Robert Demaree- Two Poems

YESTERDAY’S SNOW

Midnight: an unexpected snow

Brightens our court at Golden Pines,

Thick whiteness caught in amber streetlight,

Moist cotton balls, fluffy on our small trees

In the clear Piedmont dawn.

It’s beautiful, our neighbors say,

Thinking of other places they have lived.

On my seventieth birthday I drive into town for barbecue,

Listening to Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons,

Their soaring falsetto harmonies

From sorrowful New Jersey towns

Not far from my own,

The undertow of time,

Those unchangeable places of our birth

That took some of us a while to figure out.

At the funeral home, the casket truck,

Up from Mississippi, makes a stop:

The routineness of it.

It is afternoon, sixty degrees,

And, of course, the Carolina snow is gone,

Except for fringes in the roof’s shadow,

And by the curb, graying,

Like other snows I’ve seen.

“Yesterday’s Snow” appeared in Poets’ Touchstone, Winter 2009

NOT TAKEN

1971: moonlight, cool, blue

On crisp, lightly glazed snow;

Wool scarves, boots,

Suburbs of Baltimore.

The young headmaster

Played lacrosse, taught poetry,

His cheerful wife,

Fresh, golden blonde

Junior League beauty,

From one of those Main Line schools

Where our glee club used to sing.

In the dining hall, dark walnut

Panels, linen table clothes,

Boys in blazers raise up

A cheer for their team.

February night pierces the lungs.

He offered me a job.

Late in life I’ve wondered

If I should have said yes,

Followed reluctantly

The path that led

North toward home.

Robert Demaree is the author of four collections of poems, including Fathers and Teachers (2007) and Mileposts (2009), both published by Beech River Books. The winner of the 2007 Conway, N.H., Library Poetry Award, he is a retired school administrator with ties to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire in the eastern U.S. He has had over 600 poems published or accepted by 125 periodicals in the U.S., Canada and U.K., including Cold Mountain Review, Red Wheelbarrow, Miller’s Pond, MediaVirus, Bolts of Silk, Louisville Review and Paris/Atlantic, and in four anthologies including the 2008 and 2010 editions of Poet’s Guide to New Hampshire and Celebrating Poets over 70.. For further information see http://www.demareepoetry.blogspot.com