Category: Seasons
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Geraniums (revised, again)
It begins with the scent of geraniums, bitter and hard, and my grandmother telling me not to touch because she is afraid I will pick them. I wonder how this flower so harsh on my nose could be the crown of her patio. It begins with the scent of geraniums, bitter and metallic, and the…
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White rose in November blooming
as if you cannot wait for the snow, as if you open wide to remind us that November holds both summer and winter. We learn from you to prepare for any crazy thing, to carry our burdens lightly so we might dare to bloom if given even half a chance.
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In ordinary time
Dust stirs as I walk to your door, hat by my side. Long pond lies still, weeds bending, expectant. How many steps like this in how many galaxies on earth unrecounted? They come, they go, dust tumbles round footprints, shuffling in and out, as if deciding what shall be be.
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Visitation
Even the spires of milkweed bend over in the low tumble of wind through the prairie, dry reeds tapping hollow on ancient gravestones. When I left you here, the ground was frozen and wet, with pelting sleet leaving a pebbled sheet on the grass, the canopy, the cars. How different it feels in August now,…
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Buddhista 3
It is a miracle that you survive day after long day in the cold, under rain, through whining wind. Once, as snow fell, a smirk edged your lips but it slipped under by the time I looked firm. I ask, are you a ghost? Yet day after long day, you hold steady, build moment after…
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Buddhista 2
You sit on the stump of the old willow where last stood a luxurious swaying, deep shade for hot summer days. Sun falls bright upon your head, your joints ache from prayer or thought or long years of passive watch over this small yard, the squirrels that make their home in the stretches of the…
Poems from in between 