Morning came
too quietly,
neither chirp nor trill,
but only cicada’s
serrated drone.
A very timid cricket
tuned his small pipe.
There I stood,
knee-deep in July,
prickly and unsure,
so restless was the quiet.
Now the dark of August nights
and no firefly winks.
The Green Heron blats
like fallow French horn
once or twice a day,
and maple leaves,
scorched,
bleed at their edges.
Do I imagine
the urgency?
Time is out of sorts,
as am I.
“The malignant air of calumny has taken possession of all ranks and societies of people in this place…The rich, the poor, the high professor and the prophane, seem all to be infected with this grievous disorder, so that the love of our neighbor seems to be quite banished, the love of self and opinions so far prevails….The enemies of our present struggle…are grown even scurrilous to individuals, and treat all characters who differ from them with the most opprobrious language.”
According to David McCullough’s book “John Adams,” Christopher Marshall wrote the above in 1776.
Perhaps spellings have changed, and maybe vocabularies have weakened a bit, and maybe also “social media” is no longer the handwritten letter, but otherwise Mr. Marshall would not be much surprised, it would seem, by any of the news accounts today. So I pass it along to you, dear reader, for what it’s worth, and I leave it to you whether to laugh or to cry.
The very hungry caterpillar
has cousins by the score;
single-minded critters
whose battle cry is “More!”
So formally attired,
you’d think them more discreet,
but completely unembarrassed
they hold dinner with their feet.
I knew it had to happen,
either soon or late,
inevitable, ordained
by calculating Fate.
A sign of our fraught times —
do you really have to ask? —
Nasal indigestion!
I sneezed into my mask!
A GARDEN STORY
Once upon a November, I bought this house. When a gardener buys a house in November, she has a whole winter to wonder what someone else’s garden will bring. As it came to life, I wondered less and pulled more. Out, out, rude roots! After the chaos of resettling, I happily yanked and snipped. Instant gratification. The gardener’s high.
In the throes of this euphoria, I approached a small shaded gravel patch where nothing should have been able to grow, but no one had told the weeds. Then I stopped and stared in a gardener’s disbelief. Four small stems with happy little leaves looked familiar. Snapdragons? Could it be? Snapdragons sprouting in these sunless stones? Tenderly, I eased them up and out, such little things, but so green. I transplanted them into the garden and coddled them neurotically. They grew plump with leaves and buds. They were the shortest snapdragons I’d ever seen, and they bloomed white! I am a fool for white flowers! Oh, what a gardener’s jig I danced!
And, oh, what a harvest of snapdragon seeds followed! And now, two garden seasons later, I have low-lying clouds of white snapdragons, snuggling with parsley, lighting the front-door thyme, wreathing the bay. Even though I have not been able to plant my back yard garden this year, the white snapdragons assure me that beauty will be had, and that I should always look twice at the gravel.
If I could befriend watercolor
and dip my brush into a sunset,
I would capture this
with scrupulous palette.
Then again, if I did,
and caged it in a frame.
how deluded would I be
to think it looked the same?
More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.
If I say I’ve known
a home that’s crowded,
the finches say
that’s highly doubted.
More thanks to photographer and finch landlord
S.W. Berg.
Befuzzed denizens
of tiny nest pocket
look like they stuck
their beaks in a socket.
More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.
And, if there are any grammar purists left,
my apologies to them for the improper conjunction.
Summer snowflake
luminescent,
polka-dot
of lace florescent,
meadow frosting,
highway frill,
whitewater froth
of mid-air rill.
Thanks yet again to photographer S.W. Berg.
On a still summer evening,
near the trees’ looking glass,
I developed the fidgets
from eyes in the grass.
I share my shade gladly,
I grant it rent-free,
so why this imperious
staring at me?
Magnanimous me,
all live-and-let-live —
could they be thinking the shade
is not mine to give?
