How much more?

I just reread my recent poetry output, preparatory to printing the newer stuff out and adding it to my book. (April is Poetry Month, and, believe it or not, I do get calls to read stuff at different venues.) In any case, I was rather disconcerted to find that I seem to have taken a darker turn recently. Almost everything I've turned out this winter (barring my Ode to Velveeta) has been pretty darned depressing.

Blame it on the weather, blame it on my health issues, blame it on my mother and her complaints...but it has been a bad winter all round. It's almost the first of March and I am still seeing piles of dirty snow on my patio and in the street. The alley bears the remnants of rock salt and ice melt; there are fallen branches (poor magnolias!) and ragged scars on so many trees that I wonder how misshapen they will be come spring. Even the river looks dirty and tired.

But, clearing up the fallen branches on the patio, I saw, peeking out from underneath the snow, a couple little inch-high spears of daffodil leaves. The lilac has what looks like a few leaf buds (I dare not hope for flowers...) Indoors, my scraggly-looking orchid from last spring somehow produced a flower stalk and still shows 5 or 6 blossoms. So this morning I walked down to Market Square, and while there are only a handful of hardy vendors, there was one who had pussy willows. I gathered some up and put them in a vase right inside the front door. There may be a threat of more snow this week--but those pussy willows are a promise.

(...and, in case you're interested, here's the last depressing poem of the season...)

Dark Angels

The reluctant river drags its heels
along its muddy bed,
turbid and brown-green
as the patchy ragged grass
and bony, lost-soul trees along its banks.
Above, dark angels spread their wings,
dirty –feathered, oppressive,
holding no promise of salvation,
inhabiting neither earth nor heaven:
perpetually suspended, as are we,
between winter’s dingy, sin-gray landscape
and lost paradisaic light.