Niche

 At the March Hoot, Bob Moore read his poem “Niche,” which appears in the 2008 Poets’ Guide to New Hampshire. The four stanzas composed in iambic tetrameter are an example of how satisfying well-crafted regular meter can be. Our ears are further delighted by the rhyme, which comes not in the expected places but at the end of the first and third lines of each stanza. The fact that the object of scrutiny is never named provides a gentle riddle.

-Elizabeth Knies

Niche

   for Charles W. Pratt

Bend your head down toward the ground—

and find a stone they’re clinging to.

You might be wondering why they’re bound,

or how they keep their imprint small.

And yet, they’re older than the trees—

the ones you often wander through.

It could be they’re as old as these

old stones that used to be a wall.

They do it slow. They first adhere—

then multiply at maybe one

one-thousandth of an inch per year.

(A year perhaps when growth is good.)

They thrive together as a pair.

And though their work is never done,

one hardly knows the other’s there—

and neither do the stones or wood.

Bob Moore lives in East Kingston and teaches science at Pelham High School. In addition to poetry, he writes songs, and he and his wife owned Exeter Music from 1986 to 1997.He published a book of poems, A Bridge With a View, in 1997. Bob finds fellow poets “inspiring.” He workshops with the Powow River Poets in Newburyport, MA.