December 2.21: Coping

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?

 

 

November 21.21: Coping

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.

 

 

November 18.21: Coping

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.

 

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 16.21: Coping

YESTERDAY

The gods of winter rose

against the fragile spring,

roared and raged in angst,

spat ice on everything.

The lilac buds all shivered,

the ducks could barely quack;

spring appeared forsaken,

winter had come back.

But winter gods, those bullies,

with eyes so cold and shifty,

know their days are numbered:

today it will be 50!

 

 

February 26.21: Coping

A bird in the hand

is better (it’s said)

than two in the bush,

but I’d say instead

that a bird in the bush

is the very best thing

when you long for a sign

there may one day be spring.

Yes, he is scarfed

and wearing his hat,

but his bright eye belies

any torpor in that.

He’s ready to nest,

and, oh, how he sings!

so sure is his heart

of seeds and of wings.

 

 

February 23.21: Coping

It seemed to me

miscalculation,

a frozen

discombobulation:

expecting spring

he here alighted

but found a landscape

winter-blighted.

With frosted beak

and bluebird fluff,

he groused (I heard him),

“Phoo! Enough!”

 

 

February 18.21: Coping

One of these is my muse, dear reader. Standing stodgily and stupidly on the frozen pond. Hanging out with someone else’s muse, no doubt, both determined to be useless.

So, uninspired, I will write about what is.

Snow and more snow. Cold and more cold. A world in pandemic, a country in turmoil, and, at the moment, with millions battered by the weather with no power, and some without running water.

Monday the winter storms barreled into Indiana. In my best swaddled shmoo look, I shoveled the first wave of snow, which was fluffy and light, and, having congratulated myself on that, I decided to start the car and let it run a few minutes. I was walking in the garage when one of my booted left feet found something to slip on and went its own way. I grabbed the car and went down in one of those memorable slow-motion falls. It was not a serious fall. Except. Except that my cheekbone hit the rim of a plastic flowerpot. The crack heard ’round the world.

This in a monster winter storm. I was scared.

My son was able to get me to Urgent Care the next day. Nothing is broken, but if you are picturing an old lady with half her face the color and shape of an eggplant, you’d be close.  An occasional Tylenol is in order.

The past twelve months have taken a toll on us all. We’d be foolish to understate that. Everything that happens to us right now hits hard and cuts deep. We all wish our muses would bring us magic words to make things better for each other. Failing that, we can only write about being human.

 

 

 

 

February 12.21: Coping

ODE TO DICHOTOMYSugar snow

makes winter sweet

if you like clompy boots

on both your feet,

if you like glassy streets

to slip and slide

while white-knuckled driving

petrified,

if you like your toes

and fingers too

stinging and reddened

to shades of blue,

if you like clothes like blubber

on arctic whale

just to go out

to get the mail,

if you like north winds,

those icy bullies,

roaring through layers

of itchy woollies,

if you like shovel kink

in your lower back

and a quiver in

sacroiliac,

but if you like a big sniff

of cookies oven-hot,

the company of stew

bubbling in a pot,

the softness of thick flannel,

most comfy of old friends,

the search for words and meanings

that never ever ends,

the pencil, pen, and mug

 to draw and write and sip,

your sugar snow, like mine,

is introvert’s catnip.

 

 

January 31.21: Coping

The vendor vast

in winter blue,

we see self-serve

is nothing new.

 

 

Thanks yet again to intrepid photographer S.W. Berg,

tromping the beach in January cold.