Welcome to RPP

Spaghetti is a nostalgic nod to those Salad Days when I had a column in the Real Paper called “Spaghetti.”  Here I hope to gas with my former readers and others who believe we must maintain our senses of humor. And who know we are but a blink in evolution. 

This week's poem is from

[if someone could tell me how to get this to publish lined on the left margin rather than centered I'd appreciate it.]

What I Got for Dollar, Off the Grid Press, Boston, Massachusetts

© 2018 Bert Stern

Elegy for Henry Braun

Any man could imagine this:

three friends and you around

a fire, reminiscing, telling

back-then stories and now

ones too. Y’ all know one

another deep as the bones,

your shadows playing

on the trunks of old oaks.

Then the silent marauder’s

there and you are three,

and now the woods move

in as if – though not yet

doing it – to engulf the fire.

Still, the stories are strong

as oaken roots.

And then you are two.

The woods are darkening 

deeper. Love hasn’t vanished 

but it’s  grown more ghostly.

On some plane it’s true

that you‘re still five, though

the wind’s whistling through

your bones.

Somewhere bereft, children

we been the night, and wives

toss in beds abruptly unfamiliar.

You two, though more fragile,

feed the fire, until you are one.

This you is you, or – say it –

I, somehow reading silent stories, 

as if dead friends were candlelight.