Beets
I like to scrape my fork and knife
Through all the delicacies of life.
For example, take the ruddy beet—
Not the favorite food of the man on the street.
Even fully cooked, it still looks raw
And tastes as nasty as a good big chaw
Of cigar leaf.
Yet, I forced myself to eat
Great gobs of bloody beets. “Real treat,”
I told myself (and gagged). But now,
I take the beet for what it is—not chow,
At least for me—just borscht, for a Muscovite,
That happens to sour my appetite.
I guess the beet explains a lot about
Anchovies, as well as sauerkraut.
Autumn Fire
The burning leaves produce an acrid smoke
That rises up, only to be caught and held
By an atmospheric inversion, hanging there
Above the tree tops, while the old man jokes
About these Irish lads and the infidels,
His face aglow with deep comfort in fire.
He slips behind the shed, unearths his stash
Of bottled wisdom, glances right and left,
Then tips a slug of warmth down his gullet.
Back before the fire, he fumbles through his coins
And hands me some: “On your way, kid. Be off.
Go spend it on some pretty girl.” I’m eight.
He stands alone tending the fire, eyes glazed;
Out of his ancient past, the Druids re-arise.
Togetherness
I
They wait until the kids are tucked in bed
To start on one another’s sins—
He having lost the glow of boilermakers
Sloshed down after work; she with a head
Dull in the aftermath of cocktail gins—
Both primed, vindictive, ready to engage,
Defeated only by what’s left unsaid.
The kids, of course, hear when it begins,
Stomachs churning, fantasizing peace,
Too immature to force a household truce.
II
Here, the TV’s off at eight o’clock,
Maybe before, but never after. By eight,
He turns it off. At six, on the dot,
They rise. This house admits no praise;
No one ever dares to deviate
From this unwholesome dullness, where the girl
Will shrink in fright and never disobey,
Where “no” continually reverberates,
Where she will underplay her childhood sport
And bruise herself beyond emancipation.
III
Together now, he never starts a fight,
Always backs down before his stomach churns,
Never says a word of criticism.
She, on the other hand, sinks in a bite
Or barb with ease and likes to watch him squirm,
Relishes the quarrels they never have.
Who knows, or cares, which one of them is right.
They carry on, both wronged. Their children learn
The catechismic schism’s hellfire truth—
That each abides within a self-made enclave.
Girl-Watching
Nothing will quite so satisfy the eye
As when some summer day it spies,
Along the beach or somewhere near a pool,
The lissome curves and bulging hills
So adequately placed
On a bikini-wearer’s build.
This selfsame body will, it seems,
Please the eye, feed the flames,
Yet always leave for other means
To satisfy
The body of the eye.
Endurance
Don’t begrudge my endurance,
My persistent trespass
On your lawn; I only want
To rap, rap at your door, and come in.
Don’t be a persnickety snob,
Hiding behind lace curtains
And swelling up with pink pride
When I come poking around.
I only want over the threshold,
No further than the front hall;
Just a few quick words, that’s all,
Then I’ll slip away without a trace.
A
