When words die
and lie
lightly in brown piles,
and slatted benches
hold no one
in their arms,
will the stones remember
warmth
of blood and bone,
do they
hearth-like
hold the meaning?
Or does meaning lie too
in the dry brown
awaiting its ride on the scattering wind
leaving the stones to their empty cold?
Thanks more to photographer S.W. Berg.
The season of soup slips behind us —
we can’t let it pass unobserved;
the kettles and bowls warmly bind us
with elixir drippingly served.
Here’s to you, soup,
you wondrous admixture,
the winter’s cozy
regular fixture,
steaming mosaic,
ad-libbed enterprise,
like flannel to bones,
old friend to our eyes.
Yet more thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.
And thanks also to Anna’s Pizza in Buckroe, Hampton, VA,
creator of this minestrone and presentation thereof.
(Do you, dear reader, like me, have the urge to grab a spoon?)
Translucence
how inadequate the Latin
for snowlight through
the jonquil’s matin.
LINES ON MISTLETOE
From lintels I thought it grew
on ribbon vines prolific
imagine my shamefaced rue
to see it in clumps parasitic.
More thanks and a HAPPY BIRTHDAY to photographer S.W. Berg!
With a-one and a-two
it’s the goose soft shoe
a shuffle and a step
ponderous schlep
slip and slide
to far pondside
with list to lee
graceful like me
I frown and sigh
why don’t they just fly?
In silvered regal posture
high-headedly aloof
it shimmers self-congratulatory
for my personal behoof.
Yesterday, dear reader, came the fifth sunless day of rain in five days. Also came the haulers in a pickup truck pulling an open wooden cart. They hauled stuff from my garage and then we drove to my storage unit and they hauled stuff from there.
And the rain poured down.
I followed them out of the storage place, and there was no way not to see the detritus of my life, soaked and wilted, riding in front of me. The big cardboard box with the old Christmas tree figured prominently in the heap. Some of the stiff old branches had fallen out and, formed yet in their bent upward curve, lay there appearing to wave goodbye to me. It was the forlornest vignette to be imagined.
That tree belonged to my parents and had seen many, many Christmases. Yes, I still have the top. Yes, it was time to let it go.
But did it have to wave at me?
And the rain poured down.
I came home and attacked the garage, sweeping and shoving and piling. The temperature was 59 and it was suddenly April. We haven’t seen the sun all week, but there was warmth! The daylilies were sprouting!
This morning the temperature is 18, windchill 0. A winter wind rattles the house and my head. Poor daylilies. Poor old frozen Christmas tree.
Mourning is a process not meant to be cured or stopped or unfelt. Grief will be, just as the winter rains will be. I loathe Pollyanna-isms, but there are those sprouting daylilies.
