Stewart Alter

by Stewart Alter

I know it’s ancient history
but I can’t seem to forget
my teacher’s unexpected oration
addressing my report on Egyptian
measurements in our sixth-grade class.

Before that, and even more so after,
my ruler was the cubit length,
its logic the body’s, not some notched wooden strip,
a tower stretching from the elbow to the tip
of the steepled middle finger.

I enlivened my report cover with color,
made rainbows of Pharaoh’s fingers and nemes,
added sphinxes, pyramids, a blue-striped Nile,
crowned the verbiage inside with visual style,
thus animating my words like hieroglyphs.

But when my teacher drew my opus from the pile
and held it, like Antony bearing Caesar’s will,
my classmates were mesmerized, my artistry reframed.
“This colored-in cover is baby work,” she proclaimed,
as she buried me along with that long ago world.

Stewart Alter, who joined LP² in the Fall of 2020, has been contributing poems to Voices since 2021.

by Stewart Alter

There’s an expectation about childhood
jobs which, when I had my first one,
I didn’t catch onto, as I dragged
a net at the end of a long pole
around the rectangle
of a swimming pool
skimming the water
removing the inkblot bugs
in the bungalow colony
my uncle owned.

Back and forth, back and forth,
I was supposedly starting to learn
about the grown-up world,
but I kept looking over my shoulder
envying my friends just hanging out
while they were talking about me
resenting my quarter-a-day job
secured through a family connection.

I didn’t work as long
as I was supposed to,
didn’t stretch for the hard-to-reach
insects lying dead among leaves
in the center of the pool,
and unless the lesson was
you didn’t have to finish a job
to still get paid
I didn’t learn much
about the real world.

When I felt I was through I’d take the pole
to the fence surrounding the pool
to shake the net clean into the tall grass.
The caught flies and mosquitoes
lay across the net
like black specks scattered
in a painting by Miro.
I think he would have
gotten more out of the job than I did.

Stewart Alter, who joined LP² in the Fall of 2020, has been contributing poems to Voices since 2021.

by Stewart Alter

Where I used to wonder
How the stream in the woods
Fed the roots of the trees
Twenty feet away,
I am now unable
Even to imagine
How an unknown
Someone
From somewhere
Unknown
Could have found me
To ask for my support
In an email.
And where I used to sit
Quietly and watch
How the birds
Connected
With the branches,
And how the leaves
On the ground
Formed into piles,
Guided by the wind
Invisibly,
I am now unable
To sit anymore
Quietly
And believe
That anything
Could be naturally
Linked.

Stewart Alter, who joined LP2 in the Fall of 2020, has been writing poetry and painting intermittently before, during and now after a long career in business journalism and corporate communications.

by Stewart Alter

Sometimes things in life
Really do work out.
I can see that now,
The way the cars ahead,
Almost crashing,
Are squeezing
Into an array
Of acute angles,
Like a desperately
Fleeing herd
Of prey
Converging
Into a vanishing point.
Their horns shredding
The air with their honking,
The cars then inch further
Toward each other,
Compacting
Into a single
Purposeful
Jumble of shapes
In order to sprout
A new space, a thin stripe,
At the remotest boundary,
Narrowly available
For an emergency
Vehicle,
Its siren splitting the air.

Stewart Alter, who joined LP2 in the Fall of 2020, has been writing poetry and painting intermittently before, during and now after a long career in business journalism and corporate communications.

by Stewart Alter

Earphones on, playing contemporary,
The exercise walker was sure he knew
His way around the cemetery.
He had been often on its boundary

Where, as a passer-by, he had observed
Those crests and valleys of capsulized lives,
Their skeletonized facts in stone preserved
Amid that web of walkways, quiet and curved.

He longed to reach the far side avenue,
Impatient to explore what lay beyond.
So a shortcut across this scenic view
Was what his rhythmic vigor could rally to.

Right here in the city sat this country relief,
A landscape as much as it was sacred ground
Where he was free to bound over branch and leaf,
Bypassing the mourners clustered in grief.

Assured of his stance, now marching with pride,
He refused to be ruled by an unseen world.
With his music to guide his clocklike stride,
He would forge his own path to the other side.

Stewart Alter, who joined LP2 in the Fall of 2020, has been writing poetry and painting intermittently before, during and now after a long career in business journalism and corporate communications.

by Stewart Alter

Unsure of himself, he decided to run
For president and command thousands
Of journalists, zealous and massed,
To invade the shores of his private past.

Muster, marshal, scatter and batter his walls,
Interview everyone he’s ever known.
Hunt down each hint, every shadow and shape.
Investigate, interrogate, get it all on tape.

For there must be a theme behind this tale,
Some furtive facts that can explain the plot,
Crucial episodes that changed his course,
Obscure to him but witnessed by a source.

He has tried to unearth these secrets himself
But his defensive vines were too thick to hack,
Jungle-tangled, with no sense of bearing,
He could spot no sight of a sunlit clearing.

So set loose the scoop-attacking troops
That they might draft an obit-befitting script,
Not the surface bullets of triumph and strife
But the buried motives that define a life.

Stewart Alter, who joined LP2 in the Fall of 2020, has been writing poetry and painting intermittently before, during and now after a long career in business journalism and corporate communications.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxStudy the fat
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx man in his native
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxclime. Explore
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxhim
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxwith anthropological verve. He is
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxno savage, but man in his prime, a system
as Levi-Strauss might observe. Disdain men’s meanings when they paint
xxxxxxxxxxxxxand rhyme, there are deeper ones when they
xxxxxxxxxxxxcook and serve. For the real taste of the rare
xxxxxxxxxxxand sublime can be found around each daily curve.
xxxxxxxxxxxYes, the fat man can be thin at any time, but the
xxxxxxxxxxtaboo of thinness leaves him unnerved. To make it
xxxxxxxxxxxxreal would be his sacred crime. It is an ideal
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxresisted to be preserved. So, get out
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxyour notebooks
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxand startxxxxxxx to describe
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxbefore hexxxxxxxxx becomes
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxa vanishing xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxtribe.

Stewart Alter, who joined LP2 in the Fall of 2020, has been writing poetry and painting intermittently before, during and now after a long career in business journalism and corporate communications.