These were written in the latter half of the 1980s when I was in college and published in the college literary magazine.
More college poetry
Autumn Tale
Maple trees must feel like Cinderella,
Plain all spring and summer;
Then the fairy godmother
comes round with her wand
and POOF! They're splendid
gold and scarlet,
But only till midnight . . .
Maple trees are hard workers, like Cinderella,
And very sweet;
And people notice them at the ball,
admiring their finery.
But still, no prince ever comes 'round
with any of the thousand glass slippers
they drop all over Vermont . . .
The Moon's Lover Leaves Her
The moon decks herself in silver
so you will have the pleasure
of undressing her
One robe each night you fling into orbit
Until she lies before you, dark and bare
You take her in your arms and leap together
into the deep, wet well of your passion
that the two of you drink dry all in one night
Then, regretfully, she drapes herself again in silver
One garment each night -- but now the robes
are lined with midnight black for mourning
And she peels off the things herself, folds them and stores them away,
longing for you to return.
Anti-Gravity
Like defiant leaves
birds shake themselves loose of the trees
And fall upward
Peony Dances, Still
Peony's traces are all she has,
the steps her whole life;
she prances through her paces
while in the stands people laugh
and she caused that;
she'd laugh herself, if she could squeeze it in
but her whole mind is dance,
her feet sketch faces on the surface
hands shape spaces from the air
Cleverer than light (with its miracle mirrors)
is Peony: her path curves around
tricky places in the caves of air
left leg races its twin to see who is the quickest
but ends in a tie; she glances at the stands,
sees a glazed openmouthed stare
with a leap she erases glaze, laces mouth
closed and earns a sigh of awe,
a thin peal of shock like a lance of sound.
Romance never minds Peony and she never minds it;
her own shapes elate her, she holds
as much awe as anyone for the traces,
the spaces, the steps of the dance.
And in the stands, their amazed glances
at her paces, races, prances in the places
where she dances erase any face
of romance she might have idly dreamed;
movement swims in all the idyll reaches of her mind.
Applause as she pauses: Peony dances, still.
On Being Unable to Decide
A cat prefers to sleep
in a doorway.
He knows the simplicity
of one room, or another,
and that in the kitchen
means missing all the action
upstairs.
A cat sprawls
under the door frame,
watching two rooms at once,
doubling the complexity
of her chances. Any mice
straying into either kitchen
or parlor, she'll spot.
She'll give up a sunny chair
for that added chance:
one more possibility
of success.
Decisions like location
are hard to make, since
the mice always seem friskier
where the cat isn't.
He may believe that the first
tail he sees, he'll chase,
but he may sit by the door,
waiting for a longer one.
The Wheel of Earth
I dream and waken, sleep and stir
in endless cycles of dark and light.
The stars come out. Welcome, night
with moon and jeweled cities; your
friendship gives me ease. Your bright
and glowing modern fashions tend to lure
these ornate fancies from my hidden mind,
these imaginary treasures. Then slow delight
of dawn as day makes herself free behind
modest curtain of cloud; the sun can reassure
the darkest fearful soul, when shined
and rosy-pearly as this morning. Find
a day that doesn't toe the heels of night,
and it will be other than day... The birds
sing sunrise in. I have no more words.
Travel
Would you climb a hundred miles to see the sun
if you had lived your life out underground?
Ilessa did, a girl who'd looked around
at all the caves her firelit clan had won
from solid stone, and had decided then
she needed more than what, at home, she'd found
to be her place, and whispering to the sound
of caves, she said goodbye to everything she'd been
and left. Ilessa saw, outside her clan's domain,
nothing but rock and darkness. With strain,
she found a tunnel leading up. Starting to climb
it as a chimney, with legs pressing the walls
she spent what seemed like hours. Her time
compressed to seconds; feet seemed like miles
and yards like leagues. And when, above her,
Ilessa saw a light, she didn't know that pure
radiant light was of the sun. She heard a rhyme
of the caves echo in her mind: the fire is cheer,
the dark is fear; and felt a childhood smile
possess her face. She pulled herself up on green,
soft grass and then, staring up into the sky,
watched the sun move across a cloud. Without a tear,
she began the long climb down. Most of us die
before we take the journey we have seen
to be our soul. Some of us even scorn
those who return; but the Ilessas, alone, are truly born.
