MARK SCONCE
Retired with Chica in Leisure Village, Camarillo, California
President of Workshop For Writers
Lived for seven years in Ajijic
New Book: Volunteering in Nepal; Loitering in Lucknow.
Arizona Reflections
In Arizona one may greet
The desert with its burning heat.
And then next day upon a hill,
Confront the gaping Canyon’s chill.
From cactus to the piñon pine
And Colorado’s serpentine,
One wonders at the vast array
On anyArizona day.
Sedona with its flaming rocks
Is one of nature’s wondrous shocks,
While Tlaquepaque’s alleys show
An air of distant Mexico.
The Anasazi Spirits weep
And Mogollons, in disbelief,
Watch thieves profane their petroglyphs
In Mesa Verde’s undercliffs.
Old Phoenix rose from smelted ashes
Copper mining mountain gashes…
But real estate now dominates
Among the Valley’s potentates.
The Superstition Mountains hold
Much more than tales of buried gold.
The ashes of my gentle folks
Now rest beneath the mountain oaks.
On Arizona’s Granite Reef
Where geckos play and life is brief,
One looks in vain for purling streams
And finds instead one’s dreams.
*****
Audubon Society
I socialize with hummingbirds,
I’m friendly with the owl;
I lift my lid to lakeside loons
And other water fowl.
They’re living here on Lake Louise
(Some call it Dutchman Lake)
Protected by a thousand trees
And every Mallard drake.
I greet our guests from Canada
And overlook their mess.
Next stop will be Lake Manawa,
So bon voyage, God Bless!
I’m guarded when with grackles
But struggle to be nice;
Their habits raise some hackles
And mar our paradise.
Each morning I greet mourning doves
That perch along my gate.
They’re clearly very much in love
And share each other’s fate.
Day’s end I leave the office grind
And wave to Mrs. Quail
As all her covey close behind
Go bobbing down the trail.
Great Blue Herons breast the breeze;
I’m proud to call them friends
And welcome them to Lake Louise
Along with cactus wrens.
Great Blues are not the only kind
Of heron to be found.
The Green-Backed I can also find,
The Tiger and Black-Crowned.
In avian society,
I note that coots and grebes
Affect a certain piety
That dates to ancient Thebes.
The anti-social birds of course
Include the Turkey Vulture
And hawks that use excessive force
And others lacking culture.
My Audubon society,
With finches, flickers, phoebes,
Is cheaper than psychiatry.
It’s one of Nature’s freebies.
*****
Look Who’s Coming to Dinner
My sister telephoned last night;
She had some news to share.
Her manner seemed a bit uptight;
I listened whatsoe’er.
She said her daughter’s coming home
From college way back east.
And bringing with her “cool Jerome,”
A sophomore artiste.
“You’ll like him, Mom, and Daddy, too.
He’s really, really hip.
He’s even been to Kathmandu
And pierced his lower lip.”
My sister groaned and wondered why
The gods would treat her thus.
I sympathized in my reply
But warned her not to fuss.
“Remember many years ago,
You didn’t even phone,
To say that you were bringing home
A boy who made us groan.
“Recall with me his dread dreadlocks
And gibbonesque goatee
And sundry other aftershocks–
A Krishna devotee!”
Our mother, up in heaven now,
Is laughing loud, I’m sure
To see her daughter’s furrowed brow
And fine discomfiture.
*****
Of Heirlooms and Pedigrees
As Antique Road Shows clearly show,
The heirlooms we collect
Are sometimes worth a lot of dough
And earn our deep respect.
The stories that the owners tell,
The history of the piece,
Can cast a spell and usually will
Foretell a price increase.
Pedigree is a different duck,
Begotten though not made,
A birthright we can count as luck,
The owner wouldn’t trade.
Fine hand-me-downs and pedigrees
Deserving both of measure.
The one implies noblesse oblige,
The other, dearest treasure.
The olden days of tarnished things–
A candlestick perhaps,
A birthday spoon or napkin rings:
Are ghosts in our synapse.
Do heirlooms outdate pedigrees?
I think perhaps they do.
The oldest ones no doubt Chinese
Or deep in Kathmandu.
But I could use a pedigree,
So easy to convey;
Hereditary title me
And I’ll be on my way.
*****
Sharing Tales with Nepalese
When sharing tales with Nepalese,
I wander back in time
To my old village in Nepal
Where I did once abide.
Sindhuli Madhi was its name,
A Himalayan site:
With Annapurna on the left,
And Everest on the right.
Thatched roof adorned my village hut,
While mud and cow dung formed the floor,
And mud and wattle were its walls.
No sense to lock the door.
My lanterns fed with kerosene
Provided reading light,
And I had water from our stream
To bathe in every night.
The milk of water buffalo
To froth my tea each morn;
Good chai from tea stalls down below
And by my bearer borne.
Sir Adhikari was his name
Just eighteen years of age,
A Hindu Brahmin, he became
My guide and cook and sage.
He cooked me rice and lentil soup,
Spiced vegetables a treat;
The fish he found in our bazaar
Were barely fit to eat.
Our hardships though were small indeed
Compared to village ways;
The men were yoked to ox and plow
The same as ancient days.
When looking out our window gap,
One cloudy afternoon,
We saw a body borne aloft
Before the great monsoon.
The mourning family bore the corpse
And placed it on a pyre
Beside the rushing river shore,
And set their son on fire.
We watched the smoke ascend like shrouds
We watched the Hindu priest,
We watched the billows reach the clouds
And with them the deceased.
These memories oft return to me,
Both pleasant and profound,
When I sit down with Nepalese
On this my native ground.
*****
After he retired and moved to Sedona, Arizona, he taught literature at Yavapai College in Clarkdale, Arizona.
He and professional artist Bev Kephart bought a small motor home in 2003, sold most of their possessions, and traveled the U. S. for seven years. After visiting Mexico several times, they settled in the village of Ajijic, joining the ex-pat artist and writing communities.
Mel’s writing has been published online and in print in The United Kingdom, The United States, Mexico, New Zealand, and Australia. He is the author of three novels, a book of short stories, and several books of poetry. He and his wife now make their home in the village of San Nicholas de Ibarra.
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The last line of the first poem should be: “And finds instead one’s bleakest dreams.”.
The author