The Cambridge Water Supply

The track around the reservoir

at dusk sports a dozen joggers

and a pair of women rehashing

Belmont’s loudest divorce. Walking

so tenderly I won’t bruise

the faint violet sea of light,

I admire a round brick water house,

grass sward capping and concealing

the water itself. No way to drown

in the Cambridge water supply,

which simmers under lock and key

and can’t readily evaporate

in gruesome September heat.

Not that I’m looking to drown

or even swim, but a glimpse

of open water would cool me

for a moment, empower me

to review the life I’ve spent

stalking the Chimera to snuff

its fire breath and poke out its eyes.

The joggers gasp and pant and sweat.

The women snarl as they agree

that she should have demanded more

alimony from that creep, drained

his bank account and shoveled him

headlong into the furnace

of his neo-pubic desires.

Neighboring houses crackle

with ordinary lives. Pages

turn under lamplight. A bible

surrenders its angry subtext,

a novel coughs up a character

a reader might wish to befriend.

The evening’s first stars fall, snuffing

in the reservoir’s secret depths.

I should take notes; but warped

by this walk, my handwriting

might strangle itself and render                           

the track around the reservoir

not as a circle but series

of loops, entangling me in syntax

too faintly violet to parse.

Al Fresco in Weare

A little schoolhouse in ruins.

We’re lunching on the wooden steps

Ghosts murmur in the boarded dark

behind us. The radiance

of early September blazes

with fields of aster and goldenrod.

We’ve just visited a graveyard

where nearly famous people lie

as flat as everyone else does:

headstones slightly more serious

and neatly fenced except where

a tree fell and cracked the ironwork.

The old chaos remains although

that little plot lingers in the eye

and berries at the edge of pastures

ripen with no one to pick them

except a few spontaneous birds.

No Trespassing signs plaster

the schoolhouse. Otherwise

we might risk entering to face

the children grown old and dead

in the dust of chalk and litter

of pages torn from textbooks

published before the Japanese

bombed Pearl Harbor. Maybe drenched

in that daylight dark I’d recall

the whole of my algebra,

while you would orate by rote

the history of California

from Father Serra through Stanford

and Ames of the Union Pacific.                                                

A summer of drought has left us

giddy with arid glare. We munch

deviled eggs and lobster rolls

from the market down the highway

and stare at the weedy gravel drive

and wonder how long this schoolhouse

has stood abandoned and whether

surviving graduates recall it

with affection or disgust. I fear

that police will roust us, but you

with your fawn-like innocence

enjoy the undertone of ghost

at our backs, and, post-graveyard,

declare the living moment good,

leaving a few crumbs for birds.

A Shady Graveyard Corner

In a shady graveyard corner

three slate headstones face a wall.

Despite the noon glare splashing

the rest of the weedy acre,

this corner’s so dark I can’t read

the inscriptions, if any remain.

But as I fondle a surface

to detect surviving characters

silver mist rises from the soil

and makes me cough. I retreat

to a safe and sunny distance

and watch the shadows thicken

and brighten with haze. Figures

seem to form, or maybe only

tricks of light and shade. Long ago

oblivion erased every thought

these citizens had, and left

their infrastructure to decay.

This ghostly fog isn’t ghost

but miasma trampled from the moss

when in my usual clumsy way

I tried to trace the names and dates

of people who aren’t my business.

Nothing has changed. The August sun

lurches across a cloudless sky,

the trees in their innocence cast

shade deep enough to drown in.

Why should I feel such a clamor

of nerves at the root of my senses?

The mist has congealed and surely

represents in subtle hues

the dead who have emitted it.

Not souls but last desperate breaths

seeking audience or at least

a glimmer of light to assure them

a version of the world survives.