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.

 

 

February 26.20

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.

February 16.20

White insists

that every crook

splintered furl

bashful nook

shriveled curl

be seen.

 

December 16.19

Can you hear the nothing?

Does it have a name?

Is it stillness? No,

it’s not the same.

It lacks the breath

the stillness sighs,

it has no pulse,

nor lives nor dies.

The hollow air

and muted street,

in want of wings

and wheels and feet,

straddle worlds

of real and not

with fragile boundary

question-fraught.

Of substance there are

shapes and weights

King Winter’s touch

obliterates.

 

 

February 23.19

Translucence

how inadequate the Latin

for snowlight through

the jonquil’s matin.

 

 

January 14.19

 

You don’t need a fireplace

to have a crackling blaze

there are other fires

that warm our winter days.

 

 

Connections: March 21.18

The snow bedecks the deck

the swing and windowsill

and expletives explode

from every daffodil.

Connections

Connections: February 5.18

A Michigan winter is very white

wrapping every thing in sight

with cotton.

The snow relentless after fall

summer’s distant warmth is all

but forgotten.

 

 

Thanks to Mary Jo Bassett for this lovely image of Michigan winter.

Connections

Connections: January 28.18

Until snow falls

I cannot see

space’s eminent

sculptability.

More thanks to the S.W. Berg Photo Archives.

Connections

Connections: January 26.18

Stop

time out

no up, no down

white

fermata

  ghosts the town.

 

 

More thanks to the S. W. Berg Photo Archives.

Connections