The Dunmore Rock

I promise, as July ends this is my last moon and spoon about either Vermont or Lake Dunmore (for this year anyway). Yet here is an interesting character, for as all it's bliss and terror is ascribed by us it is deserving of poetic immortality.

The Dunmore Rock

I know whereof, in depths unknown
  up from the brown green a thing renown
  that mocks how mountains rent the level sky
In the mouth of South cove it tickles the serene lake,
  radio waves it casts in droves
  from the head, that stone pate unseen,
  except those said ripples sent from what’s hid below,
  an immobile coursing pretender of muskrat or monster,

Somewhere is a picture, an old sixties polaroid,
  of Uncle Charlie who stepped out of his boat
  and stood upon that rounded rock,
  mocking he can walk on water…
Oh Charlie! Are you Jesus?
  the places you will go to tease us!

Yet I know the Dunmore rock in a different vein
  it’s lurking deception and danger just the same
As you run the mid lake eastside, far past Watherhouses,
There, beyond the emerging point,
  before you pass to port of the island,
Tip up your engine, pull up your dagger,
  for you may not see it,
That circle of wavelets gets lost in the breeze,
  and you must keep watch, do not run through at ease,

I of course, when I pass through, must find it,
  it vexes me, it’s my Moby Dick,
How like Odysseus Sirens or the Gorgon Herself ,
  I am compelled to wonder and stare,
See the jagged scars from it’s tearing of hulls,?
  see the white paint dents, with shag lake algae waiving between?
  they invoke the image of shred seal lion meat,
  gore in the jaws of the Great Shark,

No, I do not avoid, I paddle to it,
  I reach out with a kindly hand and I avast me to it’s crown,
Peaceful, I so anchor with this pet rock, 
  for fear abates, phrenology divines a kinder presence,
  you tame manatee, you simple submarine Saracen,
Spirit of the lake, all year I contrive to return,
  to float in your timeless current,
  to offer benedictions at your altar,
  to lap in the waves of your prophesy,

And now our time has come, again, and gone,
Wonderful obelisk, set by the glacier lang syne,
  I must hove on, yet I push off wistful,
My hope we’ve not met our last time

Hooooooo-wwaasshhh!

Still in the midst of summer, I'm pining for the lake in Vermont.
Here's a memory of something Christine and I saw fly over Moosalamoo one night...

Hooooooo-wwaasshhh!

(Note - at the end of this poem, the reader is invited to shout out the name of the title)

Not a falling star, for parallel to the Earth
  a thing unpinned to Heaven wreaked,
  and over the mountain brightly streaked,
Of these, the largest which dash above our peaks
  are fireballs, stones that circle earth for ages,
  then gouging through the atmos at perigee they rage
  flaming out once they’ve broken through the turn, again,
  and yes, rare times some explode…
Now this was a diminutive and momentary sun,
  matching on it’s course the ridge upon it’s run,
With curly-cue’s of fire flash lapping on behind,
  wagging it’s tail all a spray, the night’s fiery fountain
  as it arced over tonight’s velvet mountain,

This brilliant chameleon bore an ever re-growing tail
  of orange, red, yellow, blue,
  each outgrowth sparking bold and briefly through,
  as by an invisible hand each suddenly picked,
  and blown out as quickly as a kindling click,
Ask me,
  was it consumed by or did it exit our sky?
  for answer I’ll not even try,
As then just as briefly as it came
  the ball smoked out above the ground,
  naught by but starlit ash and my memory to be found
Then seeming all was dead – it spoke!
Can you imagine what it said?

 

A Ripton Sunset

From Lake Dunmore, if you climb Mt Moosalamoo, go past  the snake point, past the mountain peak, the path comes to a ledge, from there you cam see Bread Loaf, on the north shoulder of which Robert Frost had his summer cabin.
If you choose not to climb a whole mountain, you need only drive up the Middlebury river (road,
Rt whatever), past the gorge, halfway to the college on the left there's a picnic stop and then just a few yards on there's a dirt road. Park at the white house, walk up a path about 100 yards. It's up there.
I visited too many years ago. I need to return to Vermont more often.

A Ripton Sunset

There never was a sound from this cottage but one,
  can you hear it? the wind is a scratching pencil,
  the etching and revision of natural verse,
Share with me the sunset cowl arising behind
  Moosalamoo, enshrouding Bread Loaf with the dusk
Here, the oak tree he leaned against and sat before
  while poking fire embers with a walking stick
  given him by Tatoskok, used so every night,
  until burnt and blackened to such a pencil lance
  that he might write upon the landscape, sparing scrap,
Sit here on this scone of stones where he scratched his crown
  (perhaps) while college undergrads attend around,
Tally here, the score, in this field we well know,
  the mown grass he scythed, made hey, neat parsed six foot rows

My 2nd Amendment Bomb Pop

I have about 2 dozen poems in various states of completion. Some on summer themes, some not.
The easy ones need little more revision at this point, but the longer, more meaningful works will take more time.
Case in point - here's this, best described as a satire of the bane of warm weather porch time; Electronic Ice Cream Music.

My 2^nd Amendment Bomb Pop

If there ever was a reason,
  for a civilian like me
To own his own bazooka,
  it’s a truck like thee,
With your electronic Ears Hung Low
  all a blasting from your horn,
As on you roll, again, again,
  by day all day and morn
With your Doppler shifting music
  you change into second gear,
You go round and round the neighborhood
  you are both far and near,
With your ebb and flow acoustics
  you sound royally most queer,
And nobody buys your ice cream,
  so please go, get out of here
I see you selling cherry pops
  and also chocolate bombs
I’d like to pop your tires
  or have you run over my bomb,
But as I said at the beginning
  a bazooka would be best,
So you can sell ice cream in hell
  and finally let me have a rest

Fa-Pooom!
   Ahhhhh!

Humble

Humble

In the purple morning rising
  as we start our day of work
We greet a dozen sun portals
 topping tall green flower stalks,
Behind the petals from suns’ beams,
  a bee’s crawled in, and dreams,
Rests the cold and torpid Bumble
  numb at rest in his camp bed
The cool weather of evening
  has yet to leave his head

‘Dare you to pet it,’

Do not pet him on the wings
 for he’ll not like that kind of thing,
And don’t touch him on his stinger
 although he’s cool don’t risk your finger,
See there the hair upon his back,
 in that short golden hair, right there,
Just point out your index finger
 touch him gently and with care,

‘It feels like velvet, warm sunny velvet,’

With that the drowsy bumble
 waived a lazy flailing leg
As if to press the snooze bar
 on this digital clock, he begged,
Yet Bumbles are diurnal too,
 once he’s warmed up he’s chores to do,
So up the Bumble hummed away,
  and we began our working day