Poems by Dick Westheimer
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A Prayer to the Gods of Winter Solstice
by Dick Westheimer
Dick resides on 50 acres of land in the western reaches of Ohio Appalachia where he’s made a home for 46 years. The farm’s soil, farmed out when he arrived, has made a modest recovery in that time and supports year-'round vegetable gardens, a small orchard, and a burgeoning permanent prairie of native grasses and pollinators. The land is bisected by Shayler Run Creek — a tributary of the Little Miami River – which runs, by way of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, to the Gulf of Mexico.
I was promised the heavens by the old ones, the spinners,
the gods who tilted the earth away from the everyday blaze
to this solstice. But all I’ve got is this permanent haze, a gift
Prometheus should have thought better of,
a dull yellow light smudged across the western sky,
cast up from the horizon like smoke
from a million frost fires, a dirty curtain,
a bewildered Aurora breaking vows with the dawn.
The god who corrupts the firmament with this gray radiance
is called Excess - what is disgorged by a million city dwellers
unaware that their wasted lumens have been cast like dust
into my night sky, my star starved sky. So, for just this night,
give us back the dark. We who sing outside this longest night
let us see clear though to the barest pinprick stars flung deep.
© Dick Westheimer
Dishwater
by Dick Westheimer
I plunge my hands stiff with cold
in dishwater. The water and I
undo much of what has been done.
The water sees back in my day when
I removed my gloves, still curled
in their grip of the spade I used to crack pond ice.
I see the water back up the spout,
squeezed through valve and pump
into the cistern, back up to the roof
where a thousand thousand raindrops mingled –
back to clouds blown in from the west
back to the recently flooded prairies, back and back...
Again I feel where the water meets my hands,
the slough of soap and sludge from the soup pot,
bits of carrots and greens unstuck by my scrubbing.
The dishwater warms me. I warm the house. The house
warms the world around when I crack the door, listen to see
if the nuthatches and geese are on wing, calling in spring.
© Dick Westheimer
In Preparing for the Winter Storm
by Dick Westheimer
we had the good sense to charge our phones but we
failed to pop the wipers on the cars, failed
to move the cars from under the maple, to move
a load of firewood from the shed to the house – a
blundering we’d regret long after the power went down, us blundering
round the house trying to find the flashlights we’d left around
in here, somewhere. After the lights went out, we settled in
like we’ve done before, snuggled under the covers (glad we like
each other!) and made plans for the morning. We each
took on tasks, I brought in wood, Deb built the fire, I took
a shovel to the drive and she got the skis prepared for a
day of exploring. All the roads were closed, would be for days,
so we were on our own. Once out on the ski trails, we saw so
many trees down, the oaks suffering most, many
with their clinging leaves sheathed and weighed to the breaking point with
coats of ice. After a mile, we heated up, shed our coats,
were quiet long enough to hear nothing but a solitary sparrow. We were
stunned at how much we’d won in that moment, so still, so stunning.
First appeared in Autumn Sky Daily.
© Dick Westheimer
The Corners of My Fields
You shall not reap all the way to the corners of your field, you shall leave that for the
poor and the stranger.
Leviticus 23:22
by Dick Westheimer
Even the deer have had it rough this winter. This morning,
three wandered onto my frozen yard walking like
each step hurt.
One nosed up at a pine limb just out of reach,
looks to his fellows and back at the branches.
I feel forlorn for him.
Another mouths a spruce bough, tongues a mouthful of pitch,
so bitter he shakes his head in disgust, appears to me like
he’s defeated.
The two yearlings jounce each other, nuzzle a bit as if to play,
vacantly. They then thread a path into the woods on their way to find
more of nothing,
except perhaps a drink at a barely ice-free patch of the creek.
This spring I will find bones of one strewn near the scrub-cedars
across the way.
The rest I guess, will survive
to raid my garden. Then I will turn again
to think
of these lovely creatures as vermin, know their hunger
as trouble, erect a fence of charged wire to keep for me
the corners of my fields.
© Dick Westheimer
The New World Order
by Dick Westheimer
1.
Mars went missing last night from the gathering along the ecliptic. The moon and
Jupiter and Saturn and Venus arced up from the horizon – kept company with me,
feeling big as all the Earth. I hear only my heartbeat thrubbing from within and the
small sounds of my shallow breath – so long as I don’t pay attention to the road noise
whine and clang of construction equipment working by klieg light over the hillside. If
Mars were here, red and wary, he’d warn that these sounds were the drums of war, tell
stories of old feuds among the gods that were settled with lesser weapons than track-
hoes and long-haul trucks.
2.
I have not seen a cardinal this winter, not heard a chip, chip, chip, chip, cheer from the
trees. There are no finches at the feeder. A solitary jay scrabbles its claws against the
gutter and jeers peevish into the chill air. Winds have blown from the north seven times
in the last seven days. The wind never blows from the north around here. Not a single
house mouse has scrambled from under the stove. Even the cats are confused.
3.
Only the tall trees were damaged in the storm last night - some with human sized limbs
broken – littering the woods like bodies from a great battle, another uprooted and lying
across the lane. The neighbor-men gather with chainsaws in hand and begin to trim.
Some of women haul the cut-loose branches into the thicket while others stand in a
clutch on the hill and speak in mysteries. On the forest floor, the fungi carry on their
work.
© Dick Westheimer