on display
in Italian delicatessens.
November 13-20, 2011
Signs of the Season
The geese are back on Paradise Pond,
an armada of them
floating peacefully in a warm November sun
which, low in the sky,
though it’s only mid-afteroon,
dazzles the ruffled water.
Dry leaves drift
across my field of vision.
I don’t need a calendar
to tell me Fall has come.
November 6-13, 2011
Jane Austen at Fort Dix
I heard a broadcast some time ago
commemorating Fats Waller
whose centenary it was.
They played Ain’t Misbehavin”
and it took me back almost sixty years
to when I was a draftee at Fort Dix
and spent my Sundays at the enlisted men’s club.
Though I’m not a clubbable type
it was the best place to escape from the barracks
where there was the risk of being called upon for extra duty.
I was working my way at the time
through the complete works of Jane Austen
(which I kept well concealed the rest of the week)
and secluded myself in a balcony
reading those works so far from the military mind
while a fellow refugee played piano downstairs
and sang in a clear Irish tenor.
Ain’t Misbehavin was one of the songs he sang.
Fats Waller, Jane Austen and an army base.
Now those Sabbaths in that club,
deep in that place I’d have shunned if I’d had a choice,
sing amongst my memories.
October 30 – November 6. 2011
Unseasonable
It was dusk all day today
the temperature not much above freezing
and a little after two in the afternoon
snowflakes started to float down past the window.
Soon there were herds of them,
stampeding.
It seemed more like Thanksgiving than late October.
Then I took a nap
and when I awoke
there were three inches,
nine to twelve predicted.
It looks like a Bing Crosby Christmas.
I must be dreaming.
October 23-30, 2011
Pictures of Yesteryear
Looking for an old photo
I came across another
from almost sixty years ago.
It was rolled up in a mailing tube
addressed to my mother
in the handwriting of my youth
and labeled prominently
Reception Station
Company C 14.7
Fort Dix, N.J.
September 15, 1954.
I’m at the far left of the back row
cap raked low over eyes
looking about fifteen,
though I’d already finished graduate school,
and I think to myself
if my children looked at this photo
it would seem to them
like ones from early in the century did to me,
alluding to wars known only from books,
while in my mind
the years elapsed
seem hardly more than months
and those days like recent history.
October 9-16, 2011
Hydrangeas
Our house is crowded with hydrangeas
parlor, kitchen, dining room,
some a profusion of blue
others green wannabes,
rescued by my wife
from the late season chill,
so with these we must make do
until summer comes again
and the hydrangeas.
October 2-9, 2011
Autumn Rain
a chill whisper
sifting assiduously
onto roofs and trees,
gathering the cold sap of its veins,
shafting bright spheres
at the pavement
on into the afternoon
its voice rising
with rhythmless momentum
September 18-25, 2011
August
After a hot July it’s August
when the curtain of summer sometimes lifts
and we get a faint glimpse of fall.
I no longer sweat on my morning walk,
the sun warming instead of burning,
and the house feels fresh
with the windows open all day.
They call these the dog days
which sounds like a time when you’re feeling low.
But no, it’s because the heat of this season
was ascribed by the ancients to Sirius,
the dog star,
brightest in our sky,
which rose with the sun
this time of year.
Now the nights are cool and clear
and a chorus of stars
sings the fine weather.
August 7-14, 2011
Thursday Afternoon Fever
There were nine yellow swallowtails on the butterfly bush
when I glanced out the window this afternoon.
It looked like the bush was dancing
but then I saw it was butterflies
flitting from flower to flower
their wings winking semaphore.
Stoned on nectar, I suppose,
like revelers at a rave.
I used to have violent fantasies about you
when we had a bird feeder
but now we live in a place
where bird feeders are forbidden
and your kind abound.
It’s all the acorns, I suppose.
(Do squirrels dream of oak forests
on long winter nights?)
Now I find you charming,
your diminutive ears and snouts,
seemingly all pupil eyes
and sumptuous tails,
with their manic twitching,
your supercharged loops across lawns,
the way you chase each other
and scuttle about
like animated fur hats,
the way you stick your head
around the boles of trees
to peer at me
after you’ve scrambled up
to put a safe distance between us.
A bit of birdseed, I think,
isn’t too high a price to pay
for your entertaining ways.
The Broken Guitar
There was a photo in the book review
of First World War dead,
Italians in a defile
killed by Austrians the caption said.
Italians? Austrians?
They haven’t made war on each other
for nearly a century.
Yet there the Italians lie
all in a row
as if asleep in a dormitory
except that their bodies are strangely twisted
and too dirty for sleeping men,
as if mud had flowed through that defile
trying to bury these mothers’ sons,
and on the ground
next to one of them
a muddy guitar
its head broken off.
Sound Effects
I’m learning the language of birds
to conjugate their verbs
decline their nouns
as one learns a foreign tongue for the opera.
Yesterday I listened
as an oriole’s aria
came right through our windowpanes.
Later a mockingbird made it a duet.
Today despite rain I hear
songsters everywhere.
I thought the downpour would quench their ardor.
But no. It seems to make them all the more boisterous.
I open the door
and a chorus rushes in.
Lamb White Days
It was fine today,
this fifteenth of May,
flocks of fleecy clouds
grazing in cornflower fields
watered by yesterday’s rain.
May 8-15, 2011
Lambing Time
In England once in the spring
riding through the countryside
after dark I would see
lamps aglow near barns
signaling farmers’ nightlong labors
at the birthing of the lambs.
I’d hear the bleating of the newborn
and see them still wet and unsteady.
But in the morning, riding by again,
I’d find the new arrivals
firm on their feet as matrons,
though suckling,
and sometimes gamboling, tentatively.
May 1-8, 2011
Big Bang
The magnolia tree outside our window
explodes with blossoms
half the size of dinner plates.
Walking into the living room
you’re accosted by a throng of them
crowding the window frame
with pearly pink and white
so dense they hide the tree.
You look out the window and, POW!,
those blossoms are in your face
shouting
Look at me!
Look at me!
April 24 – May 1, 2011
Still Delighting in Spring
Eighty times
I’ve witnessed the coming of spring
crocuses, daffodils, jonquils,
hyacinth, narcissus
poking miraculously
out of bare ground,
leaf buds emerging
even more miraculously
from twigs,
stippling woods and neighborhoods
with their fair green,
pointillist pigment of forsythia
dappling yards,
all the signs
that there’s life
in the winter barren matrix
of earth and wood,
and in this old body of mine.
April 17-24, 2011
It’s in the Air
Warm spring day.
Students from the college
out in numbers
on the green again grass
of the small park near town center,
some sitting, most lying, on the sward,
some in small groups
a few alone
but most in pairs,
and pheromones fill the air.
April 10-17, 2011
April Is the Cruelest Month
It looks like the last day
for the snow pile at the end of our driveway.
Once a veritable glacier
it’s down to the size of a few rags
and the temperature’s supposed to hit 60 today.
The whitest white at creation,
it’s been dirt encrusted for weeks.
Still I’m sad to see it go,
that once proud pile of snow
reduced to a wet spot on the pavement,
crying, as its last crystal liquefies,
Oh, what a world!
What a world!*
*Following in the footsteps of the author of this poem’s title, a footnote for those who don’t remember their Wizard of Oz: the last two lines of this poem were the last words of the Wicked Witch of the West, dissolving after Dorothy threw a bucket of water on her.
The phone rings a few minutes after nine.
A young woman’s voice,
a lovely voice,
could be that of a radio announcer,
a TV anchor,
contralto
forceful
self-confident
perfectly modulated
as if she’d been rehearsing this moment for weeks,
training for it for a lifetime,
practicing to get the voice just right
for this call
to a wrong number.
March 27 – April 3, 2011
Aliens
So I complete my eightieth year.
I’ve joined the nation of the aged.
For most of my years
I couldn’t imagine being old.
Those who were seemed to me
like creatures from another planet,
old throughout their lives.
But now it’s the young who are alien
and I look on them with wonder
at the time warp in which they exist.
March 20-27, 2011
Arrivals and Departures
Looking in an old file I find
a copy of my birth certificate
and notice that its says
“Born Alive, 4:27 PM”
and that moment comes to life:
afternoon light,
a hospital room,
my mother
in the full force of youth
(the certificate says “Age at last birthday 22”),
myself
kicking as infants do,
face still puffy from long immersion
still red from being squeezed into this world.
Will leaving be any easier?
March 13-20, 2011
Putting Drops in My Wife’s Ears
I bend over
those delicate appendages
and her warm woman’s body
curled up on our bed
in nightgown, robe and winter socks.
March 6-13, 2011
The Taste of Summer
Blueberries or raspberries
fresh from the bush
some for the bucket
some for the mouth.
I remember picking berries
with my mother and sister and brother,
my mother gone over six decades now,
that summer we spent at my aunt’s farm
when I was fifteen.
I can taste it even this winter day
as I breakfast on blueberries,
brought from another continent,
and I remember my mother
her voice, her dark hair, her fair face
on that berry laden hill.
February 27 – March 6, 2011
Snow White
Another snow last night.
I wouldn’t be surprised
if the number were in double digits.
Another day for lumbering around in boots
shoveling out the car
navigating slush and snow piles.
I’m running out of new ways to describe it.
It’s beautiful, for now,
coating roofs
clinging to trees
covering all
with clean whiteness.
Yes, beautiful,
but so was the evil stepmother.
Einstein in Love
“Einstein Confused in Love”
was the article’s title.
It’s hard to imagine
Einstein in love
not to speak of making love.
So with many a venerable figure,
Luther, Bach, Lincoln, Margaret Thatcher.
But that which to us seems inconceivable,
they had no trouble conceiving.
February 6-13, 2011
Snowmania
When I was young
I hoped for snow,
the more the better
for sledding and snowmen and snow angels
(snowball fights I could do without),
days off from school
and later from work,
and just the thrill
of seeing the world blanketed in white.
I continued to feel that way
even after I had cars and walks and driveways
to be dug out,
but now I’m of an age
where it’s hard for me to shovel
or maneuver a snow blowing machine,
I’m uneasy driving on snowbound streets,
and, as I no longer have work to go to,
everyday’s a snow day, so to speak.
Still, when we had a big snowfall last week
I found myself perversely hoping
for it to rise to ever greater heights.
January 30 – February 6, 2011
Your Grandfather’s War
Nearly a century ago
your grandfather fought in “the great war”.
He was in a famous battle in France
wounded by shrapnel and mustard gassed
may have shot at the enemy and been shot at—
I never asked—
may even have fought hand to hand
where you can see the grime on your enemy’s face
and the fear in his eyes
over the frantic thrust and parry of your bayonet
and his
and feel the frenzy of your own fear.
Now that war is history
so remote you can read of it
innocent of the feelings
of those who faced each other
in an effort to kill and survive.
January 23-30, 2011
Snowmen
