October 2007

            
The Poetry of Bruce
            Niedt


            


            Time Travel

            
Maybe it’s in the memory of skin –

            a certain touch, chemical connection,

            a circuit of nerves completed.

            
Maybe it’s all in the mind –

            a déjà vu of senses,

            a re-opened file of valentines.

            
But when we share a serious embrace

            or trade passionate kisses,

            there is no need to compare

            
those kids in the old wedding photo

            with what we see in the mirror.

            Reflections are irrelevant,

            
time machines superfluous.

            When I am in the moment of your arms

            I am nineteen again.

            
What Fifty Feels Like

            
It feels like any other day

            that’s not a round-number birthday,

            but perhaps most like the day I took

            
my only sailing trip, a ninety-minute tour

            on a thirty-foot ketch, out into an arm

            of the Chesapeake Bay, off the Eastern Shore.

            
We landlubbers slipped out of the cove,

            past the osprey nests, past the channel markers,

            the bobbing buoys under a brisk sky –

            
stiff breeze pulled the rigging taut

            to harmonic tension, sails strained,

            snapping in a westerly breeze,

            
billowing like my mother’s sheets

            when she used to hang them on the line

            and I would run face-first,

            
arms swept back like the X-15

            as I hit a wall of white like a solid cloud

            and inhaled the mix of chlorine bleach

            
and fresh-air ozone. It wrapped me

            like a fragrant, friendly monster,

            dancing with me in the backyard,

            
filtering sun through its translucent skin.

            Another snap, and I am yanked back

            by a lanyard to the boat,

            
watching the tango of linen and sky,

            cradle-rocking in silence, the only sounds

            the drum of sail, the groan of wood and rope,

            
the occasional bleat of a gull,

            as water lapped its tongues across the gunwales.

            And I would never want this hour to end,

            
as I would never want to be called in to
            supper,

            knowi ng nothing would ever be the same again

            on those perfect blue parachute days.

            
 

            
We Should All Be More Like Atticus Finch

            
We all should be more like Atticus Finch,

            number-one on that movie-hero hit parade,

            cool and collected,

            in his ice-cream linen suit and fedora,

            barely breaking a sweat

            on a Southern August afternoon.

            
We all should be more like Atticus Finch,

            steadfast and principled, pleading against injustice.

            And when he, with the voice of Gregory Peck,

            exhorts the jury, “In the name of God! –

            do your duty!”

            you can believe he is summoning

            a higher power, to see that right is done.

            But it isn’t. An innocent black man is convicted.

            Yet Atticus still moves with dignity,

            and as he leaves the courtroom, the Reverend,

            a dignified man himself, says to Scout,

            “Stand up! Your father’s passing.”

            
We all should be more like Atticus Finch,

            when evil Bob Euell spits in his face.

            He tenses and moves forward, but stops himself,

            and with all the steel a man can muster,

            simply wipes the spittle with his handkerchief,

            stares at Euell all the while,

            and silently walks away.

            
We all should be more like Atticus Finch,

            who stays up all night in vigil

            beside his son Jem and his broken arm,

            till the sun colors the curtains next morning,

            and Jem wakes up.

            
We all should be more like Atticus Finch.

            The world may still not be perfect,

            but perhaps we won’t spend so much time

            killing mockingbirds.