Robert Demaree- Three Poems

HARD DRIVE

He would have willed

His brain to Science

Except for what they might find

Recorded, as if upon

A computer hard drive.

He had heard of people

Chopping them up,

Sacrifice of Knowledge.

Browsing history, he saw,

Could be erased.

Memory might be like that,

Vanished with a single click.

But he rather thought

It was always somewhere

Deep inside

And someone knew how to find it.

GOOD YEARS: A LOVE SONG

August 24, 2011

I wrote a haiku

And put it out

For her to find that day:

August twenty-fourth:

Wedding anniversary

Forty-eight good years.

I worried about not saying

Great, or wonderful,

Both of which were true.

But great rhymes and

Wonderful doesn’t scan.

I meant good the way

The Army speaks of good years,

Or Social Security:

Years that count,

That count for something.

In any case,

They are the years that

We have had,

So far.

AT MY OLD SCHOOL

Things that have not changed:

Cheerful earnestness,

Cell phones turned on, BlackBerries.

Things that are new:

Faculty sign-out sheet,

Hazelnut syrup

By the coffee maker.

Robert Demaree, a retired educator, is the author of four collections of poems, including Mileposts (2009), published by Beech River Books. He has had over 550 poems published in 125 periodicals, including The Aurorean, Avocet, Cold Mountain Review, Dead Snakes, Foliate Oak, Louisiana Review, The Louisville Review, MediaVirus, miller’s pond, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Tipton Poetry Journal and in the 2008 and 2010 editions of The Poets’ Guide to New Hampshire. He lives in Wolfeboro, N.H., and Burlington, N.C.