The Woodlot

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"The Woodlot" was first published by Alabama Literary Review in 2016. It appears in my book Pointing Home.

 

The Woodlot

 

Eleven years ago we bought the house,

a cottage on a quiet lane, where trees

dominate the landscape, where the Ville

de Saint-Lazare protects its woods and wetlands

with an environmental bylaw bible

thicker than the girth of any oak

or sugar maple sapling one may wish

to cut without a permit from a stern

and rigorous inspector. So it was

we moved into our house in mid-October

and filled over a hundred bags with leaves

we’d raked until our backs and hands could take

no more of it. There were about a dozen

trees in our backyard, but the lot behind

was brush and bramble underneath a stand

of ash and linden, ironwood and one—

just one—white birch. It was a wooded lot,

and it had been the clincher on the deal:

no rear neighbors. We’d have bought

it if we could. Some day. Or so we thought.

 

You and those trees, he groused, a mild reproach,

because he, too, enjoyed the privacy

and loved the flocks of chickadees who fed

from outstretched hands, the squirrels and rabbits who

built their dreys and warrens in that wood.

Wild raspberries were plentiful in summer;

each spring trillium and columbine

shot up to ease the slap of April snow;

and often frigid January seemed

less so, as northern cardinals’ wheet! wheet! wheet!

whistled through the branches of the lot

that bordered on our dog’s last resting place.

Last year in early May the lot was sold,

and all the trees, including the lone birch,

were felled, chain-sawed and hauled away. The laws

I mentioned don’t apply (so I’ve been told)

to new construction, and a house was built.

A matching shed. A five-foot chain-link fence

secures new neighbors from the likes of me—

the one who trespassed. She who hugged that tree.

Click HERE to hear the northern cardinal's song.

Click HERE to hear one of the songs of the black-capped chickadee.

Chaos

 As the United States prepares for another four years of corruption, indecency, and utter chaos, I was reminded of my sonnet Χαος (below) which appears in my fifth collection, Pointing Home.

 

 

Never forget January 6, 2021

Chaos

 

Chaos speaks a language of its own—

a lexicon of howl, hue and cry;

a dialect that contradicts the lie

of rationality.  Its bone-on-bone

inflection duplicates the wordless moan,

and parses the wild syllable of why.

It deconstructs all goodness from good-bye

with syllabaries rigorous as stone.

 

The idiom of Chaos can translate  

with ease the accent of a South Atlantic                   

gale, the timbre of a red-tailed hawk 

before the kill. It will not mitigate—

sprung from the pen’s sweet ordered lines—the frantic,

bounding pulse. Declining double-talk

 

and claptrap, Chaos gives it to us straight.

 

 

Madison Street: Coda

 "Coda" is the final poem in the series, "Madison Street". 

In music, a coda is a concluding section that signals the end of a piece or movement.

The word "coda" can also refer to the concluding part of a literary or dramatic work, or something that serves to round out, conclude, or summarize.

 

I hope readers who have been following the sonnet sequence were able to get a glimpse of what it was like in my neighborhood. 

I'm sure I could write another twenty-five sonnets on Madison Street, but that will have to wait for another time, if time allows.

 

[If you click on line 11, it will be explained]

 

"the boys flown to the belly of the beast"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Coda

 

So here we are, approaching three score ten,

“Boomers” from a lost millennium,

perched on Simon’s metaphoric park

bench, waiting, musing, I remember when . . .,

wise to what we knew, and what has come

to light since days of dancing in the dark.

 

And if we misremember, fantasize,

omitting secrets, cover-ups and lies—

the boys flown to the belly of the beast,

the pennyroyal cure, the preemie fraud,

the tender mercies of the parish priest­—

cut us some slack. Our innocence was flawed:

we failed to spot the specter at the feast,

and every one of us believed in God.

 

  

 

 

 

Listen to the Old Friends/Bookends theme HERE

 

Madison Street: Kitty Kramer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kitty Kramer

 

There’s Kitty Kramer, racing double-quick

on that red Schwinn of hers, a baseball card

clacking in the spokes. She lives next-door

in an ancient double-block of ghetto brick

with thirteen double cousins whose back yard

is way too tame for Kitty anymore.

 

You won’t catch Kitty on the hopscotch squares

or jumping rope. She’s game for double dares.

 

Last spring it was those roller skates, but soon

she’ll drive her Daddy’s tail-finned Pontiac.

As Kitty flies this summer afternoon,

I see a girl who jams the luggage rack,

indifferent to the way the Full Crow Moon

trails a bus that won’t be doubling back.

 

 

 

Madison Street: Fire

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fire

 

The frequent sorrows in our neighborhood—

the youngest Grayce girl and the Bennett boy,

the Lambert children dying one by one

of CF (something not yet understood)—

eclipsed sporadic stretches of pure joy

and betterment, hardscrabble and hard-won.

 

The night the Dorsey family died, my trust

in God’s all-wise, all-merciful, all-just

core attributes was tested. No one knew

what caused the blaze; some said it had to be

faulty wiring, a blocked-up chimney flue,

or lights on their aluminum Christmas tree.

 

A vacant lot now stands as witness to

the distance of some loving deity.

 

 

 

 

Madison Street: "Mea culpa"

 

 

Boysenberry ice cream

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mea culpa

 

Ringing his bell, old Ciccio Antony,

the ice cream man, arrives. For just five cents

you get to taste the flavor-of-the-day,

but on your birthday, two big dips for free.

Having had enough of indigence

that sweltering Fourth, and knowing I might pay

a hefty price, I coolly jumped the line,

barefacedly alleged I’d just turned nine,

then claimed my purple prize. But someone knew

I’d come into the world in January.

Wasting not a minute, Eddie blew

the whistle on my luscious boysenberry

sin. Still, I got off with just a few

Our Fathers and a fervent Hail Mary.

 

 

 

Madison Street: "Boots"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 "Boots"

 

When Mr. Cooper died at ninety-three

his house was rented out in no time flat --

for who would buy a rundown clapboard painted

what kindly Mrs. Lake called “burgundy”?

Still, the gentle man who’d tipped his hat

was missed. So Mrs. Moffat nearly fainted

when in moved Boots, her mother, and her daughter

(Tsk-tsk, born out of wedlock!); but I thought her

cool. They called her Boots because she wore

red high-heeled boots no matter where she went.

Phil’s father claimed she was a two-bit whore

who had to turn cheap tricks to pay the rent.

But after Boots decamped to Baltimore,

I’d ape her swagger to my heart’s content.

 

Note: An earlier version of "Boots" published as "Luxuria" [Lust] as one of the sonnets in "SALIGIA: Seven Deadly Sonnets" can be found in my second collection, Glad and Sorry Seasons.  

 

Madison Street: Mrs. Moffat

 

From the Website "Ridiculously Retro" - Spring Cleaning - the 50s way

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mrs. Moffat

 

She’s out there early with her rubber gloves

and Comet cleanser, scowling at the smudge

or speck she may have overlooked last time.

 

I wonder whether Mrs. Moffat loves

the dull endeavors of the household drudge

or simply hates the mere idea of grime.

 

The mailman and the paperboy are wary

of Mrs. Moffat.  Children think she’s scary.

 

She scours her front porch steps and even sweeps

the little swath of dirt that runs between

the sidewalk and the curb; and though she keeps

her panes impeccable, her storm door clean,

who’s to know if Mrs. Moffat weeps

when no one rings her bell on Halloween.

 

 

 

 

 

Madison Street: Kidnapped!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kidnapped!

 

One summer, after dark, when all the bats

had come and gone, and we’d squeezed diamond rings

from lightning bugs we’d captured in a jar,

we heard the screeches  -- was it Mildred’s cats,

we wondered, or some drunken ding-a-lings,

or Davie torturing his steel guitar?

We didn't know the symbol of the Fates

could be a Chevy with New Jersey plates.

 

Our neighbor's brutal ex had forced his way

into her house and snatched young Jimmy, who

had just been put to bed. Somewhere, someday

the cops might get a tip and follow through;

that is, if Jimmy’s in the USA,

not spirited away to Timbuktu.