Two Poems by R. W. Stephens

 

Yosemite and its water 

 

What can you say when a billion words have been written about the beauty?

What can you describe when millions of images have been taken of this place?

Where do you start: the falls, the rivers, the trees and mountains,

The chickadees, fliting from ground, branches, trees?

They are ubiquitous in the valley,

Almost singular on the sides of the mountains and canyons,

But their voices are familiar like the sight of a strutting red breasted robin.

 

The trees are tall. They are sentinels, on the rim and in the valley,

Both bleached dead and green furred,

Scarce with altitude, grappling with the mountains,

Like miners looking for a vein.

They are stone masons,

Gnarled roots piercing granite.

Holding it like a bag of rocks.

 

Falls and rivers grinding away at the granite

Millennia before the arrival of people.

The sand bars and pebble shores their barter.

Evidence of the glacially slow life

That the mountains live and die.

The river continues the work of the tons of solid water slicing

The mountains into shear faces, deep valleys,

Rapids clogged with the remains

Of the work of water, the master constructor. 

 

 

 The old man 

 

The cars drive by crunching

like the wheels of carriages riding down

the grand entry to a manor house.

On the stark sidewalk an old man stands:

threadbare coat, moth eaten sweater, rusty red and brown scarf

wrapped tightly around his neck, fingerless gloves.

He wheezes like an old asthmatic on oxygen

as his accordion slowly bellows and groans brightly

an ancient melody heard in a royal ballroom.

 

A child totters by:

black snowsuit, muted red mittens,

blue scarf almost covering the child's face

blue toque with white snowflakes.

The old man smiles at the child.

The child waves like a penguin waving its flipper.

 

Across the way,

a bookstore,

full of old rarities and dry Victorian histories.

Between,

chunks of ice fused to the sidewalk, smooth, matte and dark,

snow on its edges.

 

A woman leaves the bookstore:

long black coat, black leather gloves, tall boots, bright red scarf, blue beret.

She slips and almost falls, snared by the ice.

The old man chortles like an old father sitting by a fire,

listening to his daughters natter about

the handsome new doctor in the village.

 

The wind kicks up but

the old man does not shiver

as he seems to disappear

as snow falls.

R. W. Stephens is a native of California, born in San Francisco. There was a stint in Wisconsin for university and a BS in English. He raised two special needs kids, part of an interesting life. He is willing to admit he likes cats over dogs. Recently started writing again with a new perspective. He is the organizer and coordinator for a small writing group based in Hayward, California.