Arts

The Bobcat

Without pride, senses controlled,
born or to be born, we met as hilarious strangers,
each wanting something impossible.

I wanted all beings like you to be happy.
You wanted no being to deceive another.

For a brief moment, we were sincere.
Both of us, protected against the spirits of the dead,
on a darkened street, on the outskirts of the city,

waiting to cross over

Read More Poems From the New York Almanack HERE.

Hut Next to Wilderness

Set in China’s ancient T’ang Dynasty,
Gerald Stern’s “Ancient Chinese Egg”
poem says “a hut is a hut be it this or that.”
I have like feelings about our old cabin
in the Adirondack Mountains, which our
father christened “Mateskared” to honor
we four kids by combining first syllables
of our names — Mat, Esther, Karen, and
Edward — a strategy he garnered from
Schaefers’ camp “Cragorehol” that used
first syllables of three nearby mountains.

Having examined our father’s writings
about wilderness, I now wonder if he ever
repented of anthropomorphizing our hut
that now rests just across our dirt access
road from the New York State-designated
Siamese Ponds Wilderness Area. It was
formerly simply park lands that hosted
all our past family, and then later sibling
camping and fishing trips — “Excursions,”
Thoreau might have called them — with
what was, even then, their wild character.

Read More Poems From the New York Almanack HERE.