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.
The hydrangea and the crabapple tree
awoke in frozen state.
“Remind me,” said each to the other,
“what is the real date?”
They shivered and shrugged
and tried to remember
if they slept through the summer
and woke up in December.
Thus, below freezing, did yesterday begin. And thus did we shiver through the day. Blossoms on the trees held a hundred times their weight in heavy snow, and thus did pink and white branches lie broken on the ground. We had hail, snow, rain, bright sunshine, perfect calm, roaring winds and thunder in dizzying display, and thus did Nature growl at us to take nothing for granted.
Wishing you a good Earth Day, dear reader!
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.
As I clutched my morning coffee
and sought some inspiration,
I searched election-day sky
in vacuous contemplation.
And there it was, the message
amid chaotic fall:
there’s always more than one way
to rise above it all.
To be sure, dear reader, I have not risen above it all; I’m loony and weary and full of opinions. When I try to rise above it all, I just thud down. And so it was that I watched these hardy folks float over my head and accused them of taking the easy way. Which is definitely not to say that I wanted to be up there with them! Mocking gravity while dangling in a basket is not my idea of rising above.
She’s got her camera!
She’s out on her deck!
Flap your wing
and stick out your neck!
Shake tail feather
and follow me
in honking
photobombing V!
It never ceases
to amaze,
this gold of
Apollonian rays.
Salad days
are with us yet
in 24-karat
dawn vignette.
With thanks to Shakespeare
and to photographer Emily Berg Baine.
Sunday brunch al fresco
never better was
with family all decked out
in finest feather and fuzz.
Spring exhales in hues
so pale
it turns the dawn
to merest veil;
even bones
in shroud aurorean
seem to join
in morning paean.
The day explodes with light
and many a robin aria;
twinkling dew engirds
dandelion luminaria.
Wishing you some form of light,
dear reader,
in this new month.
This morning I feel Pliocene,
and maybe you know what I mean:
the sleep that preceded
was not what I needed
and instead of standing I lean.
The coffee has not been invented that will open my eyes this morning.
So, dear reader, any thudding you hear from the American Midwest today
will be me bumping into walls.
