Poems on Sabbatical

By Christopher Keats

This collection of poems is the authors' first, and reflects his wide-ranging interests. It will appeal to anyone who, like the author, has spent a number of years on earth and has struggled to make sense of it all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Feb 21, 2024
• ISBN: 9781662947483

Book preview

Introduction

These poems came to me between March 2023, when I retired after forty-five years as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and November of that year. I call them Poems on Sabbatical because I viewed that time as a time off, a time to reflect on what might be next, and yet a time to accomplish something. I did not embark on a project to write poems. A few were written prior to that time— Sonnet of the CEO, for instance, I wrote earlier, when a friend mentioned something called a sonnet, and I asked myself if I could write one; Ere the End I wrote on the occasion of my fifty-fifth college reunion, and Masks for an Art Salon at the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. Sonnet to My Last Day of Work was one of the first I wrote, in early March. The rest emerged since. I found they clustered around the themes which have become chapter headings, but only loosely so; they are now organized accordingly, and not in the order in which they were written.

Chapter 1:

Looking Back

Sonnet to Woodfield Maryland

Desiring to fit in, to be a good neighbor,

My mom asked Hetty Darby how to raise the chicks.

And so we bought a little incubator

And warmed them. We were living in the sticks,

My mom and dad bohemians and communists,

Who smoked and drank and didn’t go to church,

Which led to me defending with my fists:

I often ended bloodied in the lurch.

So too the chicks, now hens, had bloodied necks

As mom, with face scrunched up and cigarette askew,

Chopped off their heads with one blow from the axe.

And I would watch, a quiet white, and revolution brew

That took me to the bookmobile, and there I borrowed dreams,

Which helped me through the days I wasn’t picked for any teams.

Baseball

The baseball came so dangerously close

It seemed about to hit me in the face,

And thickly grew the grass in the back yard—

The mower stuck no matter how I pushed.

These dangers loomed like those that Jason faced

When he set out to find the Golden Fleece:

What Hercules was tasked to overcome

Seemed less than found by me in my backyard.

And yet I knew that dragons never scared

The men in armor saving princesses;

I never heard Prometheus complain

Nor Sisyphus refuse his endless task.

And so I screwed my courage to the peak:

I’d not be found with constitution weak.

The Bees Did Swarm

The bees did swarm, and whizz, and buzz about

When I lugged out the chow to feed the hens,

And then the chickens pecked my reaching hand

When I groped under them to gather eggs.

The dog leaped up, tore clothing from the line

The crows flocked down and pecked the rows of seeds

The neighbor’s son arrested smoking weed

At school we ducked and covered in the drill

And read aloud our primer, Dick and Jane

Whose trips to grandma’s farm included Spot,

The dog, and Puff, the cat, and Mom and Dad

Both dressed as if about to go to work.

We knew the gap between reality

And what the grown-ups wanted us to see.

I Used to Curl Up on the Couch

I used to curl up on the couch and read.

My mom would tell me I should play outdoors:

I think she worried I would not succeed

With other little kids in playground wars.

But I would find upon the printed page,

Careening down the lists with leveled lance,

The knights in armor eager to engage

And prove their worth to princesses entranced.

And that was when the princesses were not

Delivered from the dragons breathing fire,

Who’d golden ransom from the village sought,

But who were slain at last by sturdy squire.

And those were just the medieval times:

My books had tales of mongeese fighting snakes,

And sailors keeping healthy eating limes,

And boys in jungles who were raised by wolves.

From couch I would not budge or raise a hand—

I must have seemed a beached whale to mom.

But mind was ranging over foreign land,

Or in Los Alamos making the bomb.

How could events in my backyard compare?

My mom would need my quiet reading bear.

Though she wondered if I could wield a bat,

Or stand my own when I got in a spat.

And even now when I look back on life,

I wonder how the other men have stood

The pressures laid on them by eager wife

To make a fortune in the neighborhood,

Or leave this place for even greener fields,

For monies to be found ’mongst bulls and bears,

And all the arbitrage a fortune yields,

Then I feel glad to have escaped these cares.

My feet, though not securely on the ground,

Are running freely, dodging here and there.

My mom would see I’m not to millstone bound:

My head, though in the clouds, in better air.

Career Choice

I want to be a rocket scientist

Until I find that math is not my thing,

I realize every course is merely grist

Which to my table, once it’s ground, may bring

Decision clear about my life ahead—

What I desire is not in focus yet—

I wonder how I’ll make my daily bread,

On which career I’ll ever