Historic Tree – Do Not Climb

the sign said, not
… enjoy its shade by the busy road
… touch the barky edge of its life and seasons
… feel the gnarly strength of its limbs
… remember the stories of its wooden rings
… take a dropped leaf for your box of treasures.

The sign was a prohibition
by caretakers preserving
its history, quarantining
its life. Fathers and mothers
of the caretakers imagined
its limbs the prow
of a ship, a trapeze
for swinging, a lap
for reading, but
they now reside in life-care
communities where
no one comes to climb.

Lynne

Celebrate at sixty-five –
youth, career and kids survived,
BCG, two husbands past,
braless through the sixties blast,
antsy at a southern prom,
proud success as Katy’s mom.

You bathed your bones in rapid rivers,
climbed to where the eagle quivers,
rode your bike with strength and speed
so no one calls you knobby-kneed,
on and on, your brain still edits
strategy and carbon credits.

You picked a man informed and ready
to be your partner, keep you steady,
opened up your Lincoln house,
opened up your Lincoln spouse,
Viagra, K-Y, estrogen,
chemical coitus, one big grin.

You found the opportunity
to build a new community,
old chums too, you’ve kept in touch
with those who shared with you so much,
and earned a deep felt loyalty
from us whose friend you’ll always be.


Yes, life you challenged one-on-one
sometimes lost, sometimes won,
but now your aching body veers
closer to the Advil years.
Not yet, you shout, your clenched jaw set,
I’ve more to do, I ain’t dead yet.

Shrine

Beach pieces,
seawall assembly,
low tide footprints,
deer, dogs, disbelievers,
shelter from some tides, wind,
modest monumental bequests,
requests for safety, health
by unsure parents
adopting anyway
bits of shells,
feathers,
stones.

Unresolved

Jackhammer, smartest, whiz, IBM
machine on legs, applauded
by Senators, Presidents, me.

An acolyte, ambiguous
about our mission, I wanted
hard-eyed insight, wire-
rimmed command,
rationality – emotion no
substitute for reason.
Just five months after
I arrived, you left me
to discover what you knew already.

When you knew and didn’t say –
was it loyalty? The unified front?
Influencing from the inside?
Did you hope digging deeper,
one final jackhammer
would break through?
Fired,
did you wince with terrible
irony when the tunnels spewed
their wrath on us?

That’s when I began to get it,
our losing.
Doubting,
I stayed, my analyses
piling up – spending higher,
backpacked supplies unstoppable,
database filling with bodies.

Much later, in remembrance,
you said we got it wrong,
terribly wrong.
You probed for lessons which
I studied wondering
if eleven lessons
were enough?

I think
you were not a computer.
No machine weeps
into office curtains, walks disheveled
past the posts of power, loves
the son who protests
his dad’s war.

Still
our faces reflect
on that dark wall.

Married

They walk briskly,
every day, early,
on the side of the road facing traffic.

She wears a soft pink shirt, tan shorts.
He wears a floppy hat, faded pants, shirt with long sleeves.

Their children have children.
Both wear glasses,
Neither hears very well.

They talk –
what do they say after a lifetime?

They don’t hold hands,
but their steps match
perfectly.

Secrets

Soft and relaxed in the afternoon sun
They’re wrapped in each other, quiet and done.
The hot twisting action, entwining and wet
Has run through its cycle, the sensors reset.
Tumbling no longer unsettles their form,
As they lie in the sunlight, breezy and warm.
Do they remember their tight fitting fashion,
The bulging and tugging of previous passion?
Or, are they content in their soft cotton folds
With elastic forgotten as it’s gotten old?
Much like the old lovers, the fresh wash remains
Still warm with the secrets of Victoria and Haines.

Retirement

Today presents
an uncomfortable gift,
of disorientation and discovery,

unwrapping
to the horizon
or maybe not so far,

inviting
what I will be
from what I’ve been,

distinguishing
what I do
from who I am,
unfinished