The catalog arrived today
injecting green into my thoughts
lush garden dreams now underway
Vast lettuce rows not puny pots
rich hills of beans with tongues of fire
espaliered trees of downy apricots
Splashed color stokes my fierce desire
until the bubble pops and I fall back to earth
my garden plot is small, the barrow needs a tire
A reset needed for this year’s rebirth
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NaPoWriMo Day 5: the prompt was exotic seed names, using one in a poem. I had a yen to dabble once again with rhyme and a bit of humor, and chose the terza rima: aba bcb cdc d.
November days turn dim and cold
as we slide down to pinprick light
and brace our souls for longest dark,
rich colors chasing flocks of migrant birds
cruel times for light starved eyes.
Yet worse there is the maiden month
that masks her fangs, bright ribbons
trailing barely warming breeze
summoning new green and crocus cups
to come and greet the sun.
Then tosses back her cape revealing
claws, which hold my frozen daffodills,
and shrieks her name in falling snow.
Oh yes sweet April there is no doubt
you take the prize.
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The NaPoWriMo prompt for day 4 was our choice of cruelest month (after T.S. Elliot). Watching snow encase my daffodills this morning, and birds become intent on seeds again, the winner, hands down (at least this year) is April.
Dear poet sir,
where to begin,
your words press tightly
side by side,
to pull me through
the shiny skin of thought,
a mirrored surface of
another’s world.
Words of early years
and soldiers gone to fight
a hellish, fruitless war.
Survival and regrowth,
sharp perceptions of
time’s road.
A place so different
from your youth
yet you can laugh, then
fete with knife edged pen
and dazzling words
the mix and contradictions
of accumulated life, that leave
my inward turning eye
and mind replete
at least for now.
Until another clutch
of welded thought
brings me full awake
and ravenous
for more
______________________________
NaPoWriMo day 3, in which the prompt was to write a poem as fan letter to a celebrity, unrestricted as to time and gender. Disliking the idea of kowtowing to mere celebrity (as opposed to creative talent), I chose to write to a (celebrated) poet whose work I admire.
Outside an open window
long bones of morning light
stretch across new green
and under petal floats
Mind’s eye leaping past
advancing spring
to waiting brown woods
Snowdrops hang, quiet white
broken only by the calls of jays
or arcing cardinal voice
I ache for home
those starker hills
and life lived on a wilder scale
With the flow of my brook’s
ambient song in counterpoint
to raven growls and beaver slaps
The shouting silence of the stars
that touch my trees
Small-hours communion with the moon
cupped softly by the dark
My homeward journey’s pull is strong
yet it will be hard to leave
a house so filled with love
and people of my bones,
Twin pole stars
anchoring the heart
outside my door the guard has changed
a day of wet and gloomy gray
whisked off by racing clouds
abdicated winter steps in minuet retreat
the sullen blue gray glow of rained on slate
is caught by short lived slants of morning sun
and wind, a small all-hands treetop voice
is loath to roar (for now)
the dripping cloak that wraps this house
begins to dry and shed small gleams
the morning raven fly by
lacking winter urgency
green daffy blades push up
brash in return, migrating from the soil
no longer threatened accidents
almost time to prune and clear a way
for the celadon and smell of spring
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I’m mindful that March in New Hampshire is fickle, and for a good long while snow will be a possibility. the path to spring is never straight up here.
I dream of deconstructing beaver weirs
layered dams of branch and mud
fiendish things set up by stealth
to drown my woods
and work to draw up plans,
a personal peninsular campaign
fought in the boots of wellington
besetting toothy bonapartes,
guerilla skirmishes to win release
of chokepoint water pools
allowed to stream again towards
the pond beyond its sapling fringe
growing up we know some barriers too,
thrown up to block our childhood path
casual injected freeze,
anti action dollops of impatient noise
thoughtless shards from adult tongues
that carry all the power
of their world, and leave us
with no voice to tell them no
unconscious joy leaching from
young porous souls, replaced by dust
to render us no longer fully vested
in our birthright gifts
oh we will feel creative pull
and try to move toward its warmth
each with our signature routine
to step around the wall,
with time and luck that sidestep waltz
will lose appeal, prompting us
to search out understanding,
mighty antidote to doubt
and let it heal our hearts
armored with new energy and joy
thoughts free to wander where they will
we ride the flow
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there is a vast difference between thoughtful words to guide and tossed off criticism. as adults we often forget the power of what we say to a child.
morning light in eyes
beams peek past the window edge
a friend has returned
__________________________________
this morning the sun returned from its winter sojourn away from my window, continuing the slow dance from solstice to equinox, right to left. shining across the bed and into my eyes. a welcome thing in the pit of winter.
I stand quite still snared by unaccustomed silence backlit in a pool of warmth and kitchen candle light looking out at darkness intimate in thick falling snow soundproofing all that lies beyond its edge until a car appears creeping down the mountain arm headlights poking through lace curtain flakes wheels soundless on the road deeply masked by white a traveler almost surely blind determination understood and much admired by me we share this moment and our quiet space until my door is shut again and he has passed us by
______________________________________ The world is well lost and soundless when it snows here. Like an infant’s view of life our boundaries shrink for a bit.
this morning life rose earlier
by minutes that felt wider
accordioning out the day,
winter’s pearl blue light
cut by blades of gold
cast from the ridge
revealed the snow well broken in,
squirrel byways clearly marked
seed leavings on white crests,
starter crystal stalactites
lipped from the roof,
evidence of romping dogs
mouse tracks
and my own red squirrel visitor
in a quiet moment
_____________________________________
immediate snow is always special, but some time out from its fall the evidence of life outside the house reveals itself.
frost painting echo trees
on woods facing windows
in the coldest
days and nights
of the dark months
the panes must be calling
siren like, their remnant
grains of earth
almost alive once more,
or is it that trees hear
the windows sigh
and send their shadow shapes
to be as one?
Life With Horace 