Were you there? Was that YOU???!!!??? [Nope. It was Dad. He's confessed]

During Beethoven at the Sunday Mandolin Concert in Todi, Italy

As redwood to bonsai in trees,
As hurricane to trade-wind in breeze,
As limburger to cheddar in cheese,
As Chamberlain to Mom-and-kids in appease,
As Vienna Boys Choir to  Hoboken High in "Glee's",
As taxes to bus-fare in fees,
As diamond to gardenia in please,
As hospital to Primatene in wheeze,
As Roman Empire to Granada in seize,

As ice age to icebox in freeze,
 

As Earl Grey to Lipton in teas,
As killer to honey in bees,
As Paul Newman to Mickey Rooney in "he"s,
As Marlene Dietrich to Shirley Temple in "she"s,
As Claire's to a camel's in knees,
As the Rosetta Stone to Little Orphan Annie Decoder Ring in keys,
As Gypsy Rose Lee to the Pink Poodle in "G"s,
As circus-trained to our dog Bud's in fleas,
As the National Enquirer to the Christian Science Monitor in sleaze - - -

So there was this INCREDIBLE
                                    SNEEZE   !   !   ! 

June 1992

A Mother in 1954, or Why I Am a Masterpiece :)

Accompli

A time ago, in teachered halls,
I waged a struggle
To outdo
My fellows in the game of school.
And I can say,
To some extent, I did indeed.
I wrote exams concise and clear
In such a way
My tutors thought
They'd taught me much.
And while I ciphered, memorized,
Translated, studied
With the "grinds" -
I also dabbled into sports
And mixed with the politicos,
The all-round student,
Magna cum laude.
But I felt no pride --
More that I'd somehow failed.
The hollow honors
Could not fill my heart
With feelings of accomplishment.

I love the mountains,
So I ranged in them -
In worlds of earth and sky;
Of jagged rock and cushion moss;
Hot sun; dusty trails;
Cool lakes at timberline.
I often spurned
The intimate comfort
Of a tiny, rushing stream
For barren grandeur
And perhaps for some subjective notoriety
Of summit registers.
Snow slopes called me too;
And I saw them fresh, untracked;
Or gay with Sunday crowds.
In mountains I found solace
For my soul,
But no answer to its quest.

I have worked in science
On the edge of knowledge.
A step or two -
Small but firm -
I have taken on the ladder
(Of someone else's crafting)
Where no one else has stood
For a moment.
The challenge of problem, solved;
The warmth of job well done;
But call to the spirit?  No.

The arts I touched as well.
I turned the brush to canvas,
Writing with color;
The pen to paper,
Sketching with rhyme.
Searching, searching myself
For some minor masterpiece.
Pleasure I found,
But not elation - not exultation.

Till now.
Now I but stroke the silken hair
Of my slumbering son
And I am graduated
Magna Cum Laude,
Into the World
Of surpassing accomplishment
Which I have sought.

To Eric and David, 1954

It's mowing season

GRASS

This rectangle of grass
Is a lively canvas.

Dandelions are doing a synchronized
Yellow dance.

A choreography of leaps
Over green leaf blades...
A chorus of hundreds...

It is a primitive Grandma Moses.
It is a sophisticated Gustav Klimt.
Children's crayons
Are bright enough for it.







Comes the minimalist movement,
A mower will alter the lawn
To a shimmering green Rothko.

September 4, 2001

Savoring the delicious broken pieces of dreams which are reality

Dreams

(In hopes that my 3 children may have a
birthright and not a mess of potage)

I hope my children have their secret dreams,
Extravagant and so naively wild
That shatter wretchedly they must;
But from such dreams, I think,
Distill the dews,
The small successes,
Which refresh life's mornings.

* * * 

Myself - 
A silly, gawky, stick-thin child, -
I had the wide-eyed pillow gall
To see myself as May Queen
At our Westwood School May Festival.
Three years (!) I planned for it.
Most popular sixth grade girl.
By secret written ballot, please!   I prayed.
I pulled that dreamlike taffy
Night by night.  In it I won.
In it I feigned surprise:  I reigned with regal cool;
My short straight hair was ringlets down my back.
Of course, it wasn't me,
But lovely Patty Anderson they crowned,
And photos show my short cropped head
Thrust forward in a line with
The flag I carried in the march behind the queen.
But still I had a thousand reigning days, not one.
And now I am that queen, beloved by all,
When one child casts his ballot:  "Moncherooper,
I love you".

* * * 

Another dream I had
A novelist by age of 10.   "The
Far Distant Oxus," which I read, was written
by two girls.

And so I too could grace the shelves.
I practiced writing pen names
And book-jacket blurbs about myself
And would write poems at midnight
In my bed by filtered street lamps.
Rejection slips lie in a drawer
That has a lot of me in poems
and stories.
But David (12 years) giggled when he read
My mountain tale.
Ho ho - the broken dream bits glittered then.
If no dreams - nothing.

* * *

In third grade
(Mrs. Stone's class -
She was short and almost stout
With hair drawn tightly back into a knot)
We children drew a picture
Of the Eskimos.
I had some vaulting neon northern lights
And busy hunters by their igloos
In the glow.

I dreamt that painting was so real
It came alive.
While it was on display
(How good a painting it most surely was!)
I checked each morning when I came to class
To see if any of my figures had moved at night.
I thought they had!
I knew they had - the painting was so real!
And one bouquet of marigolds I drew
Were such bright orange that I sniffed at them-
They had to smell!
When Ricki did her pastel of our Cull dog,
I hope she thrilled as much.
There is such genius in all children's art.

* * *

Clear dreams I wish my children
Not hazed and shaky ones.
And strength I wish them
To savor the delicious broken 
Pieces of those dreams
Which are reality.