Sea Grapes and Sea Oats
Jeffrey Jay Niehaus
Sea Grapes and Sea Oats
Copyright © 2018 Jeffrey Jay Niehaus. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Resource Publications
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-5659-0
hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-5660-6
ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-5661-3
Manufactured in the U.S.A.
FOR
ERIN & ANNIKA
beauty is truth, truth beauty
AFTER SONNETS
After sonnets how about a siesta
Sombrero in hot sun over your face
No sound around, but tumbleweed
Casually rolling past could be
A low, silent breeze after them—
As you repose against an old fence?
On a southwestern afternoon
You could dream of chilis, enchiladas
Jalapeños and Scoville units
And not have to worry about tomorrow
Because endorphins took it all away
Before it could bother you today.
As you relax upon some old wood
Gastronomics offer short delay.
POEM TO ROTTING APPLES
Why would you compose a poem to rotting apples?
—Maggi
Why would one compose a poem, you ask,
To rotting apples?
Although long ago
As humans ordinarily count long
Schiller loved to do so—and who knows
Who brought the apples to his study
Or what inspiration entered him
When nostrils dilated to catch and hold
For elevated moments those aromas
Just a rotten apple could produce?
So now you have conjured a new poem,
A sonnet I would hardly have composed,
Only, I spoke of Schiller—and you mocked.
So mockery and playfulness gave birth
To what a rotten apple has brought forth.
BIRD OF PARADISE
Paradisaeidae (your Latin name)
Accustomed to New Guinea and her islands
But also now and then in Florida
One could spot in yard or garden
Your tropical outrageous orange crest—
A crown of many colors honestly
And not one color of a Florida fruit.
I saw you only rarely as a boy
In our subtropical peninsula.
West Palm Beach was almost part of sand
And sea and plants and animals could be
Sublimely indifferent to us.
Who could own such a crown and be
So tranquil beyond words
O rara avis
COFFEA
Coffea I love you—imagine
How you can stimulate
Any hour I hope to enjoy you—
O save a soul from Yankee lethargy
Coffea Arabica whose glossy leaves
Although lovely hardly offer us
A clue as to what pink or purple berries
Can do for a desperate soul.
So transport me to India, Cameroon
Or anywhere in South America
Or even better take me to Jamaica
And her Blue Mountains
or rather her coast
And Sugar Mill Restaurant
where I can sip
Coffea
by an abandoned water wheel
TWO PALMS
Two palm trees at North Palm Beach
So long ago when Florida
Was simple—undeveloped as men say
You saw them arcing tall and narrow and
You thought they should be on a post card
Or rather, thought they were
so unreal
Those palms looked to one from England.
I could reassure you they were not
Imaginary or some sort of art
Posing as palms
on a public shore.
SALISBURY CATHEDRAL
Astounding mass of stonework on grass,
Flat and rolled as one may often see
In England’s green and pleasant
land
Masonry to Our Lady a spire,
Tallest in the isle—no aspiration
Beyond a hope of heaven.
May no hubris
Undo our offering.
Once, a skeptic,
I ambled on your plain and saw
Your solemn cloister and the eloquent
Chaste fan vault of your chapter house
And hardly understood how such work
Could honor God who was supernal
Only older would I know
Architecture
can become a song.
CASTILLO DE SAN MARCOS
Old castle at Matanzas Bay