David Gilmour ------------------ two poems

 

Winter Ritual: Breaking Bread

 

Cold concrete darkness

Pine tree groaning overhead.

Something swinging in the wind.

Wild whipping of the tips

Of the limbs, but not the limbs

Themselves, frozen and creaking.

 

One came down—CRACK!

Landed on the cradled loaf

She was carrying before her

On the front stone porch beneath.

Crashed on its covered crust

In the icy brittle chill of evening.

 

Sourdough it was

Fresh baked, warm and ready

For finger to break from its cozy nest.

But as I have said,

It was the limb, the limb it was

That broke the bread

Beneath the rocking boughs.

 

Oh, the Baker?  She was shaken,

Shocked, as though disarmed,

Battered and patted with fronds of pine,

Frosted, but otherwise unmarked.

 

 

November Lawn Crew

 

They cut the lawn today.

They were cutting the frost today.

They were nipping at Jack Frost

Not vice versa.

 

Nipping: “nipping” is right—

Not the scythe-arch swipe,

A good John Barleycorn snap,

The harvest hack at back of the knees,

Just after the best of Indian summer.

 

 

Theirs today was but a tender shave

To take away some green,

To preserve some green,

To force up some green,

To make for themselves some green,

By nipping, nipping, nipping at the blades

Stuck up above the velvet moss,

As they cut through the frost,

Cutting the lawn early today.