Not--Spring

Hell is April snow

and winter coats that should have been retired a month ago

and hats and mittens and boots that should be

packed away by now for the summer.

Hell is 'should be' but not quite yet.

Hell is colorless gardens

devoid of spring flowers,

with frozen fountains, and disoriented birds,

torn between flying south again

or building nests,

baffled squirrels and my indecision:

what SHOULD I wear this morning?

Should I turn on the heat—

or open the windows?

Is spring dragging its feet around the corner,

or has it passed us by?

April is the cruelest month,

and hell is not-spring.

Impossibilities

There is a bird
overcome with spring
building a nest outside my window,
in the pear tree bright with bloom.
He is struggling
with a strip of tissue,
white as snow against
the snowflake blossoms
and his midnight feathers.
He twists and turns and flutters
through the branches,
managing his find.
(It must fit somewhere.)
He fails and it drifts away
but he, determined,
retrieves it, pokes and prods
and wraps and winds
with beak and claw--
only to lose it yet again.

O Bird,
of whatever name,
let it go.
The garden is full of tissue
and treasure, of twigs and leaves
that will serve as well.
I should know.
Pounding square pegs into
hopelessly round holes
is what I do.
But hopeful spring knows no reason
in man or bird. Who knows?
It might work yet.
In April, everything is possible.

Poetry Month: April 2018

It's not that April produces
great poems. It doesn't.
Instead, we celebrate the idea
of a month for poetry:
for setting aside
(if only for moments a day)
the perspective
from which we view our worlds.
We cock our heads
at a slightly different angle
and sniff the air for words
that speak in unfamiliar accents.
We listen for the snatch of music,
the melodies we use
to choreograph our days.

The poetry is always there;
April is when we taste it.

Notes on Birthdays

The years don’t matter;

not the number,

be it large or small. It matters

not where you are (or aren’t)

on this very personal day:

a day for celebration

of the you you’ve come to be.

This day is one of recognition

of people and places,

surroundings and treasures,

that made your everyday

for whatever years.

You are not GETTING older,

But growing.

Always. Every hour, every day,

toward the apogee

of you-ness:

the star inside your soul.

Tree

I’m in love. With a tree. 

Last year, we bought a townhouse, more or less sight unseen. We were in San Diego for the winter; our VA house had sold, and we needed a place to move to when we returned to the east coast. WE finally saw a place that looked like it might fill the bill. We pored over photos on the listing and on Realtor.com, studied the various features, asked questions of our agent and our daughter about things that weren’t shown in either of those locations--where is the powder room? Are there any walk-in closets? What about storage? (You will notice that we did not ask if it had an open floor plan, stainless-steel appliances, or granite countertops--those are stupid HGTV questions that we hoot at when we watch Househunters.) We ended up buying the house on its merits: location, garage, light--but there was still a lot that we did not know. Some of that was important, some less so.

We did not know about the tree. I had assumed that, once again (for the third house in a row), I would have a bricked-in patio that needed to be enlivened with plants in pots. I expected bare and blasted, and, I must admit, the roll of bamboo fencing that (sort of) screened the HVAC compressor was pretty ugly: attached to the fence on one end and, wobbly-legged, fastened to the side of the kitchen window on the other. Wire-cutters, please.

The rest of the back ‘yard’ area held a non-functional wall fountain, attached to the side of the kitchen bay window. (Huh?) There was a tall storage cabinet (about 12” square and 5 feet high--presumably designed for pygmy gardeners) and a coffin-sized box with a slanted copper-painted-black lid. A small bricked-in area fanned out from the brick steps, with a small dirt area, semi-covered with bark mulch that held the afore-mentioned HVAC unit and the ugly quickly-removed bamboo fence. And the tree.

The tree is a red maple, I think. In May, the leaves were green, but they were small and fine and delicate-looking. It shaded the patio; it stretched up to the second floor bedroom, giving that room the aura of a treehouse. From the kitchen window, I saw branches and leaves reaching across the blue sky, and from my chair at breakfast, I could watch squirrels chase each other up and down its trunk. I liked this tree from the start.

Love came in the fall. My tree saved the finest for last. Her leaves turned magnificently red, with gorgeous orange highlights. She lights up the patio, and leans over the fence so that passers-by will see her and remark upon her colors. In the morning--even on dull mornings where clouds drag the sky down to the ground--she offers a bright note to start the day. I find my eyes drawn to the window,, to the sunlight filtering through that rosy confusion., and think: all they had to show me was this tree. I could paint the walls, the trim, the cabinets; I could get someone to fix what’s broken, and alter the things that are inconvenient. But...getting a tree like this takes years of patience, years of care, years of love. This one puts Joyce Kilmer to shame. 

Balance

It's Thanksgiving, and Facebook is filled with gratitude. Every post lists things we are thankful for, ranging from pets to pies. Maybe we all just need a break, because I haven't seen a lot in the news to be thankful for. Murder, rape, riot, and catastrophe--not to mention Trump, the biggest catastrophe of all-- stream across our televisions, parading current and past scandals and offenses. I, for one, am ready for some good news.

It's easy to list our blessings, large and small. It's easier yet to catalogue all the things we would wish away (Can I get in an early thumbs-down for political ads? and any stories about Harvey Weinstein?) But, today, I'll take my cue from a magazine editorial I read this morning.

We all have a lot of 'everyday' in our lives: things that have to be done that we don't particularly want to do--making beds, doing dishes, unloading the laundry, putting stuff away, feeding the cat, vacuuming...These are all on my personal "Don't wanna" list, along with a number of other delightful activities. The editor that I chanced upon was folding laundry while watching the news. As everyone knows by now, news programs everywhere feature floods, fires, and hurricanes, shootings, robberies, and scams. Here and everywhere around the world.

And here I am, on the comfortable island of my living room, safe and sound, watching the news and complaining about having to decide what to have for dinner. I have choices that so many others don't. There's a refrigerator and freezer and pantry full of inspiration. There are restaurants a block away. I can call on my phone for pizza delivery or for an Uber to take me somewhere else. I have a table and chairs and a bed to sleep in, air-conditioning or heat, or just about anything I might want. And amid all this plenty, the whiny child says, "But what do I want for dinner?"

You get my point. Years of having it all have spawned years of needing more, until we've become eternally dissatisfied, essentially unsatisfiable. We take our lives for granted, when we are, in reality, one storm away from the deluge, one match away from the fire, one bullet away from tragedy. Why is it so hard to say a simple "thank you", then to roll up our sleeves and pitch in to make life a little better for someone else?

So here it is--between the Halloween candy and the Thanksgiving feast, between the adorable children in costume and the inevitable handprint turkeys, between gorging on candy and celebration of endless leftovers...thank you. Now, where's that list of places to start?

100 Loads of Laundry

Today I hit the bottom of the box of dryer sheets that I bought when we moved. That means that, since May 11--5 months ago--I have done 100 loads of laundry, averaging out to about 20 loads every month, more or less. Surely, that has some milestone-level of import. While Eliot's Prufrock measures out  his life in coffee spoons, I apparently choose laundry as my unit of measure.

One hundred baskets of laundry have churned through my life: clean sheets, clean towels, everything from jeans to underwear, from t-shirts to tablecloths, have measured out my days. Each basket represents an hour here, an hour there, tucked between the events and errands of the day.  The significant measured by the insignificant.

And--if we measured what we have accomplished in that laundry-measured period...?? Today I can report that we've plateau-ed out. Most things have a place (though occasionally I will open a closet or cabinet and be surprised by a box or bag or piece of silver that was incongruously placed.) This is when you have to recognize that there comes a time in every move when you just say, "That's enough!" and stop. Some things just have to stay where they are until motivation returns.

That may be Christmas. For now, we've stopped moving and started living again.