October 14.22: Coping, but barely

It wrapped me like a cloak, that papery sound. October’s leaves, battered and bruised, but holding yet, whooshed thickly in a wind tantrum determined to strip away every remnant of summer, thrashing the trees and twisting each leaf, growling down from the dishwater sky and around our little homes, impatient for winter.

The air was warm still, but one muscular shove from the south bore an invisible stream of ice, a whisper in the tumult, frost-winged specter. I felt it and knew then it was saying what it came to say, this insistent rush.

I bent over the lavender, itself bent low. Spent, sleepy, it offered up a final incense as I trimmed back its floppy stems. Two fat bees lumbered through the air to watch and sniff. They too heard the Babel of the papery leaves, in tongues of crimson and copper, and saluted the deep purple of my harvest. They too knew the time.

December 14.21: Coping

It held.

This mass of brittle

fragile things,

leaf bricks,

joists of sticks,

held.

The tree lunged,

convulsing

in a murderous

hungry wind —

still it held.

When sunset

painted the exhausted day

in a copper light,

and remnant clouds

dithered,

like sluggard thoughts,

it held.

The poet longs

for metaphor

but

doubts.

 

 

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 13.20: Coping

In pastel voice the trees sang out

yoo-hoo’d the daffodil

the wind laughed at my camera

and nothing would hold still.

 

March 29.20: Coping

Last night the lightning

tore up the sky;

now remnants gather

and wind sweeps them by,

face-planting the jonquils

into the mud,

ripping the petals

from yesterday’s bud.

No cheer to be had

from this morning’s dawn;

I don’t think I’ll keep calm

but I will carry on.

 

Saluting the British slogan which has served so well —

until we don’t WANT to keep calm.

January 19.19

 

Too old and crisped

to fight the wind

whose sport it is

to dizzy me,

I pretend

a diamond rink

in chassé with

Terpsichore.

 

 

Connections: May 11.18

Some ancient mythic language

ebbing, swelling, weightless

like liquid air

many-voiced

chorus of Sophocles

bade me stop.

I turned toward the sound

the fullness of new leaves

spring petals

soft as babies

supple in newness

stroked by wind

sibilant and sure

wanting me to know

something.

Still as the dead

I listened

taut

to pluck a word

but there was none.

 

Connections

Connections: July 9.17

Holding tight in Hoosier clay

at end of thundering roiling day

the plants in tilted chorus say

the summer storm went that-a-way.

 

 

 

Connections

Connections: January 10.17

When it snows in ol’ Virginny

by the Chesapeake Bay

and sky and the sea

join in endless grey

and the wind blows ice

down each wool bandanna

you know it’s not nice

in Indiana.

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

Connections

Connections: December 30.16

Snow squalls, they said

and what a show

mid-air chaotic

tumble and blow.

White-fisted fury

with wind a-roarin’

but when it was over

there wasn’t much more ‘an

a dustin’

bare crustin’

a whole lotta nothin’.

Connections