The Studio

What a view he had from that huge window

He could see eleven islands if you counted a couple of large rocks

He used to let me in to look

This is what you could do with lots of money I thought

Build this enormous room and hang it on a cliff

With the whole bay spread before you

Gulls and cormorants and seals lining the ledges and mackerel schooling

And a rich wife back at their cottage making lunch...

The man was a pretty good painter... He couldn't draw but he wasn't a bad colorist

His work was understated… Very subtle and labored

He worked mostly from postcards… Color shots that were sold to tourists

He'd steal a little from one and a little from another and come up with something clever

I thought it kind of strange when he had this great view to work from

But he spent hours alone in the studio

Noodling away at pictures of abandoned saltwater farms

And broken wharves and isolated harbors.,, There were never any people in his pictures

Because the postcards didn't have any either...

His wife was an elegant lady. I heard stories when I first arrived

That she was worth millions. The two of them though never put on airs

Pretty soon we got sort of stand-offish friendly

I would stop by in my skiff if I saw them lounging on their lawn

And I was invited in to tea and english biscuits

Their house was supposed to be the oldest house on the island

It looked it. All low ceilings and lintels. I guess when it was built more than two centuries ago

All the islanders were smaller. I never saw any of his pictures hanging on their walls

Only a portrait of her father...Mean looking old man…

Sometimes I walked along the shore to their place and climbed the cliff to the studio

They couldn't see me because it wasn't close to their cottage

There was this copse of cat-spruce and birch and alders that hid one from the other

And I would look through that great mass of glass at his meticulous layout

Paint tubes set in spectrum order… Brushes arranged by tip and width

Canvasses stacked by size… This expensive easel in the center of the room

Without a stray dollop of paint on it… And the postcards of the week

Tacked to it above the work-in-progress…

They had no kids. Only a cat named Cora

Every spring they had someone drive them up from New York in a rented limo 

A fisherman would load their baggage in his boat and ferry them over to the island 

They were both good-looking people

He was tall and sharp-featured and smoked a pipe

She was small and wiry and wore almost no make-up

They used a double-ended dory for mainland trips

She would row the mile or so to keep her figure she said… He never rowed.

They seemed more like brother and sister than husband and wife

And their days and nights would run together without change…

Then early one summer when I stopped by he wasn't there

She was alone with her cat… She told me he passed away that winter

I didn't know it but he had a bad heart

I guess that's why he never rowed that double-ended dory.

She didn't last long either. Died that fall in New York.

Then I read in the paper that she'd left these millions to the local museum

To build a wing for her husband's paintings...

She'd also left word I was to be invited to the opening

When I went with my wife to see those pictures again they looked priceless

All lit up in magnificent frames with soft music by a string quartet from Boston

And these elegant people had come up from New York for the exhibit

We drank champagne and ate tiny lobster rolls

And kept admiring all those shimmering and expensive postcards…

Later I found out the studio had been there long before they'd bought their place

It was built by some fellow who designed depression skyscrapers in New York

He and his wife also had no kids and spent their summers sketching the island

On rainy days I was told they worked up these corny watercolors

And gave them away to friends who visited occasionally

Some of them were movie stars like the guy who played the French cop in Casablanca

And on the day after Labor Day

They closed everything up and went back to Park Avenue…

After the war I guess the skyscraper business changed

Art Deco was out and glass boxes were in and the architect got old

He sold the place to this rich arty couple I've been telling about

And he and his wife went to live in a retirement community in safe and sunny Florida

The place was run by a homicidal doctor and his nurse who conned old people

With no kids or relatives into signing over their money in return for perpetual care

And then disposed of them…

Of course all this was before my time

The story about the unfortunate architect and his wife made headlines years ago

The local paper ran it again as an aside

When it wrote about the museum's million-dollar windfall

That's how I found out about it

By and by as there were no heirs the rich widow's lawyers sold the property

To close out the estate…

It was bought by a couple of really rich old lawyers from Boston

There won't be any kids around the place this time either as they're both men

They only come up for a couple of weeks in late summer

This big seaplane drops them off right smack at their new wharf

Together with some of their men friends…

Except for one or two loud parties on starry summer nights

No one uses the studio anymore…

Woman is Earth and Mother Too

Love-riveted her face mirrors his own

Tobaccoed her flushed breath flushes with his

Yet still she loves him through shut lids

He himself sees only blown leaves dried almost black

Pillow her head

Shorn for an instant of desire

Cleansed for an instant

Finished he turns from her to see her fingers

Tipped fresh with his back's blood sift the earth through

And though he turns to her again

She cannot keep him here for long

His mind is level now and stalled

No matter

His spirit soars beyond the budding stars

The Thief

You know… there are days in the winter of our lives

Piling on now and symptomatic of a weakening will

When those accidental atoms which make for a material existence

Convert within a wrinkled skin-inflated body

To an ocean of silent degradation of those circuitous spores

Those aquatic amoebas floating within us                                                                

That once long ago…spermed and spiralled themselves into an “us”

Within the turbulent caverns of our minds

Our drained brains still manage a spark of tumultuous thought

Of how to make it possible to greet another dawn

Of how not to submit…of how not to surrender…

Of how to cheat that stealthy thief of a few more ticks

That miserable bastard… that mandatory time-keeper

The enemy of us all

But there is no hope… one might salvage a few more tired tries

In the end though… the thief always wins

Still the cat sleeps… She could not care less

She has triumphed over that sly dilatory sneak

Because she is not afraid of him

Her courage sparkles… reaches out to us with gentle loving purrs

She is our dominie… the guide to our survival

Her eyes transmit her faith in us… she needs us

Like nuns and monks need their sanctuaries

She eats and drinks and stays warm in our bed

And when you come right down to it

Isn’t that all that really matters?

Wall

Wall wall

Bright wall of island days

Wall which falls down to the sea

Wall which comforts keeps him stills him

Low tide wall

Fired with flowers sea-sustained

For synapta glint at its base

As wake-robins soar the breezes of its dawn

And here beneath his very feet

The vining yew trails its green face

Across his wall

Across his weeping-cross

Vignette

After the doctor left

A man came and glued a bright red card on the door

With big black letters on it that read:

"By order of the Department of Health of the City of New York

These premises are QUARANTINED until further notice"

And when his mother asked him what it said

He told her he didn't understand it

But before the man left

He told him to tell his mother

That his little sister who was only three was sick with "polio"

And that an ambulance would come to take her to the hospital

And did he know the greek word for "polio" to tell his mother

And he said he did

But he didn't know the greek word for "polio"

And when Thea Liyeri who was the mayor of Eagle Avenue

And lived across the street and saw the man leave

And came over to find out what was going on

And she asked him what the man said

He told her that he said his sister had "polio"

And she started to cry because she knew what "polio" meant

And when she told his mother what it meant

His mother screamed and screamed and screamed

He was lucky though

He didn't have to go to school for the rest of the year!

(For my sister who today celebrates her 80th birthday. She married

and gave birth to two strapping boys, one of whom made her a grandmother)

Winter Spider

The spider threads its silky floss

Across the edge of time

Filiform spews from her spinerette

An almost invisible gossamer

Arachnida busies herself never stops

Her matchless artistry a marvel to behold

Silvery veins of spit drawn on air

Fasten delicate filament to lifeless twigs

Autumnal flies have disappeared

Arachnida's sustenance perished

She retreats into my welcoming cellar

And slows her pace to feed on water-bugs

The Protagonists

Night

Saturated sopped

Stopped for a moment we shall swing again

To the pitched string

Night

Follows night and in the black

Sightless we touch

Stacked like irreverent gladiators in our bed

We crowd in this ageless arena

Beyond our minute stage

The chorus also holds

Opposite man turns to her mate and for a moment

They too wait

The Heron

It's strange - After wandering city streets half your life

To wake at four or so and hear the multiple throbbing of diesels

With an old straight eight thrown in

One or two of them with slightly perforated mufflers

Softly crackling in the stillness of dawn

They're not eighteen-wheelers you hear but fishing boats

Running past the island

Running lights still visible in the brightening

Heading past the spindle that marks the edge of Morse's ledge

Rousting the ospreys nestled there since early spring

It's strange too when you can't sleep and the wind comes west

You hear real eighteen-wheelers struggling up the old Post Road

Jamming gears a dozen miles away

Out here though commerce doesn't matter

Safe on this ledge waiting for the blue

You know he's there somewhere - Stepping elegantly

Oblivious of murmuring engines passing

You can't spot him yet in the roseate mist

But as the lacy tide recedes he'll ghost up

Absolutely still - Long-necked - Stick-legged - Listening

Strange - After wandering those South Bronx streets so long ago

In neighborhoods now wasted by the junkies

Would you have dreamed yourself into this expectant isolation?

Waiting for this noble bird

Its image carved by ancients on their tombs?

Let Them Eat Tar

The time of our collective innocence has almost expired

Along with the promises of those who have always lied to us

Those cunning pols and their supporters

The moneycrats nefarious in their deviousness

Who trampled our dreams and flung them

Into a common ash-heap - a dry dead dust

Darkened and opaque - a deceitful greed

Now congealed and blackened by false promises

Life’s savings held for ripened after-years

Pauperized

Now old age

Has become an unwanted pitiful welfarism

Our dreams unfulfilled – Our lives unraveled 

Duped dismantled destroyed

Similar sinful liars back then too –

Just as today - Killing people is good economics they preached

Almost 70 years since those sly bottom-feeders shipped us out

To save the republic they said - theirs first then ours

Wars are very profitable and create lots of jobs they said

With Rosie turning out tanks and planes instead of cars

But near-children were thrown willy-nilly into an unimaginable maelstrom

Kids barely outgrown their tar-chewing days

Tar stripped and gouged from between granite cobbles

Of neighborhood streets

And they're still doing it to us

Once... he swears he heard one of those plundering plutocrats proclaim

“Hey… To hell with them... That's capitalism... If they don’t like it…

“Let them eat tar!”

A Widow's Triumph

On Easter Day in early morn when I returned from church

I thought once more of my beloved husband Achilleas

Still lying unavenged after eighteen long years

For as you know my sons then were very small

Well did I look after them though - so they would quickly grow to men

To take at last a sweet revenge for their dead father's blood

Unjustly shed by our eternal enemies

All these years I bore my shame in bitter solitude

And kept apart from those whose pitying looks I shunned

But now at last this Easter Day - I set the table with an extra plate

And when my sons crossed themselves and sat to eat

I told them whose plate it was

And that it earned its place so long ago

This is your father's plate I said - Who still lies unavenged

Because you all were very small and weak but now that you are grown

The time has come to take your guns and hunt our enemies down

And slay that mangy dog - The murderer they all obey

For as you know he still rides past our house on Easter Day

So careless now that eighteen years have left him safe from our revenge

And still he boasts to all and brags of what he's done

It is he you must kill but if you fail - my blessings you will never have

Only my blackest curses borne of shame so long ago

And my sons wept and thus replied

O best of mothers come and sit and eat roast lamb with us

And bless us now with heart and soul

Before night falls we will avenge our father's death

For that miserable snake always rides down our lane on Easter Day

Dressed like a peacock in fancy vest and golden belt

To greet his kinsmen in the valley below

Scarce had my children spoke when horse’s hooves are heard

They take their guns and silently they stand and wait

And when he comes they shout:

"We pay our debts old man!... Here take what we owe!"

And fire three shots and their father's killer falls - dead as a stone

His kinsmen come to seek revenge and the battle rages all that day

But nightfall sees them slink away in fear

My sons return and when they reach the courtyard door

I weep with joy and cover them with kisses and with tears

Rejoice dear mother they cry out! - Sweet is our revenge!

Your shame is washed away in enemy blood!

I clasp them in my arms!

Such joy I cry! - Such joy is mine and I shall live again!

A mother with such noble sons!

No longer will I bear my shame alone

And keep apart from folk whose pitying looks I shunned

Like the Cristos from his tomb

My sons have resurrected me and given me my life!

I walk today with head held high

Because your sainted father is avenged

And he sleeps finally at peace!

(Maniot Mirologia adapted from the Greek…. Mirologia (Words for the Dead) are passed

down from generation to generation and are usually recited by old women at gravesites.