Poetry
Housatonic
A great red barn
bedecked with cupolas,
immense double doors
and a many gabled roof,
stood ornate and stately
behind the ordinary homes
off-Kirk in Housatonic.
That house will always be our home
no matter who lives there now we are gone.
Abandoned to the winds for forty years,
we bought her cheap and held her very dear.
Horses once lived in those wrought iron stalls;
and later the local kids played basketball,
in what was eventually to become
our kitchen, living, dining, family room.
Music, pets, cooking and parties held sway
at the end of our grandfathered right-of-way.
Together we made a home of her,
when we were we and, seemingly, secure.
My girls are women now and grown,
and I am living on my own.
Judy (Salsbury) Staber 1988
In Defense of One British 20th Century Poet
You Say,
from your pantechnicon of knowledge
and from your well-honed opinion,
You Say,
That ALL the major modern,
ALL the great con-tem-por-ary
twentieth century poets
are American.
You Pound,
into our unschooled,
un-metered minds,
Their names – One By One.
And I,
Who know far less of such meters than you,
cannot intellectually disagree.
But I ask you,
please, consider
the librarian from Hull,
Who captured,
in a few well-chosen words and rhymes,
The lives and times
of the little-known and less-loved people,
Who live, like Eliot’s Prufrock,
Ordinarily,
Who pass their humdrum years
Uneventfully,
on housing estates;
In the council houses and tenements
in a land that is never boasted
in those “SEE BRITAIN NOW” posters.
They exist,
not in castles, nor in thatch and beam quaintness,
but in the flat Mid Lands.
They talk,
not in cockney nor with pear-shaped vowels.
but in dull-mono-tones.
And if you ever,
As I, once often did,
Ride on British Rail
Through that dull, flat,
middle part of England,
You will know
That “The Whitsun Weddings”
is a brilliant portrait
of those gray lives
Caught in passing.
Read “Here” or “Dockery and Son,”
And you will know them, too.
You
Who are so American,
Can praise your poets profoundly
(and justly so).
But I,
who am split across the sea,
in both my culture
and my loyalty,
I find sad memories, deep meaning and exaltation in reading Philip Larkin.
for Michael Gizzi. 1986
REFLECTIONS ABOUT FAIRIES
“There are Fairies at the bottom of our garden
I know you don’t believe me, but there are.”
That’s how a childhood poem goes.
As children in England watching “Peter Pan”
we were asked “Do you believe in Fairies?”
And to save Tinkerbell we all shouted “Yes.”
Back then I did believe in fairies.
I knew they watched over me and my friends.
Of course, everyone laughed at me for believing.
How could I not?
Every morning I would find traces of them:
in the bejeweled spiderwebs
hanging on the morning grass,
and on the mushroom stools,
where they would sit with time to pass.
Then I grew up and stopped believing, yet…
Now there really are fairies at the end of our garden.
Lately I’ve seen them every night.
Up by the Dahlia bed there’s a little glow of light
And I wonder why they are here now.
Every evening after the sun’s gone down
I look out of our bedroom window and see
Light flickering out there.
Are the fairies dancing? Meeting?
It’s a comfort to know they are so close,
Keeping watch over us as we sleep.
They are always there, at the same place,
But when morning comes, they leave no trace.
My husband tells me the light in the garden is the light from
my alarm clock that reflects in the big mirror at the end
of our bed, which in turn is reflected through the window
over the bed, creating a small illusion of distant eerie light.
“It’s only an illusion.” he says.
But I know better!
Jws Old Chatham, June, 2024
ANY REPLACEMENT PARTS?
It’s five in the morning.
Our flight leaves in an hour.
Check Bag
Get Boarding Passes
Continue on to TSA.
“Identification and boarding pass, please.
Any photo IDs.”
License out.
“Thank you ma’am.
Are you with him?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Over seventy-five”
We nod.
“Then you may keep your shoes on!”
Thank you God.
“Stand in that line there, please”
“Any replacement parts?
Knees?
Hips?
Shoulders?
Anything?”
“No, not yet” we almost sing.
The agent says,
“Well, good for you!”
At last we’re done,
our carry-on too.
On we trudge
to Gate C eight.
We cut it close,
but we’re not late.
Four days later, a reversed run
Another non-stop one
On this one we just might
Get into Albany by midnight.
Our flying holiday is done.
We’re home and safe in bed by One.
Next day, I go to get the mail.
On a postcard, I am told
Printed in forty point Ariel Bold
YOUR REPLACEMENT PARTS ARE AVAILABLE NOW!
Whaat!
Oh, it’s from Subaru!
Jws July 2018
WILDFLOWER WEDDING
Sweet Cicely put on her Lady’s Smock
And her Lady’s Mantle edged with dew
She added a pair of Foxgloves
And a Bonnet of brightest Blue.
So she and her Sweet William
By Jack in the Pulpit were wed
And under all the Shooting Stars
“Forget-Me-Not” they said.
But theirs was only Love-in-a-Mist
A marriage of Youth-and-Old-Age
For she was a Brazen Hussy* and he
Was a Russian Sage.
Her Honesty’s in question,
She was having too good a Thyme
Under the Indian Blankets,
(It’s hard to make this rhyme).
For he’d found her on the Bedstraw
Her Ladies Tresses awry
With Joe Pye Weed and Ragged Robin,
And Basil standing nearby.
They’d shed their Dutchman’s Breeches
And hung them on Jacob’s Ladder
“You’ll Rue this day, you Pigweed,”
He cried growing Madder and sadder.
So now his Love Lies Bleeding
No Woundwort will Self heal
He’s donned a purple Monkshood
And swears on Solomon’s Seal
By all the King’s Spears and Dames Rockets
That he’s no more William the Sweet
He said “Lady’s Slippers shall Touch-Me-Not
My love was too Bittersweet.”
* my grandmother called Celandine or wild poppies, Brazen Hussies.
>Jws 2002
published in The Countryman 2000, Honeybee Press 2001
COUNTRY ROAD ON LEAP YEAR DAY
Farther along the rutted road we go,
The woods are bright with little flags of snow.
Temporary streams in runnels are tumbling
Along this by-way and beneath the crumbling
Old stone walls from many years ago, when
All this land was cleared and farmed by men
With horses, who performed backbreaking labors,
And knew good fences always make good neighbors.
Now, high atop a sugar maple tree,
Beside the beech and shagbark hickory,
Standing sentinel is a squirrel’s dray.
Mother Nature once more is holding sway.
Birdsong promises that Spring is in the air…
Oh! Who has tossed that empty beer can there?
Jws February 29, 2000
Bowker’s Wood
The evening light of spring in Bowker’s Wood
Is soft and dapples on the greening ground.
The earth once more reveals her maidenhood,
While the river curves an oxbow all around.
The path beneath my feet feels cushioned, soft
From seasons of pine needles fallen there.
The straight-limbed trees wear all their green aloft,
While a west wind soughs in mourning and despair,
For long-gone days when all the land was pretty
And the river running by was pure and fair.
It sighs and soughs because it’s such a pity
That places like these woods are all too rare.
The fiddleheads will soon be all unfurled,
Will Hobbamocko* overcome this world?
*Hobbamocko was the Mahican spirit of evil.
Jws Spring, Glendale 1988
Corin
A Sonnet for my son
Now and then she thinks of him
He’d be past fifty-two.
A blond, good-looking,
Blue-eyed man of six foot one or two?
Or would his hair be lightish brown
And he of average height.
She thinks she sees him sometimes
But it’s just a trick of the light.
She sees him in his sisters’ eyes
And in her grandson’s smile.
And in a stranger’s face when she
Hasn’t thought of him for a while.
And while she doesn’t dwell on it
As some other mother might,
She wonders what he’d be today
If he hadn’t taken flight,
And gone, at only eighteen months,
Into that long goodnight.
Judy Staber 2017
Corin Salsbury October 1, 1964 – March 23, 1966