Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Five November-December 2024
Pipe Stories, poems by Peter A Witt.
Pipe Stories
He sat in his wicker caned chair,
one leg placed over the knee of his other leg,
tamping down tabaco into a well-worn pipe
he said he’d had since college.
Grandpa told stories while he tamped, sometimes
pausing his tamping as the pipe gently descended
onto his knee and his other hand began to wave
halfway between his knee and chin as his mouth
formed memories, like a sculptor shaping clay,
of his army days in France during WWI,
being careful to leave out the gore of men dying
in the trenches so we young ones could sleep at night,
dreaming of the sweetness of pipe smoke
not the stench of bodies decaying on the battlefield.
I don’t remember much about the war stories,
except that telling them made him seem sad,
but I do remember hoping that after dinner
grandpa would sit in his wicker chair,
reach for his pipe, take a large pinch of tabaco
from a bag, put it in the pipe bowl, and begin
gently tamping, sometimes lighting the pipe,
but often just resting it on his knee,
while his other hand conjured memories
like a magician pulling silk from his sleeve
as the smell of the tobacco echoed in the room
like a memory that refused to fade.
An Itch for Nature
This morning, hot and humid, I walked
along a mosquito infested path,
my exposed neck, hands, and face
slathered with repellent, ignored by
the biting menace of swamp mosquitoes.
And yet the walk was a treasure worth the welts
that rose in anger from my skin, for the trees
were a fluttering tapestry of migrating birds –
wilson’s warblers, baltimore orioles,
and yellow breasted chats –
happy for a mosquito feast before
starting their journey over the gulf,
hoping they’d stored enough energy
for the overnight, and then some, flight.
Back in the safety of my hotel room,
a smoothing salve applied to my itching skin,
I scanned the images captured on my camera,
some like weeds in a garden, were easily discarded,
others a reminder that to see nature at its resplendent best
sometimes requires the sacrifice of an overnight itch.
The Demise of Sunflowers
(prompted by Van Gogh’s Sunflowers)
Plucked in their prime while pointing to the sun,
sunflowers begin their slow march to death
as they stand, for now, like sentinels in a yellow vase,
on a yellow table, displaying their beauty like a peacock
flaunts its plumage as the artist van Gogh paints his masterpiece
that someday will fetch a remarkable sum at a 1987 auction.
Yet there’s something sad about the painting, one flower
already bending over, beyond its prime, succumbing to having been
clipped and planted in a water-filled vase. By morning
others will follow, their dark brown centers tilting downward
forecasting the inevitability of their demise,
the compost pile awaiting like a dark fertile abyss,
where they’ll eventually provide the mulch to nurture another
generation of sunflowers, unaware that they too
will be snipped and vased, in a cycle that repeats
itself until someone says ‘enough,’ and vows
to paint the sun-seeking flowers au plein air
or moves on to painting squirrels hording secrets
in their cheeks or burying them in a pile of pine needles.
© Peter A Witt
Peter A. Witt is a Texas Poet and a retired university professor. He also writes family history with a book about his aunt published by the Texas A&M Press. Peter’s poetry deals with personal experiences, both real and imagined. He has twice been nominated for Best of the Net. His poetry has been published on various sites including The Wise Owl, Oregaug Mountain Poetry, Verse Virtual, Beatnik Cowboy, and The Blue Bird Word.