Len Roberts

Sequence

My son out in the dark
   picking the last
   tomatoes and peppers
he’s weeded and mulched
   and watered all summer,
the night of the first frost
   here,
the TV announcer almost
   shouted,

so he went out with
   the flashlight
I watched him tuck
in his jacket pocket
   to pick his crop,

and I wanted to ask if
   I could help,
I wanted to say I could
   hold the light,
I wanted to say I should
never have let him ride
   his bike
what?, seventeen years ago
   on Wassergass Road
where the heavy Buick
sent him flying over
   a hundred feet,

his atrophied leg, his right
   eye lower than the left,
his inability to sequence
more than three steps
   at a time,

steps to write an essay,
steps for three time blocks
before and after lunch,
steps to solve for X,

but I kept quiet, sat flicking
   the remote control
while the door clicked
and I saw his light zigzag
   up the black
till he got to what we both
   knew
was the gate, the thought
   then
of lifting the latch while
   holding the flashlight
under his chin or in his mouth,

and third, the easy swinging out.

"Sequence" in Poetry International, 2001

April Dusk, Wassergass

Dull pewter light on the pond
   fringed
with the green shadows of trees
   across the road,
the sky one big pewter cloud
it's hard
             to look straight into,
all that glare that says
there's more light up there
                    than we can bear,
which makes me remember Matthew's
The lamp of the body is the eye,
even as I feel mine burning,
spring allergies, I’d thought,
the pollen and dust,
the long days of sun holding on,
one minute more,
                            then another,
till it's eight o'clock,
my wife and I still out on the patio
   with a little talk
as the darkness filters in,
                                        taking
the spruce and fir and hemlock,
   then the barn,
                         then part
of her face turned up toward the hill,
her shoulder, arm, my leg, foot, bit
      by bit
till we’re nothing but voices,
and most of the time not even that.

"April Dusk" in The American Scholar, 2001

Spring Peepers, April, Wassergass 

They leap, big as baby rabbits
   from the pond's edge
as I swerve in with the tractor's
   deck
to whack the weeds already
grown too high, early April,
their astoundingly plump bodies
   suspended
a split-second above the green
   water
that mirrors them, legs stretched,
a mix between a dive and belly flop
 
I've often seen my children perform
   at this very spot
while I watched the surface for
   their heads to pop up,
say they're all right, their own
   kind of croak
 
that reminded me of how I would
drift nights in a boat more than thirty
   years ago
on a lake whose name I can't bring
   back,
how the flashlight stunned the frogs
on pads, logs, in shallows of muck,
my hands snatching them up to toss
   into the burlap bag
from where, in the pitch-black night,
would rise sudden spurts of song.

"Spring Peepers" in The American Scholar, 2001

Monitoring Impulses

The tube jiggles each time
   I swallow,
each time I breathe, so
I try not to eat,
I try to sip the air
so the monitor won't jolt
with its green alarm,
so it won't flash that
red exclamation point
straight at my heart,
electrical impulses
running up and down
my legs, my arms,
into my eyes where streaks
of light are no longer
angels or old lovers
but a fluorescent screen
green as the clock’s hands
last night when I rolled
onto the empty side
of my sleep to find
you gone again, a list
forming that promised
to go on and on like this
jagged line blips
up and down with negative
and positive charges
packed tight in cells
that make me who I am,
a man in sweat pants and
   flannel shirt
sipping coffee as though
   I wasn't,
ready for the rush of wings
with the next bite of toast."Monitoring Impulses" in APR, 2001.

© All Copyright, 2001 Len Roberts.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission. 

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