POEM: At Mr. Frost’s (2)

Posted 29 January, 2010 in My poems, Poetry

I wrote this poem after a visit to Robert Frost’s house in Shaftsbury, VT.

Stone wall behind Robert Frost's house. Photo by Jason Crane.

At Mr. Frost’s

Bathed in
autumn
sunlight
on a
table rock
in the fallow field
behind
Robert Frost’s
stone house,
I’m reminded
of the poet’s
advice
to not press
the poems
too hard.
Sometimes sunlight
is just that,
and fallow fields
need only
sun, seeds,
water
and time.

POEM: Long Haul (0)

Posted 25 January, 2010 in Family, My poems, Poetry

Photo from the David Faust Collection

Long Haul
(for my father and his father)

it wasn’t easy keeping all those wheels on the road
another late-night diner and a nap in the cab
hauling one of the damned things was hard enough
it took a man to pull two

it wasn’t easy to raise seven of them
the boy was first and then six – six! – girls
you’d think we would have stopped trying
to make him a brother

and since he was a solitary boy even then,
he would put on his suit and walk down to the little church
that was happy to have an usher
an extra boy to pass the hat for what little there was

he wrecked the car, I made him replace it with college money
I wasn’t teaching him a lesson about responsibility
I was trying to hang on to my boy
the one who’d always had his eye on the horizon

and then later, when he was home from the service
we’d go down under the church to drink at the Legion hall
thick smoke in the air, cheap beer on tap
looking down the barrel of a one-stoplight life

it took a man – and I knew it – to leave
to drive and keep driving until he’d built a better life
to be more than I was and to do it with dignity
and I never told him, but I was proud

(Thanks to David Faust for letting me use a photo from his collection of St. Johnsbury trucks. That’s the company for which my grandfather drove.)

POEM: Memorex Hummingbird (2)

Posted 18 January, 2010 in Family, My poems, Poetry

Hummingbird photo by Derek Scott.

Memorex Hummingbird
by Jason Crane

Memorex hummingbird hovers above the nectar cup;
animatronic woodpecker hunts for scuttling food.
Nature or Disney ride? Who can say?
Disconnected as we are from snow falling off branches.
I hold the binoculars steady and point out the Blue Jay
as it pecks the last leaf on the winter elm,
and through those lenses peek the unspoiled eyes of my son.
He shouts, “I see it!” and is rooted to the spot,
A sapling full of the coursing energy of the yet-to-come.