March 29.21: Coping

How like Venus,

with wisp of night cloud,

twiggy veil,

rising, unbowed,

daring the eye to see,

the word to say

what some Olympus

has made of clay.

 

Did you see it, dear reader?

What a wonder!

March 27.21: Coping

Hope is the thing with feathers,

according to the poet;

this wind-coiffed matted stalwart

is adamant to show it.

Waterlogged, bedraggled,

moroser by the hour,

he watches plashy pond,

indomitable and dour.

But persevering, patient,

resolute in attitude,

it isn’t raining rain, he says,

it’s raining fortitude.

I salute unpretty Hope,

my admiration bestirred:

it may be the thing with feathers,

but it’s surely a tough old bird.

 

With thanks to Emily Dickinson.

And to the purists I make no apologies for “moroser.”

It’s a poem. Ergo, poetic license.

 

March 19.21: Coping

When metaphor is obvious,

should writer take the bait?

Should she write what all can see,

then self-excoriate?

Such conundrum filled my head

as I marveled at the sky;

two swells of salmon brilliance,

sharp blue widened my eye.

But intruding on the beauty,

unwelcome imposition,

a bar of light reflected

like ghostly apparition.

It came from light behind me,

insubstantial, weightless thing,

reflection like a wall

blocking, interfering.

Herein the metaphor,

the cliché all writers dread:

how often what’s behind us

interferes with what’s ahead.

 

 

March 16.21: Coping

YESTERDAY

The gods of winter rose

against the fragile spring,

roared and raged in angst,

spat ice on everything.

The lilac buds all shivered,

the ducks could barely quack;

spring appeared forsaken,

winter had come back.

But winter gods, those bullies,

with eyes so cold and shifty,

know their days are numbered:

today it will be 50!

 

 

March 15.21: Coping

Early spring,

winter’s grip,

intense the will

at lilac tip;

just so within

the urge to sprout

though sunless times

and spirit’s drought.

 

 

March 8.21: Coping

What we see every day

after a bit of life

we no longer see.

Then a puckish light

intrudes

and conjures a shadow

there and not there,

playing,

and we watch

with sudden sight.

 

More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.

 

March 5.21: Coping

Do they think they sing?

Can they be so deluded

to imagine their noise

sounds dulcet and fluted?

Do they look in the mirror

and see sweet warbling wrens?

What’s in their water —

hallucinogens?

Each blats like a semi

but thinks it’s a peep?

I ponder this nightly

in honk-battered sleep.