Category Archives: Poetry

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Nesting Magpies

The nest has lain dormant all winter. It is small, seeming a perfect cone with pointed side down, nestled within the crotch of three large branches of a naked tree, around twenty feet above the pavement.

Swedish 'skata'-magpieIt is early April and the nest’s builders, a pair of magpies, have returned. They are refurbishing it after the long winter’s assaults upon it. The temperatures are still mostly below freezing, but the birds are not deterred from their resolute occupation.

Their tree and others like it were planted a few decades ago by the builders of this neighborhood of well maintained apartments. The trees and buildings surround the Minneberg bus station, the gathering point for travel to and from nearby Stockholm City and beyond. This morning’s early travelers are the workday commuters. I am on my way to exercise at a club.

The bus will arrive in five minutes. I am captivated by the furious activity of the skata. They dash between the nest and nearby trees where they collect twigs and branches which suit their plan. Branches, some twice as long as the bird, are inspected, poked and prodded until one is selected and taken from the tree, snapped neatly by a twist of the head.

It is difficult to navigate, with a long branch in her beak, from the middle of a tree into the space between the trees and thence to the center of the nesting tree. One was forced by interfering branches to drop hers to the ground. Since she had so carefully chosen it, I thought she might retrieve it from the ground. She doesn’t, and I speculate on the reasons why Nature may have dictated that she shouldn’t.

Sometimes both birds are in the nest, each with branches they have captured, interweaving them collaboratively with those already laid in.

The bus arrives and I reluctantly enter it, regretting that I can’t interrupt my routine to continue watching the construction project.

It seems nature’s plan
that I should travel away
from the nesting birds

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Soiled Hands

We repotted the house plant
The one whose name we don’t know
But who grows and grows
And so we remove parts of her
To give away as healthy daughters

We spilled the potting soil
All around the kitchen
Not giving thought to the work
Of having later to restore order
After the excitement of this earthy enterprise

The rough and sinewy feeling
Of the pungent soil around my fingers
Induced a vision of the digging and planting
We’ll perform next month
In the communal garden near the lake

The vision buoyed my spirit
Giving me sudden release from the
Dark mood of Winter
Which never forgets to envelope us
In its long and icy embrace

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Four Youths at the Stream

In temporary freedom from their homes
The four youths prance, splash, run, and jump
Around and over the narrow, rushing creek.

Memories of such moments stir in these old sinews,
Eliciting feelings of joy and innocence.

What fantasies course through these boys, separately and together?
What infinite worlds do they create for themselves in these minutes?
What ever-changing images and scenes erupt from their minds,
Untrammeled by oversight of parents and teachers?

Can there be any greater time in one’s life
Than when we could run and splash and imagine
In complete freedom,
Before the imposition of life’s duties and cares?

Perhaps now, when I can, without the press of time,
Observe these children and recall
My own days of such freedom and imaginings.

—
Los Gatos Creek at Vasona Lake County Park, Los Gatos, California
12 February 2012

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sitting on a bench

sitting on a bench
square, stern buildings look at me
I look at the trees

The channel’s water
so recently full of life
now is dark and tired

empty boat slips reach
toward damp shore of this island
snows will come, then go

2011-11-23
Kungsholmen

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Lost key, found key: a haibun

Seven o’clock on a winter’s Sunday morning. It’s laundry time in the washroom of our apartment building.

Today we have an oversize load of chair coverings which requires the additional use of the large washer and dryer in the apartment building some tens of meters away.

It has been snowing for the past week with temperatures under freezing. The maintenance workers have cleared the paths and laid down gravel to reduce the chance of our slipping. The cleared snow is piled high beside the paths.

Overnight, it has been raining with the temperature above freezing. The paths are slick with water and ice and the gravel is sinking below the surface. It’s a slippery walk from our building to the next one.

I don some outer clothes over my house clothes to carry the big blue IKEA bag over the slippery path to the next building. I didn’t have my full night’s sleep and am not feeling tip-top, as Eva likes to say.

There is one key to access the building next door and another for the wash room. Each key is on a ring with other things. It’s awkward to use the two key rings while holding the bulky bag, but I get through the two doors and do what has to done to start the washing process. Then I leave for home.

When at the front door of our apartment building I can’t find the ring that has the electronic key to open the main door. The key works for the main doors of either building. I check my pockets several times in disbelief, until I believe.

I sluggishly retrace my steps, searching the path and the snow banks to either side, with no success. Thinking I may have dropped the key ring in the wash, I decide to wait to search further. It takes some window rattling and door pounding to get Eva’s attention to let me in. It’s lucky our apartment is at the same level and next to the building’s main door, otherwise I would have been trapped outside until Eva might notice I was overdue. I wasn’t fully dressed for the temperature.

After an hour, I use a duplicate key to open the front door of the other building to transfer the washed chair covers to the dryers, but I find no key ring. Disappointed, I return home.

Eva and I discuss the possibilities, both reasonable and unreasonable. She traces all the steps I have already taken, to no avail. We finally give our selves over the kindness of a stranger—that is, an unknown neighbor—to find and return the key ring to the maintenance office where someone can trace us via the key’s ID  number.

We go about performing other Sunday duties, including a trip to the grocery store, a short subway ride away.

Meanwhile, it continues to rain and the snow banks continue to recede. On our return from the grocery store, Eva decides to look once again around the entrance of the other building while I, still depressed by my misadventure and visions of impending senility, leave her to this short departure from our regular path, and carry the groceries home.

Several minutes later, Eva arrives, her spirits high and with happy voice tells me she found the key ring. It was just to the side of the other building’s entrance where the melting snow uncovered it. We laugh and hug each other like children.

After a short while, Eva says she is glad I lost the key ring, otherwise we would not have had such a happy moment.

the snows of winter
now melt away to reveal
forgotten treasures

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A Silly String of Words

Norma, I am Ron”
Said I, palindromically.
But the soul of wit is Irony, Ronnie
So get wit’’ it already.

I am always Ron or Ronnie,
Name-born that way
By Mom, star-struck by Coleman, Ronald,
Not Reagan, Ronnie, that youngster.

I almost was John or Alexander
By name, that is.
But I am always me by whatever handle known,
So take a look at me and make up your own.

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Days in the Hills

The hills rise above the fog that fills the valley
The unseen city is still heard

The trees and rocks, the spent grass, the green shoots
Ignore the city’s muffled roar

Low sunlight reflects from myriad dew-laden webs
Blanketing felled leaves
___

East wind blows swiftly, sure as the eagle flies
Pulling the sun aloft

Gusts roll endlessly, bending the brush, flushing a bobcat
I crouch behind a rock

Wind and trees combine in counterpoint, balancing
A robust embrace

The hill gives purchase to those beings
Unwilling to fly
___

The tall grass pretends to yield to me
Then encloses me

Foxtails nod their welcome, tossing back hot sunlight
But insects rule this day
__

Mountain ridges build silently toward the sky
Hiding dark canyons

Buzzards soar endlessly, from ridge to ridge and back
Searching silently
___

The wise say there are many paths to the one place sought
So as with this hill

This deer path is now my path – up, up through thick brush
Deep full breaths

A startled family gives wide berth to the sweating beast
Who now claims this hilltop
___

The scrub jay awaits on a fence, and as I approach the path’s end
She jumps to a higher perch

The late fall sun, obscured by haze, casts diffuse shadows
Its radiance blunted

The quiet hillside rests—trees, brush, grasses
Only insects move
___

The once familiar path is now rent by the storm’s torren
Showing naked earth

See how the streams flowed, running over man’s patterns
Carving creeks and gullies

But the rock and the oak remain despite the deluge
It is a comfort
___

In time, all will flow downhill with waters seeking their source

But, for now, I have the oak and the rock as unchanging friends
___

Written 1995-2002, Santa Teresa County Park, San Jose, California