POEMS

Split-Pea Soup

After Supper, start with lots of

little-bitty, green and gritty,

hard and tasteless

dried split peas.

Put them in a big black pot.

Soak them till they’re plump and tender.

Likely as not,

it’ll take about a week.

Then add the other ingredients:

salt, pepper, smoky ham, garlic, celery, okra, leeks –

and a can of Campbell’s consommé.

Bring to a boil, and simmer for a

night and a day,

until the broth is thick and hearty,

smooth with chunks of ham and peas

in lumps like stepping stones in a

gentle brook.

now, for that old-fashioned gamey taste:

throw in a golf ball or a boot –

a shoe will do.

(I added two).

Look at what a feast I made!

“yumm, have some?”

I asked my adoring, doting wife

as I ladled up a bowl of pure delight,

to eat with crunchy crackers, crisp

pickles and cold iced tea.

She took a tender morsel,

closed her eyes, and leaned

back in gastronomic ecstasy!

Teen-aged Laura said

she liked that gamey flavor best

Now for the acid test:

ten-year-old-I-won’t-eat-anything-Heather

“Yuk!” she said. “What are you trying to do?”

That stuff looks vile,

like green algae and bile and

caterpillar stew!

I’m not gonna eat that.

No sir! Not in a pig’s eye!

And if you try to make me

I’ll tell all your poker-playing buddies

That you write poetry on the sly!”

“Heather, dear, have another slice of pizza?”

Harold Anderson

April 18, 1990

Tough Love

Two white baby rabbits, evicted from Eden,

lay dead in the bottom of the cage,

while their thin, gray mother nursed fat gray others,

unconcerned in their gray-furred haven, but one.

Half gray, pushed away,

he soon joined the fate of his non-gray brothers.

Weak from birthing too soon twice,

with a hard decision to make,

she did what she had to,

to continue the gray-rabbit race.

Harold Anderson,

April 18, 1990

King of the Step-Sitters

He drove a forty-nine Ford,

and brought bags of penny candy

home at a quarter-till-six.

I was King of the Step-Sitters – crumpled brown scepter –

                doling out favors,

like a red-neck politician paving  driveways for votes.

To keep, or share? I chose

the choice of greater pleasure!

Five lonely Tootsie Rolls can’t compare

to sweetness savored

with chocolate-drooling subjects

in my arbor-vitae kingdom by the street,

where sheet-lightning

and fire-flies flickered,

while hyenas picked their teeth

with bones of their victims.

he was an old-fashioned strong man –

never said, “Son, I love you.”

but why else

would he make me

prince of the Twilight,

king of the Step-Sitters?”

Santa’s Garden:  A Circle Poem

SANTA CLAUS!

CHRISTMAS!

w i n t e r.

SPRING!

PLANTING!

SPROUTING!

beans,

peas,

tomatoes,

                grow

                                so

                                                s  l  o  w.

                                low.

TALL!

JOHNSON GRASS!

BERMUDA GRASS!

THORNS!

THISTLES!

hoe,

hoe,

hoe.

Harold Anderson

January 22, 1990

WORDWORKER

A poet is like a cabinetmaker

building from a stack of words.

he carefully selects, hefts, sights down for true

and rejects all but a few whose integrity is exact.

he rummages through his shrinking stock

of wood-(words), edge-matching subtle grain of meaning,

so the whole of many will flow in smooth transition,

or repeat itself in book-matched glory.

at the builder’s discretion, he might up-end a board,

and (for reasons of his own), without permission, change direction!

With the cutting edge of his chisel-sharp mind

he pares down just to the scribe-line,

then try-fits dovetails of intermeshing ideas

and lifts the whole to the light of scrutiny.

Skilled eyes search for a glimmer of doom

among the sockets and pins.

no chink-fault found,

he pounds them it, wood-welding a single unit,

Inseperable.

Now’s the time to find and fix or start again,

lest some (successful) self-serving critic casts

discredit upon the craftsman’s skill!

On worst still, flaw-finding ideology’s

prying tugs will reveal an unseen weakness,

and the (lofty) faulty structure, made to last forever,

will fail.

Harold Anderson

March 28, 1990

THOUGHTS OF A 22-YEAR-OLD CAT

A ball of kitten playing ball

with a ball of yarn:

A thought?

or bubbles of memories that rise

To the top and pop?

The Shadow knows,

and goes on with the chore

 of reminiscing about prime time

that begin more than a score

of years ago.  He thinks

of battles fought and victories sweet;

females in heat;

cat-naps napped on his masters’ laps;

blood and gore;

the joy of the hunt: the thrill of the kill;

wild yearnings stirred and stilled

by the bloody, sweet mouse-meat meals.

The broken mainspring of his mind

Unwinds time –

Now,

he silently, stealthfully, skillfully steals

through dew-wet grass and mouse-marked

hay of moon-flooded fields.

Once again,

he gently, quietly, lifts each paw in

rhythem and rhyme,

Flowing ever closer, then just in time,

HE’LL POUNCE!

upon an ounce

of unsuspecting mouse

and in wild abandon taunt and kill

in a comatose sleep.

His masters weep.

Soon the gentle needle’s peaceful prick

will send his soul-less soul away,

(or so the learned preachers say)

to cold, dark, quiet

oblivion.