Remembered Scenes

Autumn

The summer people have taken Their suvs down numbered highways, Leaving the sea to clutch

At shorefront footage And their boarded cottages While inland, on back roads

Past the pulped-out woodlots, winter People in their tired unpainted houses On the untilled farms

Stare through sagging window-frames At cluttered yards surrounded By broken kiddie-cars, old tires, clam creels,

Or divine the promise of their future From frayed configurations in the entrails Of aged automobiles.

Disturbers of the Peace

Well, where would they be Without peace? As for those with broken-

Rhythmed poems, how wring Subtleties From jabs of tongue and stutter

Against remembered hymn or hum? But Reality, in our time, demands . . . all

right then, let a mirror’s Cracks compose in jagged Reflected glints the real

Spectrum From our refractory illusion, The singleness of light.

Why They Are Not All Alike

In Mexico she’d found a carpenter Who so pleased her with his painted chair

She, on impulse, asked he make three more, Identical, a charming set of four.

She came to pick them up. She hadn’t dickered To reduce the price, but now surmised

She might get four for only thrice the sticker For the first one. But how then surprised

She was to learn, for four, that the expense Was as for five! Now how did that make sense?

He replied he’d have to charge her more —Repeating what he’s made would be a bore,

And, as for creating new designs, prevents His carving painted chairs not seen before.