The Poem of the World

reveals itself
like a doe’s hoof tapping ice 
till she can drink.

Startles like the rust of purple on this fall’s
forsythia leaves, though it may have used that small voice
every year, unheard.

Blinks like red and blue potatoes, 
dug this morning, drying in the sun, testing
their startled untrained eyes.

It’s the unexpected tickle, the fit of shared 
laughter in our urgency of touching that becomes 
another way of making love. It’s an ocean  

beach of pebbles that suddenly
starts singing, each stone its own tink;
together, a glorious indifferent song.

And it’s the voice of each bird I have only heard 
as morning chorus landing with its own song 
and bright perfect body in my brain.

It is even—now I begin to see them—the subtraction 
of birds, taking summer with them, too busy
to announce their leaving.

The poem of the world wants me to wake 
in my own body; it is astonished I might let 
these supple bones grow brittle.

It is the sudden thing I trust.   

published in Crosswinds Poetry Journal, Volume IV - 2019

Blessing

You compose a table
from all the tables in the house,
drape it with old linen till it snakes
through living and dining rooms
like a Chinese dragon. 

White metal lawn chairs come up
from basement slumber,
antiques from the bedroom,
where a week of clothes lands on the floor.                            

You dig to the back of the drawer
for cheap stainless, then the family silver;
untie ribbons hugging it in chamois cloth.  

Wine glasses, from pewter to crystal,
alternate around the table,
suggesting a symmetry in their history.  

You remember the spoons
that melted in the fire
no one here remembers,
and the fourth and missing crystal glass. 

Guests bring the cold air in,
each with their offering of food.
Laughter and greeting for old friends,
and strangers they embrace
because you love them all. 

Voices rise in the living room over wine,
crackers, chopped liver, baba ghanoush.
There’s that last-minute rush, the comfort of it—
this in, this out, of oven or refrigerator. 

It’s as you bring your kugel to the table
the absence races through you; the laughter here
invites the laughter that is gone.
How can we be joyful in the company of loss? 

Your knees are weak, you lean into your closest friend;
pause, slowly start to breathe. And we begin,
now that the meal is blessed.

Online link to other published poems by Scudder Parker

“To My Daughter Katie” Cagibi Journal
“Recognize” Twyckenham Notes
”Visit to Harpswell,” Tamarack,” “Sit Here,” and “Humility” Twyckenham Notes
”Salvaging Beauty” Aquifer — The Florida Review Online
”Visitation” & “Rock Harvest” Ponder Review
”First Love” Ponder Review
”Lake Elmore” Eclectica
”Moose Bog” Eclectica
”Mississippi Kites” La Presa
”Talent Show” Sky Island Journal
”You Can’t Blame Her” Boston Literary Magazine

Other publishing credits (solely in print)

“Gratitude” Crosswinds Poetry Journal, Vol. V - 2020
”Relinquished” Stonecoast Review, Summer 2019, Issue No. 11
”My Mother’s Art” Passager, 2019
”Love of Justice” Passager, 2018 (poem now entitled “Our Turn”)
”Leeks” Vermont Almanac, Vol. I, p. 63 (2020)
“Picking Wild Fruit” Vermont Almanac, Vol. II, p. 224 (2021)
”Wood Frogs” Vermont Almanac, Vol. III, p. 144 (2022)
”Osmore Pond” The Mountain Troubadour, 2021, p. 35

Davy Road

A man in clothes the shape of sleep
pushes his battered bicycle,
wire baskets front and back,
halfway up the drive and stops.

He watches me raking gravel.
"You live here now?"  I pause,
lean on my rake. "I'm trying.”
We gossip like old neighbors.

His family logged pine and maple.
A few cows and chickens. Some summers
a bear got all the corn. I tell him
a bear got ours last summer.

The house and barn were "down there,
where you have your woodpile now.
The house was small and cold as hell.
The barn was built better.”

We go down, explore lilac,
sprawling roses, honeysuckle,
clumps of double daffodils,
stacked granite slabs that held the barn.

No sign of the house foundation.
Five generations in this place,
and I, three years.

Twice since then I’ve seen him,
picking up empties. Once,
just his bike, leaning against a tree.

published in Sun Magazine, 2017 as “A Stranger Visits”

Nourishment

New rosettes of dandelion each day
in the garden, advancing on the snow’s

retreating rim. Green nests tucked in
beneath tan brittle stalks of last fall’s

vines and flowering. They sprout on ground
left bare, line up where terrace-logs sink

into loam—aggressively at home. This
spring, from their perspective, it would be

just fine if I didn’t do a thing.
But here I am, garden-fork in hand,

because they already own the lawns,
and I, like them, am pushy and have plans.

I grow happy as I dig; prying deep down;
listening for separation-sigh;

slip taproot out, raising in admiration
the pliant needle that would break

to save itself and sprout again. The leaf-bowl
blossoms from it like a slow explosion—

white underneath, hints of red, soil-freckled,
then saw-toothed green in full eruption.

I scissor them into my basket. A good
wash, salt-soak, seared in olive oil.

“There are so many paths to victory,”
I think, captured by spring’s pungent food.

read Scudder’s commentary on dandelions in VTDigger (Vermont’s independent online newspaper)

Online link to published non-fiction by Scudder Parker

“The Abbots Lawrence” Eclectica Magazine, July/August 2020

“The Table from Montpelier” Northern Woodlands Magazine, Winter 2020

Scudder’s Online Reading

Watch and listen to Scudder reading a few select poems. Click here