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!

 

 

August 25.21: Coping

Gaura gossip

cannot wait;

it’s the latest

in click-bait.

To tease the marigold

hovering near,

it’s whispered in

geranium ear.

Good for the garden,

of that I am sure,

gossip so often

a form of manure.

 

 

August 24.21: Coping

Aesop says be like the ant,

eschew grasshopper ways:

the ant puts by and plans ahead,

grasshoppers waste their days.

The ants in frantic harvest

prepare for winter’s grey.

The grasshopper, all moony,

ponders the green of today;

in foolery like writing

does he his muse pursue;

he yearns to be a poet

and use words like “eschew.”

 

Many more thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.

I have no idea how he got the grasshopper to pose like this.

August 22.21: Coping

In the time of two breaths

there’s the twilight sweet spot

when everything hovers

between color and not.

White becomes silver

as shadows unfurl,

or maybe it’s pewter

or mother-of-pearl;

reds turn to velvet

with lavender nap,

blues, cupric sulfate,

with diamond wrap.

Yellows to brass

with gold overlays,

burnished in hot coal,

smoldering blaze.

And a palette is born

each day at its end

that no words can capture

but only pretend.

 

 

August 19.21: Coping

I was feeling garden-poor,

so took my little black pitcher,

snipped some mighty color,

and felt a whole lot richer.