Spring rain washes ‘way
last year’s odd residuals
feelings that won’t stay
Categories
Precipitation
Tag: seasons
(Alternative title: Restless)
I’ll know spring is here
by the white-petalled flowers
like hiked high-waisted skirts
adorning leaf-green pelvises
emerging from a brown carpet of decay
leaves drained of their autumn exuberance
lazily revealing themselves
after winter’s white-blanketed sleep
then pushed aside without a peep
as through the beige come greener things
a trillium stalk and spotted trout lily
herb Robert and Virginia waterleaf
Virginia springbeauty and black raspberry
early blue cohosh and early meadow-rue
cut-leaved toothwort and my favourite, bloodroot
I’ll stop to pluck it from its orange tether
and snap the stem, a once small shoot
although it’s taken few weeks to grow
I rip it open and watch blood flow
this garish red unfit for skin
I smear on my wrists, as out, within
this little plant aglow with life
now bleeds as though clean cut by knife
and withering, dying in my hand
I toss it back to woods, to land
and with it, give a piece of me
a forest, springtime offering
a special elemental promise
thank you for appearing five
space, earth, water, wind and fire
in this time and in this wood
I’ll appear emptiness as I should
and until this winter fades away
with flowers in my mind, I’ll play
Categories
Bitter Beauty
Winter’s hues
of pinks and blues
have brought me to my knees
Wind’s frosty bite
stings day and night
burned alive by blistering breeze
New fallen snow
rainbowed with sun’s glow
illuminates the deadened trees
Rare beauty appears
just once here in years –
so savour this vicious freeze
Categories
Sensational Assault
shining jewel clusters
break open the escarpment
like precious stones waiting to be mined
brilliant leafy treasure
blasts of magnificent colour
explode across the rocky grandstand
backdrop to the season’s splendor
its once generous green given way
to greedy autumn’s foliage display
absent emeralds
stolen by nature’s alchemy
redeemed for rubies, garnets
amber, gold
the greatest illusion
of tempered grandeur
before the bitter cold
it should be forbidden
that beauty unfolds
so lithely in loveliness
before its death
dappled luster’s ugliness
only revealed up close
moths have chewed endlessly
leafy veins, now begging bowls
blackened edges encase
slug-gobbled holes
not unlike the singed suffering
of cigarette-burned abuse
maple’s steepled points
waxed and dried
crunchy now upon crisp earth
hard to understand its worth
its place in time,
once life, once food
now dead, now dearth
and oh the scents! I cannot forget
the dampened clay and rotting fern
sickly sweet suckles long dried up
a sun-baked bog with willowed dregs
the sunflowered smells twist into sound
scritch-scratching of squirrel toes in trees
chipmunks squeak, thin branches break
acorns land in leaves
a buzz of daubers, wasps and bees
harmonized with the last cicada song
too soon the symphony will cease
and tarsi tickles won’t be found
not for so long! so if you please…
I beg for just a bit of time
to exhaust under this dying sun
that scalds with will to kill all life
that incinerates the weak and blind
leave me alone to work my mind
and feel the last blaze of the year
striving not to shed a tear
striving not to feel false fear
that knights permanence on temporary conditions
I will be strong and wise
and remain loving, kind
though winter has its eternal quality
once here, ne’er gone
still… it must go eventually
we’ll see…
just let me loaf in this season’s sun
to soak in such sensational torture –
intense, so brief, so fun –
ending soon,
hardly begun
Categories
a week before the fall
a slothful orb ascends,
slowly across the southern sky
already missing its peak
it shirks responsibility,
no longer a light above by nine a.m.
in the yard, clocked shadows hold morning’s chill
while, with a furnace blast, blazing warmth is cast
lethally, from an expiring sun’s face
what a time of year
one of dread and fascination
a reverse magic of the spring takes place
dishearteningly unbelievable
everything once vital and green
withers away, as flames to ash
full bushes decay under still-blue skies
crosshatched with chem trails
autumn’s appearance should sting less
with each year of expectation
but the knife travels the same scar,
ripping the tissue open once more
spilling the crinkle of leaves, isolated chirps
icy rainfall spurts
there can be no love in autumn
what — love for a dying thing?
we expect spring’s rebirth in its vein
but it’s different
inconceivably so
as nothing can come back the same
taking its time, different life does grow
I no longer delight in season’s change
a witness to illness arising
and constant pain
raw attachment, unhooked anew,
broken hearts where love once grew
I cannot bear to face the task
of reliving seasons, to watch them pass
as all things slip like time in glass
my cageless prison, this life, outlasts
free me before I plunge once more
through autumn’s orange enchanted door
cold aversion ripening
grasping at inherent things
I know it’s wrong, so little worse
than self-cherishing
my ugly curse
may I be free before the fall
— just one more week
to see it all
correctly
Categories
Summer Affair
Not fair!
I said I wouldn’t become
attached to you,
changing condition
yet, so much sorrow
fills minds that grasp
at the losing
a mistaken conception:
yes, it is the summer
that offers me joy
so easy to believe
when winter brings
us pain – in joints,
in frostbitten fingers
in the minds of
jealousy when our friends
flee to now-appreciated
tropical timeshares — now
no more summertime
to share
one dream ends
while we’re trapped
in another
romantic autumn’s
place will come, when
this dull and tiresome
sadness becomes boring
to my fitful, grasping mind
but now, I see only
a broken promise to myself
I wouldn’t become attached
I said
I must have failed
why else would I lay
blame with the season’s change
for my woe
The Halfwit Writer 