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.
A robin skims the frosty grass,
stopping, starting, stopping;
the housefinch goes a-nesting,
pecking, pulling, hopping.
The chickadee, bright eye on me,
zigzags in spritely play;
the sun, at rise and setting,
is chirped along its way.
As winter’s bony grip
reluctantly lets go,
songbirds return a-twitter
in growing crescendo.
Far away in birddom
the elders meet en masse,
solemn, introspective,
with all due gravitas.
Somber-visaged sages,
exchanging thought and word,
they ponder and deliberate
what it means to be a bird.
The enigma of horizon,
the mystery of skies
inform their academia
as they Socratize.
Music quite eludes them
but they don’t think it wrong
that others ponder being
in transiency of song.
More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.
And, of course, to the pelicans.
Late winter’s aspect,
dispirited, bland,
and the song of the pothole
is heard through the land.
Hungry holes
salivating
for tasty hubcap,
serenading
with siren song
that calls to tire,
come-hither croon
sweetly dire.
Like magnets do they
pull cars in,
dine on axles
with demonic grin.
Their song grows louder
the wider they,
the better to swallow
a whole Chevrolet.
Fanged predator,
your tentacles reach me;
I sing back in words
my mom didn’t teach me.
Dear reader, it is my opinion (I have many) that there is more than one kind of pothole in life. I seem to be dealing with a blog pothole. For the last couple days, whenever I try to write a comment in one blog, I suddenly find myself in a different blog. Blam! Just like that! So far as I can tell, I’m doing nothing but typing my comment in Dan’s blog, and suddenly I’m in Susan’s. I’m typing a comment in Susan’s blog and suddenly I’m in Dan’s. And so on.
It’s the case of the hopping blogs. Whether this is a WordPress pothole or my computer’s or my brain’s, I know not. Meanwhile, I will be gone from comment sections but not because I don’t have something to say!
This bossy bird
with sword-like cry
stabbed my head
though pleased my eye.
My shovel rang out
through the snow;
he seemed to think me
slothful though.
He barked his mind
in notes of steel
that I had
insufficient zeal.
Bossy bird!
Why don’t you fly
somewhere that wants you
not nearby?
But then an echo
sliced the air —
his ladylove?
OK! Go there!
She and he,
buzz-saw duet,
each one playing
hard to get.
But still I heard
him like drill master
prodding me
to shovel faster.
Though lovely in his
lofty venue,
blue jay pie
was on my menu.
February first,
a winter storm is lurking;
ice and snow and sleet —
is their inner clock not working?
What ever are they thinking,
popped up so green and straight?
Could it possibly be spring
they prognosticate?
Dear reader, if you live in this country, you know that winter is about to smite us again; snow and ice are roaring at us and the last couple days have seen people dashing about, not in the best of moods, trying to prepare. Yesterday it was 50. I took advantage of the anomaly and walked around the house. It was like taking that big breath before diving underwater again: one bit of fresh air before the next hunkering down.
I about fell over when I spotted these shoots. They must have sprouted in January! There was a strange sound: me, laughing out loud. I think I might even have talked to them: “Are you nuts?” (Gardeners are weird.)
We are about to get walloped, according to the weatherpeople. I prefer the forecast of the daffodils.
Stemmed swan,
wings of snow,
winter daydream’s
furbelow.
With thanks to my dear friend Donna for the elegance of this white amaryllis,
which has bloomed manically and isn’t done yet.
A bit of brown bird,
his feathers a-fluff,
perched on the noon of my day.
So tiny a plume
seemed hardly enough,
but he blasted the doldrums away.
I do believe, dear reader, that this is a Carolina Wren. I was walking the familiar carpet path in familiar routine when he (barely) caught my eye, and I nearly undid myself getting to the camera without scaring him off. The sighting of anything other than the occasional crow is unheard of right now, and this little being was therefore all the more miraculous.
When morning’s a-glitter with rime,
I ponder if possibly I’m
the more fortunate one,
or is it more fun
to winter suspended in thyme?
When winter moon laughs,
the sky shimmers
like sequined cloth,
and the trees reach
their paper leaves
to touch the spangles,
and the laughter bubbles
downward
to distant lacy roots.
And then one day
the tree,
filled with moon fizz,
explodes in green.
I’m lonely;
I’ll make me a world,
God said.
Now comes the echo,
in winter wind
— loneliest sound —
that lifts dead leaves
like empty chalices,
a last offering
before ice that freezes
even loneliness,
and the moldering carpet
woven by the wind
becomes blanket
for wiggly unseens.
And yet
I’m lonely
lingers:
each of us,
after all,
only one.
With thanks to James Weldon Johnson for his poem “The Creation,”
and to the anonymous student
in a high school speech meet many years ago
who put it in my head.
Oddments 