That 70's Photo


Bash Bish Falls
a long bouncy,  packed-earth approach
in a thin-boned stroller for a one-year-old,
even one with a forgiving attitude
toward the state of things into which she has been delivered:
The doddering farmhouse with wood cook stove
in which we bake sour cream coffee cake
and vegetable casserole
while the cat sleeps in the barn annex
fighting off strays at midnight with operatic screeches,
and the relations from the borough Queens are ticketed
on the way to the wedding

The long leafy way, like a carriage drive
designed for an 18th century gathering
of French grandees costumed as peasants,
leads to the falls,
that center stage around which the universe
wraps wings of unmolested forest,
rocky defiles, vague invitations to a parking area,
and the dramatically stone-faced stairway to the heights,
which I climb, holding in mind
 -- like the flame in the void --
the child, and the mother





They Fell Without Color


No call for the orange, the yellow, the red
A meal without savor, a soup without bread
A cake without candles, an unnoticed birth
Bare lonely shelves in the pantry of earth
A soul without chocolate, or feeling or care
A sigh in the moonlight, but no one is there

They fell without music, with yawning, with gaps
Left holes in the city, woke babies from naps
They fell with a silence that nobody heard
They set off no crackle, exploded no bird
They fell like a heartache, a mystical thing
They shriveled like saints, like prayers you can't sing

They fell in the morning, were gone by the eve
No eye marked their turning, by nightfall they leave
They drop like the hour, the loss of the sun
They drop like the rainstorm, dark to our sight
They wrinkle and brown and crumble and fall
And scuttle in gutters, a brown boneless ball
And leave us alone through a long starless night
To ponder a year with the season undone





Sixth Extinction
(after The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert, 2014)

What will disappear?
Toasters, roller coasters
Piled books on the night-table library,
the ever-unread and the old favorites tumbled together,
Star fish, sea urchins, the nautilus cephalopod
Snow-salted East End streets on "Call The Midwife"
Those picturesque December days
when an hour or two of light is precious beyond all gifts
Bird feeder gatherings
pecking over lists of the season's bests
The cardinal on the crab apple bough
his vestments of red
The slowly aged turning of seasonal reflections,
like cheese in a farmstead locker
Eat me, Earth,
I was always your product