—Poetry by Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA
—Public Domain Photos
DENTAL VISIT, DOWNTOWN SACRAMENTO
The dentist probes and sculpts with flicking gestures,
Packs in at gumline level, not filling, white filler,
Where I’ve for years with the brush scrubbed overzealous,
Enough to crown me my own potential tooth-killer.
If teeth are white roses, this business repairs the trellis.
The hygienist working at my dentist’s side
Helps, and hums as she helps, to piped-in soft rock.
My mouth-rocks are pleased all this is taken in stride
By someone. Across the street, a window-view:
St Francis Church and School has been my clock
For decades of checkups, reminding me to abide
Like it; note that red-tiled Mission-style roof
Across which a gingerly crow or, some say, rook
Picks its way with hooked dental instruments for feet.
It might be for all the world a pilot fish
Eating things for the big shark’s teeth to stay neat.
That is, if this land shark owns red row upon row
Of grinding mouth-stones or incisors full of gash
As do some dinosaurs. Tiles, all perfectly true,
Immaculately aligned without braces, there lie aloof,
For only a few can savor the slight relief
As this billed creature gleans and plucks loose stuff
With only the rain to assist as does the flush
Of the small pipe that rinses from gum and lower lip
The debris, the leftovers from this fresh mortarlike lining
Adjoining the right front, right lower teeth with new
Toothpaste-hued hardening, not to spit out, to stay shining.
The dentist probes and sculpts with flicking gestures,
Packs in at gumline level, not filling, white filler,
Where I’ve for years with the brush scrubbed overzealous,
Enough to crown me my own potential tooth-killer.
If teeth are white roses, this business repairs the trellis.
The hygienist working at my dentist’s side
Helps, and hums as she helps, to piped-in soft rock.
My mouth-rocks are pleased all this is taken in stride
By someone. Across the street, a window-view:
St Francis Church and School has been my clock
For decades of checkups, reminding me to abide
Like it; note that red-tiled Mission-style roof
Across which a gingerly crow or, some say, rook
Picks its way with hooked dental instruments for feet.
It might be for all the world a pilot fish
Eating things for the big shark’s teeth to stay neat.
That is, if this land shark owns red row upon row
Of grinding mouth-stones or incisors full of gash
As do some dinosaurs. Tiles, all perfectly true,
Immaculately aligned without braces, there lie aloof,
For only a few can savor the slight relief
As this billed creature gleans and plucks loose stuff
With only the rain to assist as does the flush
Of the small pipe that rinses from gum and lower lip
The debris, the leftovers from this fresh mortarlike lining
Adjoining the right front, right lower teeth with new
Toothpaste-hued hardening, not to spit out, to stay shining.
OUTSIDE THE VETERINARIAN’S OFFICE
(VCA, Carmichael)
The veterinary hospital, shadow-nested
In an heirloom grove of surviving thick-trunked oak,
Drawstrings nature around structure like a cloak
Worn threadbare over a breezeblock jacket, unvested.
Here, COVID-masked, I wait in the parking lot
For a vet assistant to field my iPhone call,
Hoping the signal radially pans out.
Fourteen or so pecking turkeys dab as if to blot
Unseen ink marks on ground. One male fans out
His entire tail-panoply to enthrall
What, one? five? twelve? females clustering there.
Most feign indifference, peck, crop smaller-than-air
Bits that fall to them, packaged & ground-shipped by oak.
Yonder they swarm clear over a dry field,
Then, for variety, or better seed-yield,
Stride hinge-legged, on dinosaur struts, about the vet center.
They tread as if primed to enter,
For do they not deserve pet-level treatment?
Click-step all you will, turkeys, on pavement, on stubble;
Not for your likes was invented this COVID bubble.
Flaunt your iridescent-dull, dull-iridescent:
When pets and us from some (pangolin-borne?) virus
Disperse us outswept with Nineveh and King Cyrus,
You will spend untolled eons of deaths and births;
Eggs laid and split by your poults who’ll range and rove
About busted suburb streets to stubbly groves
And such as this hospital’s fallen-in walls
Before you delve and scrounge one half of the falls
And swells of acres and forage, no more thralls
To any one stand of oaks, for such are Earth’s quirks,
Her unhuman tricks, who reckons no one forlorn,
None entitled, in her encyclicals,
None fitly inscrolled in her uncollected works,
Such is her untroubled stubborn.
THE GARDEN OF RICHARD THE SECOND
for Nora at Christmas
In Berkeley long ago, a friend and I
Saw Richard II, acted by James Carpenter.
The play’s director was his martyrer,
Proposed the deposed King strip to a loincloth—why?
Outdoors. Night. A Berkeley-wintry summer, no less…
But the key part, risibly memorable, was when
The Gardener comes in with his metaphoric plaint,
Realm’s gone to seed. A comedic touch, vaudeville-quaint:
A squeaky wheelbarrow (timing spot-on!) rolled in.
Gardener-like, we have reason for complaint
Enough; pandemic, family losses, friends
No longer here. Life’s this short—to what ends,
When Breath puffed into the Mask contains the Taint?
Yet you and I, though our own wheelbarrow squeaks,
Find sunlight even in this night-muffled solstice.
One garden, not wormy, not seedy, back from bleak,
We sowed with good grass; trees hold; one good storm
will jolt this
Copse back to life, raise green-leaping leaves
once more.
One rose has refused to shed petals; fresh to its core
Against all drought or the mildew spots that leaf-cling
It holds its white gold design as does a wedding ring.
for Nora at Christmas
In Berkeley long ago, a friend and I
Saw Richard II, acted by James Carpenter.
The play’s director was his martyrer,
Proposed the deposed King strip to a loincloth—why?
Outdoors. Night. A Berkeley-wintry summer, no less…
But the key part, risibly memorable, was when
The Gardener comes in with his metaphoric plaint,
Realm’s gone to seed. A comedic touch, vaudeville-quaint:
A squeaky wheelbarrow (timing spot-on!) rolled in.
Gardener-like, we have reason for complaint
Enough; pandemic, family losses, friends
No longer here. Life’s this short—to what ends,
When Breath puffed into the Mask contains the Taint?
Yet you and I, though our own wheelbarrow squeaks,
Find sunlight even in this night-muffled solstice.
One garden, not wormy, not seedy, back from bleak,
We sowed with good grass; trees hold; one good storm
will jolt this
Copse back to life, raise green-leaping leaves
once more.
One rose has refused to shed petals; fresh to its core
Against all drought or the mildew spots that leaf-cling
It holds its white gold design as does a wedding ring.
HEARING BAX’S FOURTH SYMPHONY ON
NEW YEAR’S DAY
[Bax, to Mary Gleaves:]
This new soundscape is ours, yes? Winter in Morar;
Seacoast, placid save when storm-swept draughts
Through window-frames mimic elevator shafts’
Wind-conjurations, hotel chilled save for our
Entwined swift-coupling bodies, skin-desire
Only redoubled by our sitting-room’s
Refusal of overmastery by the glooms,
Joy seconded where fire-dogs uplift fire
To us by the Hearth, but really inside the Heart.
After, we bend the involuntary nod;
Drowsing, our carnal heaviness will remember
Sped souls’ light? Never-to-be-extinguished ember
Of music score-barred by day?—Yours or my “bod?”
Whose, what was it?—Sex? Light’s true precipitate, Art?
FOR TWO POETS
In memoriam Carol and Laverne Frith
Your poetry took you seemingly everywhere:
New York among points East-West in Poets Market.
Yet the glitz-goddess-consultant Savoir-Faire
Never inveigled life-coach-like or barked at
You sufficient to thin your poets’ art,
Never enticed you out of refined high craft
Nor served to dilute red essences of heart
Nor stemmed the sung line, verse writing’s graspable haft
And handle. Laverne, I remember your jollity
When you would hark back to the Café Montreal,
The ease of your talk suffusing formal or free
Verse, for you both wielded forms of all
Shapes or stanza types. And Carol, fine sonneteer,
Villanelle-wright—both artists with few compeers.
________________________
Today’s LittleNip:
A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.
—W.H. Auden
________________________
Wonderful, Tom Goff, and thank you for embracing this new year with us through your fine poetry! Here’s a clip (i.ytimg.com/vi/JWpChIrhphs/maxresdefault.jpg) about our clever friends, the corvidae.
________________________
—Medusa
Tom Goff, reminding us to laugh…
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