October 12.22: Coping, but barely

The refined high art of breakfasting

cannot too much be touted;

its value to the day

ought never to be doubted.

In cherry tomato season

it’s especially exact;

one keeps the tomato whole,

juicily intact.

It’s cozied in the mouth

(don’t try to sing or whistle

lest you wing it into orbit,

the oops’d misguided missile)

along with crusty morsel

of sourdough browned just right,

one aims for balanced tandem,

the perfection in the bite.

The delicacy of timing,

simultaneous squirt and crunch,

requires selfless practice

sometimes ’til half-past lunch.

September 16.22: Coping, but barely

Tomato bells,

dew besotted,

ring in language

polyglotted;

the dawn at play

in halo’d bead

in every tongue

 gardener’s meed.

 

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.

 

 

April 22.21: Coping

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!

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.

 

 

November 7.20: Coping

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.

 

October 9.20: Coping

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!

 

 

August 22.20: Coping

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.

June 7.20: Coping

Sunday brunch al fresco

never better was

with family all decked out

in finest feather and fuzz.

 

May 5.20: Coping

Spring exhales in hues

so pale

it turns the dawn

to merest veil;

even bones

in shroud aurorean

seem to join

 in morning paean.