Category: Poems

And grief swings around to pay visit once more
Its unwelcome steps an affront at my door
Why does it return again day after day
as if it belonged here in some other way?

I’d rather stay locked up behind my bright wall
and pretend that it never had knocked here at all
And still its odd face seems to glare in the glass
Its ugliness worse than its brutish trespass.

But powerless I must unlock the way free
and let it sweep in with its shameless debris
And sit all accursed at the foot of my bed
to mock at my hope of new life for the dead

How do you handle life
When there’s trouble pain and strife
The slow and sunny southern way
Or the gray and gnarly northern way

When I was a child I ne’er knew it was there
Too busy with play and too little to care
But as I grew older became part of learning
The facts and the rumors, the fears and the yearnings

Around me the young and around me the old
All thought it was haunted, it ought to be sold
Its owner a monster, a creature unclean
Would come out at night and would wander unseen

Still everyone gawked at it one time or other
Young girls and old women and somebody’s mother
The children made stories, old ladies dreamed dreams
Men mostly ignored it, going on with their schemes

’Twas always just there, was the house on the hill

Some said it was charming, kept up with such care
It added such grandeur, it added some flair
But others more practical would take their stand
And question what else could be done with that land

Some said that the style was well done, but of late
Opinion swings both ways, some love and some hate
What had it imbued on the neighborhood ’round it
It sits there an eyesore, its beauty unfounded

The entry walk was just a path, such a pity
But others said that part belonged to the city
I’d never seen anyone go up that way
Unless it was well before I had my day

’Twas always just there, was the house on the hill

Some say they’d heard music or seen lights at night
I must admit I would have taken a fright
Yet there was a time on late walks of my own
I’d swear a strange glow through the forest had shown

When on a night weary while trudging towards home
I thought I heard faintly a strange heav’nly  tone
and wondered from whence the sound came and what for
But quickly I passed and recalled it no more

And life went on ’round it, cars, buses flow by
It lay mostly hidden and trees block the eye
Most said to ignore it, they wished it torn down
An oddity sure yet a fixture in town

’Twas always just there, was the house on the hill

They thought that a rich man must live there alone
He’d been there forever aloof and unknown
He could do some good for those ’round him residing
Instead of just sitting estranged and in hiding

How queer that a house can cause such consternation
and spin round the thoughts in such public fixation
But be such a comfort to some who look up there
Dependable always as if in answer to prayer

Perhaps one day I will step through that feared gateway
Through mysteries great and walk up that long pathway
And see just what lies beyond leaves and thick arbors
In hopes to find solace and longed-for safe harbor

And always just there is my house on the hill

Something there is that doesn’t love my lawn,
That sends the racing snowplow cross the front of it,
And scrapes the front-edge soil into the street and drive,
Making gouges that the rain can further grow.

The work of parkers is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair,
Where they have left huge holes tire-deep and long.
But at spring mending-time we find them there,
I walk the line and scrape and set the soil once again,
using a spell to make it stay:
“Until the next car parks or rain doth wash away.”

When this house was built then bought by me,
No funds were found for edges poured.
But years of pacing to and fro,
glove, broom, and shovel moving land,
I can only say, with strain-ed back and sweated brow,
Good curbstones make good neighborhoods.

All archaisms and antiquities
Like vestiges and vanishing points
Our truisms and treasures of the past

Gates go down, train trudges by,
Bridge goes up, ship sludges past.
Man in flashing red truck delayed,
Dies alone.

Perhaps it will be like getting off a train after a long trip
heading down the platform and seeing your loved one
a beloved face waiting for you
gathering up your bags to take you home

Perhaps it will be like that
when you see the road stretching ahead of you
the long tiring miles stretching ahead of you
then suddenly you see the face of your beloved
waiting at the crossroads

Perhaps knowing he is there and
knowing he will carry you the rest of the way
that will be enough

Looking down from upper level,
seated ahead, all warm in place,
upon fellow passengers on lower platform still to embark,
rushing through the night to cars beyond.

But what strange lights like fireflies of youth they chase,
or lamps in hand to show their way
through the gloom they rush and wend,
and then recede.

But more behind, like squares of pearl,
they come, they come,
Till all are passed and, loaded full,
the train pulls out, all light within.