Salad days
judgment green
wings untested
life unseen
soaring spirits
buoyant dreams
endless visions
plans and schemes
ideals of beauty
reason, truth
halo’d by snow
but more by youth.
Apologies (and thanks) to Shakespeare.
Thanks also to Wabash College for use of this photo,
and to S.W. Berg for sending it.
Night light
wind with bite
bitter air
mocking chair
message clear:
don’t sit here.
Poor little pansy!
It tried very hard
to bring some springtime
into the yard.
Unabashedly sunny,
its bright shiny face
promised big change
with diminutive grace.
I’d rail at the winter
my dander bestirred,
but I know that the pansies
will have the last word.
Thanks yet again to photographer S.W. Berg.
I love graphite;
I love to draw.
Nature’s pencil
fills me with awe.
I am undecided, dear reader. Is this late winter snow a sign that Nature is cruel or kind? Indiana is at its worst now: gloppy, cold, colorless, dark. We are starved for light and color. We want watercolor but Nature gives us graphite, and, darn it, it’s beautiful.
The bud inspector
isn’t sure
how long these leaflings
will endure;
a phony spring
bamboozled them
to pop up from
their cozy stem.
He shakes his head
and fears the worst,
spreads his wings
to lift, but first
he chirps a tsk,
consults an app,
and tucks his iphone
under his cap.
White insists
that every crook
splintered furl
bashful nook
shriveled curl
be seen.
Sunrise in the kitchen
its gold eye warm
through blue-white froth
of last night’s storm
rousing the patter
of wiggly-toed feet
noses to windows
day’s quickened heartbeat.
The ice of contempt
word-borne
(or not)
cuts
like sleet shard/
snuffs thought
in tight cocoon/
enshrouds
the limp remains
of reason/
thriving in cold dark
whimpering wetly
in warm light/
rhinestoned
glittering
hard.
Aloneness
blade of a surgical wind
slices
the world
into shuddering parts.
Even the pond writhes
under one
solitary
goose
whose absurd solo honk
falls into the cold water
and drowns there.
Beware the gardener’s itch
to dig in firma terra
lest you be pruned and potted
along with the schefflera.
The gardener cannot help it,
her nails are far too clean,
so kitchen turns to hothouse,
mid-winter turns to green.
With more thanks to photographer S.W. Berg
and to indoor/outdoor gardener D.J. Berg
for this testimonial to gardeners’ winter fever.
