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 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.

 

 

February 26.21: Coping

A bird in the hand

is better (it’s said)

than two in the bush,

but I’d say instead

that a bird in the bush

is the very best thing

when you long for a sign

there may one day be spring.

Yes, he is scarfed

and wearing his hat,

but his bright eye belies

any torpor in that.

He’s ready to nest,

and, oh, how he sings!

so sure is his heart

of seeds and of wings.

 

 

February 23.21: Coping

It seemed to me

miscalculation,

a frozen

discombobulation:

expecting spring

he here alighted

but found a landscape

winter-blighted.

With frosted beak

and bluebird fluff,

he groused (I heard him),

“Phoo! Enough!”

 

 

February 18.21: Coping

One of these is my muse, dear reader. Standing stodgily and stupidly on the frozen pond. Hanging out with someone else’s muse, no doubt, both determined to be useless.

So, uninspired, I will write about what is.

Snow and more snow. Cold and more cold. A world in pandemic, a country in turmoil, and, at the moment, with millions battered by the weather with no power, and some without running water.

Monday the winter storms barreled into Indiana. In my best swaddled shmoo look, I shoveled the first wave of snow, which was fluffy and light, and, having congratulated myself on that, I decided to start the car and let it run a few minutes. I was walking in the garage when one of my booted left feet found something to slip on and went its own way. I grabbed the car and went down in one of those memorable slow-motion falls. It was not a serious fall. Except. Except that my cheekbone hit the rim of a plastic flowerpot. The crack heard ’round the world.

This in a monster winter storm. I was scared.

My son was able to get me to Urgent Care the next day. Nothing is broken, but if you are picturing an old lady with half her face the color and shape of an eggplant, you’d be close.  An occasional Tylenol is in order.

The past twelve months have taken a toll on us all. We’d be foolish to understate that. Everything that happens to us right now hits hard and cuts deep. We all wish our muses would bring us magic words to make things better for each other. Failing that, we can only write about being human.

 

 

 

 

January 31.21: Coping

The vendor vast

in winter blue,

we see self-serve

is nothing new.

 

 

Thanks yet again to intrepid photographer S.W. Berg,

tromping the beach in January cold.

January 19.21: Coping

What refuge

on a thin wire

that so many seek it?

What life

in a huddle?

When frigid waves

lap quietly

at our lives,

and a winter sun

makes the barren bright,

what warmth

in the insidious cold

is really creeping numbness?

 

More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.

 

 

January 17.21: Coping

The committee convenes

in officiousness large,

each of them sure

someone else is in charge.

 

 

January 9.21: Coping

Beneath fur and feather

it’s hard to judge pallor:

which will prevail,

discretion or valor?

 

In my pursuit of whether Shakespeare should be credited, I encountered a statement about things that annoy Shakespeare scholars.

I must say that Shakespeare scholars are easily annoyed.

November 19.20: Coping

All hail the nap!

That mini vacation,

miraculous reset,

arm-chair sedation,

restoring us to

youthful vigor

instead of creeping

mortis rigor.

So, as fugitive from

myself and the news,

I follow example

of the duck group-snooze.