GREENWOOD LAKE                            

We were too poor
to have vacations when I
was a kid

but once we drove all the way
to Greenwood Lake
stayed overnight in a cabin
with screen doors
in the front and in the back
a long dark hallway in
between

I caught three
sunfish
threw them back

climbed with my brother
over boulders and rocks
and into trees
collecting pine
cones
and empty birds' nests

but what I remember most
was Dad looking so thin
there beneath the mountains
sitting up
on the hood
of his shiny '56 Buick
having
one last smoke
before the long
long ride
back home

FERRY BOATS

Dusk, I fall into dark freezing waters
between two ferry boats -- those great
orange ferry boats that carry passengers
and cars, and men in blue coveralls
who shine shoes, from Staten Island to
Manhattan and back again,

broad-winged gulls floating along behind.
No one sees me. I can't move,
the water's so cold my limbs are numb.
I can't even yell. The two huge
orange boats begin drifting together
slowly (as I knew they would). I notice
oily residue on their hulls, but know I can't
stop them I know I'll be crushed to death
between these giant ferry boats I love
so much, and there's nothing I can do
about it except wait here in this freezing
water for it to happen.

but the wind doesn’t make the curtains move

On the far end of town tiny blue trailer rests quiet near
the railroad tracks.
I pass it every day to and from work.
A little old lady lives there,
though I’ve never seen even a glimpse
of her. There is no dog either,
or any cats mewing at the side steps.
All I ever see are coveralls
and some gray underthings
hanging out on the tattered line
strung limp between two trees.
And sometimes
the door is open or a window,
but the wind doesn’t make the curtains move.

SUMMER STARS

I wanted a golf course
as one of my summer
jobs
while working my way
through college.

at night
after the golfers had gone,
I'd start
at the 1st hole,
turn on hoses & sprinklers,
work my way down to
hole 18.

when I was done,
around 1 a.m.,
I'd find a soft & dry hill
& lie there on my back
staring up
into the pitch black summer
sky, &
count the stars.

only the good things

I wish to remember all good things
I’ve learned in my life,
not the bad things,
only the good things:
how to dance the rumba with my beautiful wife,
the names of the constellations and the moons of Saturn,
the names of the 12 cranial nerves; I recall
the memory aid for remembering them:
On Old Olympus Towering Top . .
but the nerves themselves – gone,
the names of all the muscles and nerves,
bones, arteries and veins in the human body,
how to read and speak Flemish,
how to read Virgil and Ovid and Catullus in Latin,
Moliere, Pascal, Camus, Victor Hugo,
Andre Gide and Alain-Fournier in French,
the world weight-lifting records for the press,
snatch, and clean and jerk in all the weight classes,
the Kreb’s Cycle, and the formulas for Boyle’s Law,
Laplace’s Law, Gay-Lussac’s Law, Avogadro’s Number,
and how to build a Faraday Cage.
Yes, I wish I could recall all the good things
in my life, only
the good things.
 

©Michael Estabrook, 2005
 

 

'Empty-nesting here in Acton, Massachusetts, with the last child off in college leaves me some time (between work and going to school myself) to finish about a thousand poems begun over the past couple years; also trying to get a real book of poems published, entitled “A Superlative Woman” (about my wife).'

 Email : mestabrook@comcast.net