Len Roberts

Learning to Write in Cursive
with a Fountain Pen 

The trick was to get ink from the well
into the fountain pen without blobbing it
   all over the desk,
then onto the lined paper and moving
instantly so the letters would not run
   too thick, 
Sister Ann Zita hissing
the way we wrote was An expression
   of our souls,
Ray Dumas's blotches held up for us all
   to behold,
Irene Tousignant's clean, curved lines
   tacked to the corkboard
as a model of God's will at work,
not even the sleet banging its little fists
on the invisible panes able to lift
our eyes from the pages we were making perfect
   with round O's and snake-curved S's
without one blobbed halt that might express doubt,
coming back to cross the t or dot the i only after
   the word was complete,
Sister whispering and nodding as she bent,
   black-winged,
to set the thick green blotters cut in the shape
   of the cross
beside our tight-lipped, jaw-set, swaying heads.

Shoveling While the
Snow Keeps Falling 

How many times have I found myself
out here shoveling while the flakes
   keep falling, the low rumble
of my voice like that of the shovel
as it scrapes the pitted concrete,
my wife's words in my ears, Why
go out while it's still snowing?  I 
can't tell her my father comes back
when it snows like this, his brown
   collar up,
the flakes caught in his big wave of
   hair
where they slowly crumple and melt.
That he walks down close to the house
   at night, bows
through the spruce, knocks clumps
of snow from branches in small, explosive
   puffs.
I used to think he wanted to talk
   about
his wife, my mother, the day she left
and he stood by the canal fence and wept,
   but instead
he whispers the shine of the '52 Buick,
tells me he lit candles on St. Bernard's
   altar,
then asks the names of the presidents again,
says the next time he comes he'll expect
me to know the states and their capitals,
   the ones
I've been repeating the past thirty years
   of my life.
When he squats and makes drawings I can't
   see clearly in the snow
he tells me he knows I've been screwing up,
   but it's all
right, he can tell I'm learning to open
   myself
despite the fearful dreams my mother still
   breathes
into my head of my wife leaving with another
   man,
of my sons and daughters being hit by a
   speeding car.
It's not easy, he sighs, waving his hands
in the blueblack air as though they were wind,
telling me as I straighten my back
that I cannot afford to stop and talk,
just keep shoveling no matter
how cold my toes get, no matter
how many times the snow covers
   the clear walk.                    

Passing the Orange 

I stepped between Jon Dumas
   and lovely Lorraine
when the orange was handed out
at the beginning of the line
   in some friend's house
whose name I can't bring back,
just Lorraine's big breasts clear
under the green angora sweater,
   Jon's drooped mouth
when she collected that orange
   so close to her throat
   I could feel her pulse
as I wrapped one arm around
her waist and pulled her snug
so the orange would not drop
   between us
but be caught between our chests
where I could shimmy down to hook
   my jutting chin 
around its cool smoothness
and, inch by inch, bring it up again
till my eyes were level with her lips,
the gold sparkle on them glinting
   each time we swayed
and I felt each breast give and give
   till the orange was mine
and she hung on that extra second 
   just to see how firm a grip
I really had, although the clock
   was ticking
and we knew this could be our very
   best time.

© All Copyright, Len Roberts.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission. 

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