3 Poems up on WBUR's Cognoscenti for Poetry Month

                 In the Dead of Winter in Somerville


                        Underneath the street,
                        beside the tracks,
                        between the trains,
                        an Asian woman—all angles,
                        few curves, removes her black cloak,
                        inserts her violin between her chin 
                        and collarbone and launches into 
                        “Paint it Black” by the Rolling Stones 
                        that morphs into some wild, jazz/blues fusion, 
and draws a crowd with raised eyebrows
and unexpected smiles.
We toss dollar bills
into the worn case at her feet.

When the train roars in,
she stops and bows and we clap.
Do you have a CD? Someone calls.
She shakes her head.
She is older than I thought.
Her roots are gray.

I step onto the train
wondering how many years
it took to reach
that plateau of facility
with bow and strings.

How many others? 
Artists, musicians, poets—
wear the cloak of anonymity.


Miss Maloney 


A doll, my mother proclaimed, 
after meeting Miss Maloney
the new fifth grade teacher. 
Just out of Bridgewater State Teacher’s College, 
an eraser over 5 feet tall,  
natural blond hair in a bun, 
blue eyes in a field of freckles. 
Smiling, she invited us 
to set goals for the year. 
At recess, our war council convened.
We aimed to make her cry 
for being so pretty and perky.
Each day at 10 as she stood at the board
explaining prime numbers
we swept our math books 
off our desks and the thump 
made her neck snap back. 
Afternoons as she read us
her favorite books, we cracked
our #2 pencils in half in unison,
lined up at the sharpener 
and cranked it till it whined.
When she lost her cool and yelled,
we laughed so hard we fell
off our chairs and rolled 
on the chalk-dusted floor.
Just before Christmas, she let
her hair down and cried, 
fists clenched in desperation
while we cheered.  
When she returned after break 
she vowed she’d finish the year 
and that would be the end 
of her aborted teaching career; 
she was going back to school for business. 
Walking home, we exclaimed, 
“We did it!” and high-fived, 
though what we did was far from clear.
The middle school was warned about us 
and knew exactly what to do. 
The broke us up.
And then they broke us down.


                        On the Outer Cape in August


100 miles south of Boston
where the Cape curls up
like a dog’s tail,
a gazillion stars
redefine the night.

We’ve stepped out onto the porch
to search for falling stars
which aren’t stars at all
but meteorites—
white streaks of cosmic dust—
flaming out like dreams at dawn.

In August they announce
the coming end of summer.
Meanwhile, in the garden,
fireflies surprise us
with their ethereal presence
and the miracle 
of bioluminescence.

Maybe it’s the timing
that makes us savor
these sacred gifts.

https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2019/04/10/national-poetry-month-ed-meek





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