SCOUTMASTERS REPORT V
Service project

Odd toy islands dot the tepid skin.
Two fledglings poise on the edge of their nest, watching.
It is cloudless, hot and blue on the open summer water.

Our fiberglass canoes crowd the overgrown bank.
The boys attack like ants, incongruous
in camping gear and newly issued gloves.

Metal is torn from the doomed wood,
rusted boiler and galvanized pipe dislodged,
dragged to the clumsy whaler for disposal.

A porcelain commode is extracted with cheers,
carried in triumph to the water's edge;
the exorcised heart of our demon presence.

The incendiary parts; the shingle skin, broken eyes
of peeling sash and asphalt hair are made into a pyre
waiting for the stars to take their winter stance.

When the snow arrives and makes the forest safe
the ranger will return and touch it off.
Flames higher than a man can reach

will hiss and bubble green and blue and red
with chemistry's combustion, send embers
up into the thermals then down to the waiting dust.

The dock will rot of its own accord,
leave no sign that we ever passed.


Richard Bank, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

TESTATION

He was an old fashioned judge.
The kind lawyers try to avoid.
-obit-

Snaking down the faux Medici steps
and around the cluttered city block,
clusters of prosecutors and pols
wait patiently to show their faces.
The deferential cops and all the suits
speak the power now gone for good.

I am among the onlookers; the heathen, the estranged.
I, who had been called in from the hallway
to start again; unable to console the terrified,
who waited their turn like lambs
and watched the imperious fury,
the eager delight at sentencing,
the harsh reality of his tumultuous trials.

We hated to work his room;
the sham voir dire, the frenetic process,
technical and full of minutia and dread.
Now, with the surprised widow
and the respectful old men filing by
there is an air of triumph to it all;
the spectacle a vindication in itself.

Then some of us took note of happenstance,
finished up our business there
and joined together for dinner and some wine,
taking delight in the change of pace.
The living spoke with the living
and we left the dead alone.

Richard Bank, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania