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.

January 19.21: Coping

What refuge

on a thin wire

that so many seek it?

What life

in a huddle?

When frigid waves

lap quietly

at our lives,

and a winter sun

makes the barren bright,

what warmth

in the insidious cold

is really creeping numbness?

 

More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.

 

 

January 14.21:Coping

The precarious known,

the thatched belief,

swayed by life,

like twig and leaf —

when bared to talon,

gale and cold,

will it crumble

or will it hold?

 

 

December 20.20: Coping

The pond crackles

on my eyes

as papery floes

epithelialize,

fragile bits

of water skin

turned to diamond,

inchoate, thin.

 

 

October 21.20: Coping

It’s a cold grey sky,

wintry overhead,

a rowdy autumn wind

has left me just a shred,

so what do I do

without my coat of red?

I hold out all my arms

and wear some birds instead.

 

 

July 12.20: Coping

My muse! Impertinent,

wayward thing!

Taunting me

on mighty wing!

Graceful she,

in bluest height,

indifferent

as I try to write.

I watch her float,

from earth unbound,

while I, like stone,

am stuck to ground.

In those clouds

vocabulary,

eloquence

extraordinary.

She could bring it

to cloddish me,

but prefers to soar

metaphorically.

March 4.20

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.