The Book Of Life - John Copley Alter

[Larry Robinson]

The Book Of Life

The local gossip is of the last hummingbird.
For a moment
at sunset
the tulip poplar
stood wistfully holding its ragged leaves.
The last
or almost the last
sailboat against the eastern shore.
It was cold this morning.
In mid-August
there were seven hummingbirds
sparring at the feeder.
Now, alone on his bench
above the brittle cliff,
nursing an old-fashioned,
this picaro
remembers barefoot frolicking
on childhood’s bright sand.
He loves the gossip.
 
The gossip of hummingbirds in a season of
                        political
mendacity, the book of life barely
open, is at least
the acknowledgement that a good
woman lived her eighty-seven
years
with grace & determination, wit, a sharp-
            edged
steady
commitment to what, as the sun wraps up its
                        picnic
blanket, appears so damned
obvious: we are called, as the book of life opens,
            to love one another & hummingbirds
& the bay’s slow threnody.
 
The book of life opens and written is her name,
                                                            Ruth
& the truth of her life is
 
that wisdom can be witty & elegant & tough.
Enough politics!  Supreme
 
over all powers is love after all.  Ruth dreamed of
love, our Ruth & her namesake,
 
they would not take less from the world, & founded,
                        grounded
themselves on what is sound, good,
 
the durable strong wood of trees with deep roots,
                                                Ruth.

	- John Copley Alter