LUCKY ~

Leaving For Work

I could hold you

All morning like this —

Loose summer dress

In my hands, brush of

Sunburn on your shoulders,

The feel of your waist,

And a game of tip-toeing

Who is taller, as we kiss

And won’t let go

That's Her

doing farm chores, lugging

water she hikes through a field

of wet grasses in high boots

old pants & cap, a red tee

shirt she slept in & much

earlier in bed I raised this

                                                                & kissed her kissed her

Wait

All evening

A swallow has

Swept the grassy

Farmyard for one

Shed goose

Feather to stitch

Into her nest —

It is easy enough

For me to pick

Up — but I watch

Instead, until

She has it

Lucky

She is right, this woman

I love, it has been a windy

Fall. And her blonde hair slips

Apart in long strands and with

One hand she combs it away from

Her face and she is smiling. For

Lunch she eats an apple and suns

Her legs, a summer skirt raised.

She is a mother. A small boy is

Napping upstairs in the house.

When awake he will chase

Leaves that fall down from the

Sky, that’s how he sees it.

He calls me daddy because I am.

When I was off at work this

Morning up river laying stone

Along the road in the village

A blonde woman and her young son

Visited me. Hands cold gripping

Wet stone, boots chalked. This

Woman carried her little boy

In her arms, his green sweater

Was like the one my son wears

His mother knitted, ah the love

Of mothers! and I gathered stone

By hand and thought of blue sky

Above, day clear as the river,

And why you must love what you do.

_____________________________

                       Bob Arnold

ONCE IN VERMONT

Gnomon

photo ~ "Early Spring"
by bob arnold

BOB POEMS ~

Trail

I stepped off

The road onto

A trail into

Woods of

Fresh snow —

Not too deep —

Followed for

A quarter mile,

Ducking branches,

Watching them

Persist in a

Straight line

Until they went

One way, and I

The other — the

Small hand prints

Of raccoon

Hermit

I’m the one who stacked

This stove wood ten cords

Deep under the roof of a

Broad woodshed, and sawed

Old pine boards across

To make a dutch door for

Its entry, and now I enjoy

How daylight squints into this

Burrow where round logs are

Pulled down to split each day

If you like you can find me

Talking to myself busting apart

Ash sticks with a favorite

Hatchet, its head weight just

Right, filling a kitchen basket —

Nothing like a simple tool that works

And when slipping the clear ribs

Of a whole snakeskin out of

Soft curled bark of yellow birch —

I remember that tree cut down

But this visitor I missed

Woods Work

At lunch break unwrap

And sit in place melted

Ice never tasted better

Snow falls in big flakes

Doesn’t amount to much

On hot chain saw engine

Back Track

Bobcat tracks in

Wet snow behind the

House this late March —

Came back two months later

With no warning

Both wings on

One of our ducks

Spread open floating

Along the pond edge

— a good time to see

Bright under feathers

Of blue & gray/green —

But the head ripped off

___________________

B O B     A R N O L D

Once In Vermont
Gnomon