vermontpoem #41 this morning the lake is still no ripples mar the surface not even my own as I swim no little swallows (black tops white bellies) dip and wheel to catch their insect breakfast their name I think is “least swallow” usually there’s a dozen no rower in a swift skull near the far […]
family stories
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springfield 66 poem #1
springfield 66 poem #1 busy time this fri eve in springfield route 66 gala already begun hard to get to the old pharmacy to see tom handy’s photos of palms and their latticed shadows jim hawker’s unforgettable bored child embracing a curb it was like those mazes in a kid’s puzzle book you start out […]
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dairystate poem #2
our area of wisconsin has lovelylively names afton avalon tiffanycarvers rock beckmans mill dariendelavan elkhorn hog hollow I wentwith my grandfather to a townshipmeeting of some sort in emerald grovethe little white church where they allmet was spare in decoration but hadmany tall clear windows it was as fullof sunset light as san chapelle a […]
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grampa poem #3
grampa poem #3 in a letter to his second son my grampa writes, “If I try to tell you what you like and what you dislike I may play the role of the shoemaker who was fitting a pair of shoes to a customer. The customer said, ‘These shoes pinch.’ The cobbler replied, ‘What do […]
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laborday poem #1
a 1952 news item just found:“Dairy Workers to 5-DayWeek” – ten years beforethis clipping I heard mygrandfather say “We can’tgo to a six-day week untilwe breed a six-day cow.”
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phish poem #1
phish poem #1 well odd things happen I am at a phish concert in saratoga springs not exactly atmore beside in my car but I can hear the throbbing drums sometimes a wail of a vocalist the crowd’s roar I wandered that crowd thronging the park’s entrance quite a few with a bent finger aloft […]
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dialoguepoem #4
dialoguepoem #4 “We were just married,” Harlan the herdsman told me, “and we’d moved into the apartment over the milkhouse. They were butchering. Grampa Dougan climbed the stairs, knocked, and stood there holding the cow’s tail – long, brown, the white hairy plume on its end, the bloody stump at the top. He handed it […]
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musicpoem, sort of #1
musicpoem, sort of #1 when we were kids we took our musiclessons in madison every saturday atthe wisconsin school of music a big oldhouse with sound pouring out of every fissure from squeaks squawks scales to csardas and the goldberg variationswhen you entered the house you faced a fireplace never any fire but on themantle […]
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babylon #1
babylon #1 woke up worked drank coffee worked emails phone calls worked rearrangedmanuscript last minute stuff workedworked didn’t think a single thoughtabout you till I was driving late tochurch and the car was flooded withall that baroque music you loved so wellplayed so well it was then I bawled Iremember an oratorio we sang in […]
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First day of spring poem
First day of spring poem My snowdrops are up, shivering, but visited by honeybees, and so I offer you my mother’s love poem to my dad, written in 1924, whiletheir May marriage was pending. Because of Youby Vera Wardner (not yet Dougan) This year, because I know you,Spring is lovelier than it ever was before:The […]
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storypoem #14
in the car the whole family drivingnorth I was eight I discovered a metalwhistle a slush pump by blowing andsliding the plunger up or down one couldmake swooping sounds I soon realizedby stopping on a note then moving theplunger spot to spot one could make tunesI was totally entranced it was one of thoserare moments […]
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rye poem #1
I found an essay my sister wrote when shewas a college freshman her prof must haveasked for an autobiography it is of courseinteresting to me for we shared the samechildhood and some of the same memoriesI find it telling how certain things were strongenough for both of us to have later writtenthem down one such […]
