AT THE POETRY
READING
October 30,
2012
A poetry reading at the
college:
Several of us, different
ages,
Different journeys and
ways
Of saying whatever it
is
Poets have to
say.
But a common thread shows
through:
Our fathers all smoked
cigarettes
In a time of dangerous
innocence.
Lucky Strike Green had gone
to war:
A common urgency,
a
Conduit to
loss,
And reason for
words
That grieve and
warn.
THE SUBJUNCTIVE
MOOD
The English teacher had
asked
A Latin student of
mine
About the mood of a
piece;
Dark, foreboding were
answers
He had in
mind.
Subjunctive, the boy
replied.
Others
laughed,
As though wit might somehow
lie in
The hand tools on my
father’s bench,
Which I could neither name
nor use.
The conditional sentences of
our days,
Lives of if, what if, if
only,
Jobs accepted, those not
offered,
The place her mother had
passed up
On the waiting list at
Golden Pines,
The sorrow of the pluperfect
tense.
If I was you, I
joked,
I’d pay more
attention
To the future less
vivid,
The present contrary to
fact.
THANKSGIVING
1.
1961
Filled with turkey and
family,
I recall another late gray
November,
An Army post between
wars,
Brave comrade
clerks
In the Dental
Detachment.
We nibble on
celery,
Stuffed with cream
cheese
And watch the Lions on
TV.
My friend, from Grosse
Pointe,
Wonders if his parents are
there
This year, the first he has
missed.
Our commanding
officer,
Who had perhaps expected
better,
Has put on his dress
blues,
Walks around the
room,
Makes himself
greet
Each of
us
Cordially:
Where are you from,
Soldier;
What did you do on the
outside?
2.
1995
On the last day of middle
age:
Our daughter’s turkey
dressing,
Not to her mother’s
recipe.
Walking her dog after
dinner,
Joints scrape, metal against
metal,
In the crystalline
air,
Those sharp November days
They have up
there.
We drive back south in a
gray rain,
Road getting harder to
see.
“Thanksgiving 1995: appeared in Maelstrom, January 2000; “Thanksgiving
1961” appeared in Foliate Oak,
December 2011.
Robert
Demaree is the author of three book-length collections of poems, including After Labor Day, published in April 2014
by Beech
River Books. In 2013 his poems received first place in
competitions sponsored by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire and the Burlington Writers Club He is a retired
school administrator with ties to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New
Hampshire, where he lives four months of the year. His poems have appeared in
over 150 periodicals. For further information see http://www.demareepoetry.
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