December 2.21: Coping

When morning’s a-glitter with rime,

I ponder if possibly I’m

the more fortunate one,

or is it more fun

to winter suspended in thyme?

 

 

November 10.21: Coping

How it sizzles,

this maple,

brazen in the sunset,

each blazing leaf

a crackle

like the fire in a hearth

spitting embers,

bodaciously sassing the sun.

 

 

A note, dear reader: many years ago, oh, so many, I was advised never to use a series of sibilant sounds. Which, as you can tell, is a rule that doesn’t take itself too seriously. I thought of it as I wrote that last line and reveled in my rebellion. It sounds like a leaky tire, but I like it.

 

 

November 5.21: Coping

A kind of teary

autumn rain

dribbled down

my windowpane,

tentacles

of little rivers,

tickling whole house

into shivers.

And yet this bony

sour tree

could bloom a furtive

wink at me.

Like my lilac

emblematic

of Nature’s language

enigmatic.

 

 

October 13.21: Coping

R-e-v-e-n-g-e!

This is gardener’s smuggery:

hoorah of zinnia frillery

despite cotton-tailed skullduggery.

 

(Apologies to Aretha.)

Yes, dear reader, this is that poor chomped zinnia that I mourned a while back. It recovered and set itself to showing those rabbits a thing or two about resolve. I might not have the zinnia patch I’d planned and dreamed of last March, but I sure got a brilliant pink sneer at the rabbits.

October 11.21: Coping

In the worn path of the daily

I walked. Bedroom to kitchen,

like yesterday and the day before,

when,

in this moment of the ordinary,

something,

some clanging silence,

stopped me,

stopped my breath.

Under pallid sky

as tired leaves let go their holds

on life,

spring!

Four years have we lived together,

this lilac and I,

but never a flower

until now,

this discouraged, bleak Now.

What forced its bloom?

Anger? Fear? Despair?

Why spring

on the doorstep of winter?

Is this tender-petal’d spire

telling me that

maybe

I don’t know everything?

 

 

October 6.21: Coping

Summer roars

its final word,

the likes of which

eye never heard,

majestic booming

portraiture,

October’s 1812

Overture.

 

More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.

 

September 17.21: Coping

September stands tall

between spring’s childhood

and winter’s dotage,

a bit round perhaps

with pumpkin paunch,

its brow gold-speckled,

but vital still.

One leaf, two leaves,

abacus of mortality,

drop

in quiet obedience

to the authority of time.

A cicada sings of ennui,

its sleepy notes sticking to

wet morning air

where August lingers.

 

 

September 9.21: Coping

Harvest comes soon,

the greens rich and deep,

how touchable, sniffable

the twining leafed keep.

A scruffy-kneed gardener

with nails edged in black

beams notwithstanding

the crick in his back.

It’s ever a miracle —

don’t try to explain

how seeds and a longing

are linked in life’s chain.

 

 

With thanks again to my back-yard gardener son,

for both the photo op and the basil!

 

 

September 3.21: Coping

We were green once,

in salad days,

fixed firm to umbilical vine,

slowly orange,

until, soaked in sun brine,

we plumped to red.

All as written by some sightless scribe

ordaining how life seeds,

or maybe

by some deliberate kindness

in back yard dirt

that soul and body feeds.

Gardeners wonder.

 

 

With thanks to Shakespeare

and to my firstborn, Dennis, the backyard gardener.

 

August 28.21: Coping

My son’s back yard

yields prodigiously,

vegetable-glutted

because rabbit-free.

So I have tomatoes

in my grandma’s old bowl —

what better emblem

of summer’s warm soul?

Such joy to the eye,

such promise of bliss —

the Louvre should have

such beauty as this!