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| My grandfather, 1969, Budd Lake |
This is the poem I read at the S.P.E.A.K. open mic in March at the Puffin Cultural Forum in Teaneck, NJ.
I began my reading by reciting from memory the first part of a favorite poem, "Sailing to Byzantium" by Yeats. The workshop before the open mic was about structure in poetry, and I have always appreciated the subtle structure of Yeats' masterpiece -- 10 beats per line with an ab/ab/ab/cc rhyme in each of its stanzas.
Here's the full text of my poem:
Byzantium in Jersey
This, my grandfather, in his Sunday best:
a cigarette dangling from its holder,
a tattered suit, a worn Italian vest,
with me at his side, decades less older.
He does not hold my hand. There is no rest.
He lectures as we walk, points my shoulders
to Monarch butterflies in flight toward me
along the shores of Budd Lake, New Jersey.
This, a back country road, is my classroom:
milkweed, honeysuckle, red columbine,
hummingbirds, spotted touch-me-nots in bloom,
blue robins’ eggs, goldenrod, dandelions.
My grandfather names them for me, assumes
I will remember that sparrow, that vine,
the chicory, those edible lilies,
the mew of mimicking catbirds we see.
Like the sage I loved, these vanished from me.
I live in the suburbs, reminisce now
about ancestors. One Sunday, I walk
the Hackensack riverbank in a drought.
A murder of crows chase a gyring hawk,
then roost in the sun on a golden bough.
Hearing their echoing caws, I pause, stalked.
This, I know, is my father’s father’s song
of what is past, or passing, or to come.
