A YEAR IN A SMALL TOWN
1
Surrounded by flowers,
bees drowning
in the housepainter's pot.
2
Today, I know
I haven't done as much
for this world as a tree.
3
Children bring home
stones instead of friends;
the blackbird has a golden eye.
4
Spring, that young man
is wearing the shirt
I was wounded in.
IN THE YARD
The grasshopper goes for a ride,
its little sprocket spins
over the earth.
The lizard, five inches of stream,
flows under a board.
The leaf runs from the cat.
A moth's a pharaoh in search
of a tomb full of light,
and a bumblebee explains
to the morning-glories
the joy of being a telephone.
Only the woman knows
what the man's for.
TWILIGHT AT THE SHOP
A whole day at the saw —
when they come for the rubbish,
I throw myself
out with the dust.
We smile and smoke and praise
what's left of the sun.
Dark trees have bottled its light.
They glow like many beers.
I CAN'T SLEEP
I can't sleep.
I wish we were young,
in a different house,
in a different town.
I can hear the dog
run away in her dream;
outside, raindrops —
their tender hoofbeats
trapped in the courtyard
of a leaf.
OLD
Their children are gone;
almost everyone
they loved and half
of what they understood,
has disappeared.
But the door's still open,
the porch light's on;
a little wind at night
and they hear footsteps
when a few leaves fall.
___________________________
In A Dybbuk's Raincoat
Collected PoemsBert Meyers
edited by Morton Marcus and Daniel Meyers
University of New Mexico 2007
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bert meyers photo : elliot erwitt