History, Natural History & the Arts
Retrospect
Life is a poem that just doesn’t rhyme,
A fleeting moment, a fragment of time,
A vision, an action, a memory gone by,
A race through the days, a flash in the sky.
It’s really odd, you can’t go backwards,
Yet instant replay is right there in your mind,
So you live it again, review all the details,
But there is no way you can change what you find.
Southern Adirondacks
The hard-surface road on Edwards Hill
gives out just before you reach the cabin
‘Mateskared,” which our father, Howard,
named with the first syllables of we four
childrens’ names in birth order: Mathias,
Esther, Karen, and Edward. This in 1946.
I barely made the cut, being born in late
1945. In fact, I would miss our first-ever
summer there, being but months old
and left in the care of dear aunts who
lived in Washington, D.C., not far from
our family home in suburban Maryland. [Read more…] about Poetry: Southern Adirondacks
Cabin Pantry Discovery
On first opening the cabin for summer,
on a pantry shelf sits a mustard jar
amidst ubiquitous mouse droppings.
Mice are so sly that we do not deny
their being at coining speech—here,
say: homonyms of spices and species.
It seems as if a number of those who chose to celebrate April as National Humor Month last month by taking in this columnist’s presentation of “Laughter is the Best Medicine: The Borscht Belt and American Comedy” at the Ethelbert Crawford Public Library in Monticello got more than they were expecting. [Read more…] about The Real Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Diminishing Returns
Being close
Is often good enough
Beyond a certain point
Chasing perfection
Is a fool’s errand
Yielding seriously
Diminishing returns
Hopelessly Lost
I was advised it
Would be tricky
Getting there
But I was sure
I knew the way
So I tossed the map
And in no time flat
Found myself
Hopelessly lost
Be Careful Casting About
If you come across a beaver pond
where six otters swim and frolic—
at least that’s how it may look to us
—don’t hope to catch strings of trout,
which are tops on those otters’ menu,
otters who are in their element here
where you, when the trout don’t feed,
might as well be on an urban street,
trying to hail a cab with your best
Royal Coachman artificial fly, whose
hook’s barb is trimmed off because
urban lawyers are avaricious folk.
And who knows what bystander’s
eyelid you might sink your barbed
hook into—and should you hook
an eyeball, you might as well cast
yourself and all of your heirs on
the mercy of the court system.
Free Will—and Write Yours Soon
Reductionists limit our every action
to serial impersonal events. Our genes
get transcribed, receptors get bound
to neurotransmitters, fibers in our
muscles contract, and the latest random
shooter pulls his or her gun’s trigger.
But Congress will not outlaw assault rifles,
because campaign contributions are the law,
no matter how it reads in the dusty books.
But there’s hope, as the late poet Paul Grant
wrote: “amo, amas, amat. Close your eyes
and a million years will pass fleetingly
in whom nothing dies.”
Transition
The sand is sifting, time’s moving on,
A tear drops from the Dolphin’s eye,
A flower wilts, a tall tree tumbles,
The weakened Eagle can no longer fly.
Forlorn Elk keep sniffing the earth,
But no green pasture are they able to find,
A flock of Turkeys wander the fields,
But foul fumes and pollutants make them dizzy and blind.
Man pushes buttons to know what to do,
Instructions come forth in their mechanical way,
The voice speaks up clearly and he follows suit,
A cog in the wheel, controlled day after day.
But is this the way it was meant to be,
Sacrificing our souls due to weakness and greed,
Losing our essence, giving up on ourselves,
Become a new form of man, spawned by electronic seed.
Legacy Poem
Someone must think this through,
to ward off our short-sightedness
daily pounding us into the ground
like so many disquieting habits
we recognize in ourselves but
somehow can do so little about —
or so we think, because habituated
inside our non-existent cell block
we carefully crafted for ourselves
mostly out of nothing but thought
forms and knee-jerk reactions, or
what is our legacy to the future?