Mark Fischweicher

Unfallen

by

by Mark Fischweicher

xxxxxxFor Andy

Frost bites the ground I walk on
in the woods. Moss
carpets fallen limbs,
and leaves the cobbles lush
and verdant as some
random emerald gem.

On stones the lichen grows
like bark
and leads me thru the undergrowth
and leafless branches
thru the fallen twigs and leaves,
underneath the leaden skies,
which whisper
as I walk along
beside this frozen
glory.
Winter is alive.

Death seems to be unspoken
within these woods.
Who knows what lives or dies here?
Winter hides the crime
except among the pines.
Look up beyond the old and broken shoots.
No way to tell. Just
as you
remain to
be
to me.

Mark Fischweicher has been involved with poetry all his life. As an elementary, junior high school, high school and adult educator he has published poems at all those levels and has taught courses on the Beats, the Black Mountain Poets, Ezra Pound, and The New York School of Poets.

Tirade To Dismiss My Fall

by

by Mark Fischweicher

As I get older my memory fades.
His name, her name, that place, this.
No matter how I try, I can’t recall.

The emptiness that fills my mind pervades
though some say this aloofness should be my wish
to be detached to let whatever comes to me be all.

I say my nimble wits have never been my ace of spades
My greatest attribute has always been my gibberish
just letting all my fears and cheers flow out without a stall

Not trying too hard to manage all my weird crusades, my escapades.
If I am not remiss, that should be my bliss.
That’s all. I think I’ve hit the wall.

Mark Fischweicher has been involved with poetry all his life. As an elementary, junior high school, high school and adult educator he has published poems at all those levels and has taught courses on the Beats, the Black Mountain Poets, Ezra Pound, and The New York School of Poets. 

Things That Return

by

by Mark Fischweicher

we can walk on the trail
as it runs by the brook
where a heron we’ve seen seems
a statue of sorts
still as stone
till it catches the fish
in one gulp

and down where the tracks still run
where we board the train
going down to the city
there’s this one single woman
who walks out
on her lawn
across from the station
who stands with her hands, statuesque,
deftly stretched

there before her
balletically smoking her one cigarette
not to fill up the house with her ash
I suspect
these are the things that we look for in life

the things that return

even memories
and poems

Mark Fischweicher has been involved with poetry all his life. As an elementary, junior high school, high school and adult educator he has published poems at all those levels and has taught courses on the Beats, the Black Mountain Poets, Ezra Pound, and The New York School of Poets.

For the Birds

by

by Mark Fischweicher

It is being God
to feed the birds
and they have dressed up
for the feast.

I will teach them
how to worship.

common knowledge
for the Cardinals,
already dressed in robes of red,
old hat for the gray cheeked
almost threadbare Thrushes
and the black capped
Chickadees
Who already wear their yarmulkes
to shul

I should not worry who will feed them
When I am gone.
They have gone without my industry
for forever and a day,
for eons.
for a crow’s age, an
eternity;
and the bird-seed aisles are always full
of somewhat seedy people
all the time,
but we have brought them tragedy as well;
the Willow Flycatcher may soon
no longer play the field
and the Yellow-Breasted Chats
may not cluck or cackle
as much as you have heard

but I will feed them still
with no religious purpose
after all.

Mark Fischweicher has been involved with poetry all his life. As an elementary, junior high school, high school and adult educator he has published poems at all those levels and has taught courses on the Beats, the Black Mountain Poets, Ezra Pound, and The New York School of Poets. 

No More Dreams

by

by Mark Fischweicher 

Dead of winter

xxxxxAll the leaves are brown and 
xxxxxthe sky is gray

Pine needles carpet the woodland trails,
and, with its monochrome horizon,
the landscape unfolds and,
even as the days
begin to grow,
you never know where
the moon will be
but that the sun will rise above the barren trees
seems likely for a few more years,
or centuries, or maybe
a millennium or more, but,
at least, this year, I think
that spring will come
and so will summer 

and so, for now, to keep them happy
every other morning, I fill the feeder with nuts and seeds and tasty
bits of fruit
and watch for black-capped chickadees
and purple finches, and
dark-eyed juncos,
and maybe one or two black-backed three-toed woodpeckers
or just a few, a trio or a chorus if they will of some black-throated warblers
with something smart to say or
mourning doves or all the Cardinals and their families
come to church just for the day
till evening when I take the feeder in
as once a bear had come in from the woods behind the house
and bent the steel pole it hangs on
like a twig, but
it is not the birds I think of now
who spend their days here, dependable as sun. 

No dreams for me
My only two nocturnal visitors are just the two opossum that
come looking for the nuts and seeds and bits of fruit their feathered friends
have scattered in the grass and fallen snow. 

I watch for them
am pleased when they return,
old friends should never be forgotten
I shave with Toby’s brush,
badger,
not so unlike opossum,
but he, no,
he will not return.
Ancient peoples, plagues and parents,
no monuments for these,
Perhaps some footprints in the snow will prove that they were here
and as it always seems,
the path leads to our home
welcoming the darkness as it falls
within it
A quiet comfort before the sleep I take alone,
and I,
with you beside me, 

all aflutter

Mark Fischweicher has been scratching out poems since junior high school and still hopes it may become a regular thing.

 

 

No More Dreams

by

by Mark Fischweicher

Dead of winter

xxxxxxxAll the leaves are brown and
xxxxxxxthe sky is gray

Pine needles carpet the woodland trails,
and, with its monochrome horizon,
the landscape unfolds and,
even as the days
begin to grow,
you never know where
the moon will be
but that the sun will rise above the barren trees
seems likely for a few more years,
or centuries, or maybe
a millennium or more, but,
at least, this year, I think
that spring will come
and so will summer

and so, for now, to keep them happy
every other morning, I fill the feeder with nuts and seeds and tasty
bits of fruit
and watch for black-capped chickadees
and purple finches, and
dark-eyed juncos,
and maybe one or two black-backed three-toed woodpeckers
or just a few, a trio or a chorus if they will of some black-throated warblers
with something smart to say or
mourning doves or all the Cardinals and their families
come to church just for the day
till evening when I take the feeder in
as once a bear had come in from the woods behind the house
and bent the steel pole it hangs on
like a twig, but
it is not the birds I think of now
who spend their days here, dependable as sun.

No dreams for me
My only two nocturnal visitors are just the two opossum that
come looking for the nuts and seeds and bits of fruit their feathered friends
have scattered in the grass and fallen snow.

I watch for them
am pleased when they return,
old friends should never be forgotten
I shave with Toby’s brush,
badger,
not so unlike opossum,
but he, no,
he will not return.
Ancient peoples, plagues and parents,
no monuments for these,
Perhaps some footprints in the snow will prove that they were here
and as it always seems,
the path leads to our home
welcoming the darkness as it falls
within it
A quiet comfort before the sleep I take alone,
and I,
with you beside me,

all aflutter

Mark Fischweicher has been scratching out poems since junior high school and still hopes it may become a regular thing.

 

On the Bus

by

by Mark Fischweicher

Jeans so tight I would worry about ripping them just getting them on,
but they were ripped already.

With sky blue hair, long and full of manufactured curls
that matched the jeans.

She reminded me of the woman on the train yesterday, Easter Sunday,
obviously riding back from the parade.
Quite a bonnet!
The closest we can come to looking like
the cherry blossoms in the park,
covered with petals and rainbow colored satin eggs
she looked like she could easily tip over
and no one batted even an eye
on the IRT
reminding me again of ‘Blue’
on her way to work on Monday morning

Later, I walked through the little park on Second Avenue
only two blocks wide with a fountain in the middle,
not turned on yet but surrounded with tulips in full bloom
as colorful as any hat in the parade

Where a nurse or aide helped an old man with a walker
to the edge of the circle to get an even better view.
Tulips have so many colors
“So beautiful,” I said and she agreed,
“So blue.”

Mark Fischweicher has been scratching out poems since junior high school and still hopes it may become a regular thing.

On the Bus

by

by Mark Fischweicher

Jeans so tight I would worry about ripping them just getting them on,
but they were ripped already.

With sky blue hair, long and full of manufactured curls
that matched the jeans.

She reminded me of the woman on the train yesterday, Easter Sunday,
obviously riding back from the parade.
Quite a bonnet!
The closest we can come to looking like
the cherry blossoms in the park,
covered with petals and rainbow colored satin eggs
she looked like she could easily tip over
and no one batted even an eye
on the IRT
reminding me again of ‘Blue’
on her way to work on Monday morning

Later, I walked through the little park on Second Avenue
only two blocks wide with a fountain in the middle,
not turned on yet but surrounded with tulips in full bloom
as colorful as any hat in the parade

Where a nurse or aide helped an old man with a walker
to the edge of the circle to get an even better view.
Tulips have so many colors
“So beautiful,” I said and she agreed,
“So blue.”

 

 

Mark Fischweicher has been scratching out poems since junior high school and still hopes it may become a regular thing.

 

Long Gone (a pantoum)

by

by Mark Fischweicher

 

Huddled within their own bent and twisted ruins,
Utah Junipers let parts of themselves die
…………………………to save the rest.
Ancient leafless branches curl up close to living stems,
Remembering what could have been
…………………………………..or,
……….what once was.

Letting parts of myself die to save the rest,
Revising this and that of some forgotten vision here,
Imagining what could have been once, was,
I turn my gaze away from thoughts that only went so far.

Rewriting bits and pieces of some old notations,
Quieting the old piano
I keep my eyes averted from notes that simply linger in the air
No eulogy will raise memorials there, no stones will mark the place

The old piano…    quiet now
with all our singing done,
I eulogize, I do.     I mark this place
But moss already grows upon this tome

With all our singing done,
I huddle in my own entangled shell
The moss already growing where you had gone
our limbs uncurled, untouched by these old arms.

 

Mark Fischweicher has been scratching out poems since junior high school and still hopes it may become a regular thing.

December, Harlem River

by

by Mark Fischweicher

 

This morning all the trees got old.
Fuzzy stubble on their leafless crowns.
Snow-flakey,
dusty, and already bald, as if
the slightest wind
could end
it all.

The sky, an equal grey.
Gulls, cut from the same,
the river, too.
The train,
the steel of the bridge,
the water, all a leaden,
somber, dingy, dreary hue.
The current on its schedule, though,
still moves beneath and through.
It makes you yawn, it does
No need to be involved.

It’s hard to tell the living from the dead
along the banks;
I shudder at the stillness,
try not to think of sorrow
in winds to come

so brittle, soft, and bare.

No time to lie dormant here,

 

 
Mark Fischweicher has been scratching out poems since junior high school and still hopes it may become a regular thing.