Alan C. Fox

January 27, 2021

“Throughout This Teeter-Totter World” by Alan C. FoxPosted by

Alan C. Fox

THROUGHOUT THIS TEETER-TOTTER WORLD

In Sisimiut, Greenland, today,

Inhabited for the past 4,500 years,
And now a town of 6,000 selves,
We visited a Lutheran church
Completed in 1775.

Our guide said there are only two houses left in town
With two separate entrances—

One for the conquerors, one for her people.

Isn’t it thus
For all of us?

—from Rattle #70, Winter 2020

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Alan C. Fox: “At age 80, I’m almost as energetic as ever and still working full time in my commercial real estate business. I continue to enjoy writing a philosophic blog every week and still love putting words together in a creative way.” (web)

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February 10, 2020

“Wherefore Art Thou?” by Alan C. FoxPosted by

Alan C. Fox

WHEREFORE ART THOU?

I hasten to assure
All who wander by
I live, a pragmatist,
And know regret
Like Romeo and Juliet

Fallen in love.
We know the launch,
Pure joy, but
The landing, endless
Sorrow, I confess

I picture those two,
Married for years,
Three kids, a million fights,
Romeo at the pub, he’s out,
Juliet at home, with gout.

Do I long today
For all my Juliets?
Prithee, kind reader,
Not at all, I’m sane
With my Juliet who will remain.

—from Rattle #66, Winter 2019

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Alan C. Fox: “I began writing this poem to honor my Juliet of almost 50 years ago, who committed suicide on April 15, 1971. But the poem reminded me how very happy I am with my wife, with one hiatus, of more than 35 years.” (web)

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September 11, 2019

“Full Disclosure” by Alan C. FoxPosted by

Alan C. Fox

FULL DISCLOSURE

I keep many secrets
I’m going to tell a few
You will know me better
Though still I won’t know you

A process much like praying
Though we don’t need a pew
And we’ll really never finish
We’ll always keep a few

I’m tired more than yesterday
Exhaustion simply grew
Now that you are older
You may feel it too

Do dear friends really know me
Perhaps, just one or two
Not completely because I hide
Like others in the zoo

Most important, I’m an alien
Here to spy on you
Report back to my people
They’re energy, like you

There, that is the big one
We were separate as we grew
Now carrot and potato
We swim in the same stew

Now you know me better
What I say may be true
But when you tap my shoulder
We still ask each other who

—from Rattle #64, Summer 2019

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Alan C. Fox: “I love the big wallop a poem can deliver in just a few words, and for the past ten years I have focused on eight line poems. Some are only nine or ten words. Now I’m back to writing a rhyming poem.” (web)

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February 27, 2019

“Old Times on Maui” by Alan C. FoxPosted by

Alan C. Fox

OLD TIMES ON MAUI

Old times are the best.
Aren’t they?
Old times rinse the fog of pain,
expose the pleasure, shining down
like sunlight from a star.

An old woman waits in front of a house
in which we both lived years ago, ’til
one thing led, ’til she pushed and I fell, naked,
to our bedroom floor, a swelling on my head.
But she only knows bruises of her own,

and she is wont to disremember,
remaining beautiful, dressed in her best,
which has seen its day, not yet descended
to shabbiness, to “Weren’t you someone once?”
I watch her stand and stare. She was my wife.

She gazes up at windows
through which we viewed the sea.
She pictures the outside bath
where we once cleansed ourselves;
she wonders who bathes there now.

A tear forms in one eye.
She brushes back her hair.
Still tough, she will not cry,
but allows herself to love …
briefly, before she turns away.

I need to tell this story
in a slightly different way.
She does not stand before this house.
Old times are the best. Aren’t they?
She is me.

—from Rattle #62, Winter 2018

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Alan C. Fox: “I especially enjoy the challenge of shifting the whole perception of a poem in the final line. ‘Old Times on Maui’ qualifies. No matter whose eyes we say we are looking through, those eyes always turn out to be our own.” (web)

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September 19, 2018

“Help” by Alan C. FoxPosted by

Alan C. Fox

HELP

She won’t
let me out

so I bark
at the coyotes

from behind
the window pane.

I smell them.
They hear me.

—from Rattle #60, Summer 2018

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Alan C. Fox: “Life takes strange turns. With a friend I recently condensed two short stories which I wrote many years ago into two children’s books. Children’s books! Who’da thunk it? Still, for me, poetry prevails.” (web)

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February 5, 2018

“Tilting at Windmills” by Alan C. FoxPosted by

Alan C. Fox

TILTING AT WINDMILLS

So many windmills dotted
the landscape of my life—

those tall, twirling towers
of challenge and of change.

And ofttimes, still, I mount
my steady, weary steed

to hurl myself at windmills
that are no longer there.

—from Rattle #58, Winter 2017

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Alan C. Fox: “My prose writing springs from perspiration. I can sit down and write a decent or better blog or book chapter any time, preferably morning or evening. My poetry writing, however, springs from inspiration, which is a fleeting chimera which disappears unless I pay attention and write it down at once. ‘Tilting at Windmills’ covers a lot of territory, and pleases me.” (web)

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October 2, 2017

“Wake-Up Call” by Alan C. FoxPosted by

Alan C. Fox

WAKE-UP CALL

The old man who fell asleep
on his living room chair
in the middle of the night
heard knocking at his door.

He stumbled, in his underwear,
to the door and opened it
to stop the loud knocking
of two policemen in uniform.

“The neighbors are complaining
that your alarm goes off
at all hours of the night.”
The man was my father,

standing in his underwear,
in his own living room,
at 102 years old, hearing,
“Show us your photo ID.”

“Officer, this is my house.”
“Sir, we need to see your photo ID.
Some burglars take their clothes off
To make us think they own the place.”

—from Rattle #56, Summer 2017

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Alan C. Fox: “When my father proudly told a friend that I publish a poetry journal, his friend was concerned. ‘Can your son make a living doing that?’ I don’t exactly make a living by publishing Rattle, but I do make a better life—my own and, hopefully, many others.” (website)

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