May 7.22: Coping, but barely

This was me

and this was you,

our wings be-fuzzed,

mysterious, new.

Tipping, toppling,

learning where

we stopped and started,

unaware

of cliffs and quicksand,

Pandora’s box,

we braved the world

of thorns and rocks.

Or so we thought. The really brave

were those close by

who hovered and watched

with wary eye,

letting us learn

from life’s tough classes

even if we fell

on our little

ummm

grasses.

 

Tomorrow is Mothers’ Day here; I am not a fan. I think it’s become a national day of panic. But that does not mean I don’t value mothering. I absolutely do. There are many who mother even if they’ve never given birth, and I salute every one.

Please pardon the quality of the photo, dear reader. You probably, and rightly, guessed that I was hunched down behind Venetian blinds muttering to that baby to HOLD STILL. He didn’t. Mother Goose (so to speak) did not cast a benign eye on me.

 

 

May 1.22: Coping, but barely

Many the wonder of spring

but the jaw-dropping best of them all

is a flower that never had bloomed

until one redoubtable fall.

A lilac in fall?

What could it portend?

Why in that dismal

tormented year’s end?

Pandemic exhausted,

hostility worn,

with leaves curled in death,

dry and forlorn,

we slumped into autumn

weary of strife,

and here blooms a lilac

with anomalous life.

A lilac in fall —

a thing beyond reason —

would it come back again

in traditional season?

The purpling answer

no nose can resist

nods in affirmative

its resolve to exist.

As fancy a flora

as ever hoorayed

exalts this springtime

in new life arrayed.

 

In my years here, this lilac had never given the slightest indication that it knew how to make a flower. Then, in the last gasps of 2021, it bloomed! An autumn-blooming lilac seemed in keeping with the chaos of the times. But would it bloom in the spring? Now we know!

 

 

April 30.22: Coping, but barely

Where are the toes

with which we hold

when we reach, teetering,

for the tender goaled?

When life twangs

our bearings like rubber band

and we, poor spitballs,

clawless in foot and hand,

hover on the verge of shot

yet, refusing to be denied,

become the squirrel,

wind and gravity defied,

and clutch that feeble twig,

how do we dare?

Does the soul have claws

that hold us there?

 

 

It seems appropriate, dear reader, to end Poetry Month with a question since I always start it with a question: what is poetry? Still scratching my head on that one.

April 27.22: Coping, but barely

The tortoise and the hare

have nothing on this pair.

The smugger the daunt,

the cheerier the taunt:

“Ya snooze, ya lose, mon frère!”

Yes, dear reader, I heard it myself.

That’s exactly what the little guy said as he churned by.

April 22.22: Coping, but barely

The pensive dog,

drowsed by talk,

took her thoughts

on wooded walk,

contemplative

and solitary,

past springtime’s

ruffled luminary.

The daffodils sighed

as she passed by,

looked after her

with solicitous eye.

 

This, dear reader, is Miss Janey Pickles. I’m told she is named for a literary figure beloved by my daughter-in-law. Some people speak of their grand-dogs; I am not one of those people. Janey Pickles is not my grand-dog even though she belongs to my daughter-in-law and my son. Or they belong to her. Whichever. The amazing thing about Janey Pickles is that sometimes she’s awake.

 

 

April 15.22: Coping, but barely

The art of the photo:

part timing, part luck.

Thus my photo

of a diving duck.

 

 

April 9.22: Coping, but barely

 

“Hello! I must be going!”

a tune too rarely heard,

wafted through the air

from waddling squatty bird.

Crestfallen and bewildered,

the pup, his tail a-droop,

wondered if he’d erred

in mention of “Duck Soup.”

The huffy Madame Mallard,

like all good critic quackers,

made it known that she prefers

the classic “Animal Crackers.”

 

With a salute to Marx Brothers movies:

“Animal Crackers” (1930)

“Duck Soup” (1933)

(What else would a dog and duck talk about?)

March 26.22: Coping, but barely

You think you’re funny, don’t you,

oh, gods of endless snows?

Your humor leaves me cold (haha)

with frostbite on my nose.

Of this white stuff

I’ve had enough,

Begone! And go away!

It’s time for spring —

quit dawdling!

But come back on Christmas Day.

 

 

Yes, dear reader, on this late March morning,

it’s a white, white world out my window.

Part of me says it’s pretty.

The rest of me has a different opinion.

 

More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.

 

March 22.22: Coping, but barely

Twilight curtains parted

and in grand purple theater

arose a ponderous butterscotch moon.

“Catch me if you can!”

it stage-whispered to my camera,

which sighed in my hands,

and tried, oh, so many times,

noble machine,

but in the end could only stand with me,

groundlings both,

in awed suspension of disbelief.

You may ask, dear reader, if there is anything

that doesn’t remind me of dessert.

I’ve asked that too.

March 18.22: Coping, but barely

A tourist stopped in Mallardville,

to see what might be there,

sidled up to locals

in competing savoir faire.

The Monsieurs sized each other up

in manly bivouac

while Madame Mallard plainly

didn’t seem to give a quack.