Beehive Anthology of Arlington Poets

When I saunter to the mailbox in miserable sun,
a woman stares at the stone marker by my fence—

Site of the house of John Cutter set on fire
during the British retreat of April 19, 1775

Dogs piss on it. A traffic box cautions
walkers at the crosswalk: wait, wait, wait.

Ambushed by 4,000 militia, the Brits torched
houses and barns during the day’s bloodiest fight,

royal bayonets gutting Jason and his friends
at the Jason Russell House across the street.

In third grade I fell in love with glossy books
about the founding fathers, the women in bonnets

churning butter in barrels, that righteous hunger.
What did I know of myths and facts? The Russells

and their kind owned servants, some diaries say.
Now our town fights over low-income housing.

Jazz on the Russell House lawn, pop-up beer
gardens in tents, the annual battle reenactments…

Nearby in the Old Burying Ground, unmarked
graves of Redcoats and the enslaved. Where

is Kate, owned by the Russells? Rose and Venus,
by the Cutlers? Underground radar might locate

bones the way it finds water and sewer pipes.
Black soldiers battled here—Ishmael, Cato, Cuff…

I open the hot mailbox to town taxes, Viking tours,
and the ACLU wanting my vote. A fall leaf drops.

My brother loves coffee shops
so whenever he’s on reprieve from the hospital
we head for one straightaway.

Today at the French bakery in Somerville
he chuckles to recount the many glitches
when he was here opening week,
the sincere wait staff in learning mode.

They’re immigrant kids from blue-collar
neighborhoods ─ a group close to his heart─
wearing oversized white coats and hats
with shy stiffness and palpable pride.

They confer in a murmuring huddle,
courteously bungle our order several times,
then finally escort us to a table
while they straighten things out.

At last, they bring lattes and plates of pastries,
none of which we had ordered,
but which we gladly accept just before
collapsing into an eruption of laughter.

And then we cannot contain the laughter,
fountains of it bubbling up every time
we look at each other or try to get a grip
on ourselves, so that we can barely eat.

We are out of the hospital.
Charming people are trying to please us.
We are alive together, drinking coffee at a table
in a French bakery in Somerville, Massachusetts
with the sunlight streaming in.

Swan hides her face beneath her wing,
sits vigil on a nest of twigs and trash,
a deflated soccer ball keeps company,
fallen trees act as scaffolding for the jetsam
dam across the Alewife Brook.

She looks away from the murky
green-brown water, stagnant in summer
after rainstorms filled the retention pond
by the Alewife Red Line Station
with combined sewer overflow.

She waits on her nest while the decaying
filth robs oxygen from plants and fish
in the water around her. Stormwater
floods the backyards behind Sunnyside Ave
with microbes and a sulfurous bouquet.

A few times a day, she lifts her head
to see piles of debris that line the brook.
During storms, she hears the water rush
past, decorating trees with toilet paper
and dirty plastic shopping bags.

In her bones, there are memories of the time
when anadromous herring spawned
in these waters, when the Alewife
were a friend to the riverside tavern,
where ale was brewed and served,

where fish were caught as they migrated
back and forth from the Atlantic to Fresh
Pond, so plentiful alehouses along the water
couldn’t count them but counted on netfuls
to serve or sell in nearby settlements and towns.

Now the brook is choked with algae
and sewage overflow from concrete tubes
built a hundred years ago when technology
meant human waste washed away in a hard rain,
down to the Mystic and on to Boston Harbor.

We sit on a weathered bench and watch the dogs
lead their masters down the trail beside us.
My love is susceptible to falls, so we do not go far.

Here we meet Phoebe, a yellow Lab, of dignified
middle-age, wondering what we are doing
just sitting, neither petting nor walking on ahead.

She hovers around our legs, but the longer she stays
the more I think Phoebe, from long time
among the humans, knows something is off kilter.

Has the dog picked up a troubled scent in the forest
of nerves? a thwarting in the brain that no
longer governs the body, either in gait or balance.

Often when she turns or reaches behind her, her feet
do not follow, they will freeze, then the body
will lean, tip over, and end up sprawled across the path.

In the sad quiet of this moment, the dog has decided
to stay with us for a while, so too the unseen
birds, a chorus singing about the many things to fear,

how the light will disappear, darkness settle over the land.
I see the flash of a cardinal, hear its familiar
three-note song, as the sun slips down to a sliver of light.

I think of how small the bird is, all the food it needs
just to sing. O Lord have pity on the worm
that gets lost and finds itself on the surface with us.

Praise the lengthening of the days,
the extra minute that promises more.
The furled buds of the rhododendron
and the pear, limned in January ice,
but ready. The red-bellied woodpeckers,
neon caps glinting in the bare trees,
and the sparrows threading through
the evergreens. Praise the neighbors
who leave their suburban chicken coop
gaudy with Christmas lights through March,
and the chickens, who troop silent
and orderly inside each evening, locked
safely into that warm, companionable funk.
Praise the gray fox who slinks across the road
at dusk, swift and hungry, and the coyotes,
howling defiance at the ambulance that screams
across the night. Praise the woodchuck
and the chipmunk and the rabbit, sleeping
or restless beneath the crust of snow.
Praise all who wait in the dark, uncertain
of the light. Praise what watches us
through the frozen night.

Yesterday rain
over old ice and melt
reflected an orange sun;
tonight, below the level hum
of Route Two traffic,
new ice is singing
as it gathers and converges
bank to bank:
not the hollow booms
remembered, of old ice shifting,
but clicks and pinging,
echoes of fractal fractures
ringing bank to bank—
as if the pond were shrugging
in its sleep, and singing
songs of whales
in the deep.

We arrived in ’71, the two of us before kids, before
parking meters, the bike path or recycling, back
when A-Town was “dry”, and the old High School

was new. Where fruits and vegetables were
displayed on Mass Ave sidewalks. Did we know
there was no place else like it?

Still today, a kneeling Native American quenches
his thirst with water flowing from The Rocks above
into a garden that centers the hearts of passers-by,

and the Old Mill provides a home for craftsmen
to soak and shape fine woods into violins or round
frames for White House walls.

From a mile-high park, across the highway we see
Dallin’s Angel Moroni trumpeting prayers.
Even now, the cops and firemen call me by name,

long after growing up with my kids. The mailman asks
how I am since my love passed away, and the painter
calls with condolences when he hears the news.

In line at the deli in the heights, friends offer regrets,
then share their own oncologists’ forecast. My turn now
to offer regrets.

Even the new neighbors still bring food just to
let me know that this is where I belong.
Where else?

What could be more seemly?
To have three strong sons dress you
in breast plate and greaves, raising you up
on your shield, carrying you downstairs
to the minivan where we can all
drive up to Farnhams’ for fried clams,
and then perhaps the boardwalk above Crane’s,
to watch the brute surf slash and parry,
lunge and retreat, the comely maidens
ditching school and the boys stretched out
across their polished boards as if they were
the prows of dragon ships, venturing out
and returning in triumph.
And so I say goddamn
to the doctors and their blood-work oracles,
goddamn to the festering pancreas, goddamn
to the clamor of battle no longer needing
my strong arms, my courage – and
curse as well the wintery god Metastasis,
all the bloody spoils amassed in His keep,
and what care I if the mechanical bed is my
paltry throne and if, in a week, coma
like an invading army will overwhelm
my defenses and claim my vast lands? Who
can say I have not earned my sovereign sleep?

Returning toward the avenue, I look back,
discover a perfect landscape, framed
by the tunnel gap beneath the bridge.
Slate-blue water, tan bench, a foreground tree
bronze as the large ones above me—
the whole contained by the wooden path rail,
the gray stone tunnel-sides. Everything
easeled and fresh, as if an artist stepped back
for a moment to let us bystanders see. I take
a phone picture, hitch my backpack, decide
to catch the bus a bit further down. Feel young
and full of discovery, contentment, heading home
to download, file, and maybe print this small
impermanence: Spy Pond in Late Fall.

It is a simple matter of dress, I say,
And the feminine half of the race, to-day,
Might hold, in our history, just as great
A place as the lords of high estate,
Had they been permitted to wear the clothes
And follow the selfsame styles of those
Who, having been born of the opposite sex,
Had never a worry their minds to vex.

Had Columbus and all of his valiant crew
Worn hats that the ladies of our times do,
They wouldn’t have sailed in those damp, old ships,
’T would have taken the curl from their ostrich tips.
And I’m more than delighted brave Paul Revere
Didn’t say on that night when the foe drew near,
“I’d like to go warn all the folks, I declare,
But I haven’t a thing that is fit to wear!”

Had Wellington dared by five minutes to wait,
In trying to fasten his hat on straight
(While Napoleon’s hurrying forces came),
He wouldn’t have climbed to the heights of fame.
And had Washington lingered to “frizzle” his hair,
The night that he ferried the Delaware,
He couldn’t have gotten his army away,
Till the British had gobbled them up next day.

And so, I say, in the race of life,
The woman has more than her share of strife,
And man would find ’t would be hard to gain
The prize if he had to manage a train,
A shopping bag and a parasol,
And high-heeled shoes a size too small—
Ah me, oh my! Why, he’d have a fit,
And he’d never, no, never! come out of it.

Borne onward by the fiery cloud of war,
Horrid with spears and flashing swords, she comes;
With awful battle shout she bids arise
All passions base, revenge and hate and lust.
For blood, with brutal cruelty and greed,
All in the name of what man holds most high,
The love of God, of fatherland and home,
Blinding men’s eyes to all her hideousness
By bright alluring promises of fame,
And by the stirring music of her song.

“Marchons, marchons!” The air is rent with yell
And shriek, with clank of arms and trumpet call;
The charger rears all furious for the fray,
The bow is bent, the garb of peace is cast
Aside to grasp the corselet and the sword,
And peace and joy are banished from the earth,
While havoc, strife and carnage are enthroned.

The untried youth sees in his father’s face
The patriot’s zeal, and while he hears the shout,
His very soul is thrilled, and he becomes
A man and hero from that: fateful hour.
The old man mourns that he can fight no more,
But gives his blessing to his son, and cries:
“Go forth and slay, avenge your country’s wrongs!
Go forth, my son, and lead the mighty hosts
To glorious victory or glorious death!”
In all the splendor of his glittering arms,
In all the strength and courage of his prime,
He seems the martial spirit incarnate,
A Cæsar or Napoleon, the chief
Whom armies follow wheresoe’er he leads,
The conquering hero who returns from war,
With bands of captives and with precious spoils,
Amid the plaudits of the multitude,
Who, dazzled by the gorgeous triumph, mad
With wild enthusiasm for their chief,
Forget that vultures gloat o’er bloody fields,
That myriad hearts are torn with pain and woe,
While hydra-headed evil blights the land.

But is there none in all that group to cry:
“Depart, O hated goddess, from the earth;
For pestilence and famine, fire and sword,
With death and ruin, follow in thy train!
Leave to the past her pride in warlike deeds;
A better, nobler pride our age should boast.
The world has suffered long enough from thee
And all thy dreaded brood. ’Tis time that spears
Were beaten into pruning hooks; ’tis time
That Peace borne on a radiant cloud should come,
Attended by her handmaids, wisdom, love,
Justice and liberty; spread wide her wings
Above the earth, and by her battle shout
Draw round her standard all the sons of men,
To fight ’gainst sin and ignorance and crime,—
The fitting crusades of the coming age,—
Opening men’s eyes to all her loveliness,
By wakening deeper sympathies and love,
Till, knit in one by ties of brotherhood,
The nations far and wide, as ne’er before,
Shall sing of ‘peace on earth, good will to men!’”

When the scarlet cardinal tells,
Her dream to the dragon-fly,
And the lazy breeze rocks the nest in the trees,
And murmurs a lullaby,
It is July.

When the tangled cobweb pulls
The corn-flower’s blue cap awry,
And the lilies tall lean over the wall
To bow to the butterfly,
It is July.

When the heat like a mist-veil floats,
And poppies flame in the rye,
And the silver note in the streamlet’s throat
Has softened almost to a sigh,
It is July.

When the hours are so still, that Time
Forgets them, and lets them lie
‘Neath petals pink, till the night-stars wink
At the sunset, in the sky,
It is July.