It’s raining.
Downspouts gargle furiously
around frogs of ice.
The barn cat listens & licks her pregnant belly.
It’s raining, the first warm rain of spring.
Sap rises, & the green nibs
where bulbs will write
their deathless names in the air.
It’s raining, it’s pouring.
Worms poke through the muddy ruins
of once-grand palaces of frost.
It’s raining.
Under the bark of a log,
the ant queen resumes her slow march.
the cult of money would have
some other light at noon
stop the green
experiments of spring
and to take their place
a red meat world
like news of peace
the land so promising in spring
is sick and wounded with oil
getting money
we hope to get thin
go home hungry to be
my son’s old kite
I put on my velvet coat
to go to town
My vision is going. I hear
a devilish tongue—
cold as a tumor,
vinegar boiled till thick.
I put on my coat
and do not put it off again till spring.
All the alders
in disorder
fitting themselves
with singing ears
that roar and clap.
the forest is like a house
emptied by burglars
when i am old i hope
to be this free and open
with fire stolen
from the sun
but where have all
the caterpillars gone
hungry
hungry
long time passing
they’re all in uniform
and dormant now
overwintering as sex machines
hemolymph flooded with glycerol
so ice won’t form
Spring snow:
the night before, I woke
to the sound of swans
Spring snow:
the spicebush outside my window
captures more & more of the sky
Spring snow:
one mourning dove adds
an extra half-note
Spring snow:
the soft ground sinks
under my boots
Spring snow:
last year’s stalks of Oswego tea
don fresh caps
Spring snow:
Driving home along the river, I have to turn on the windshield wipers every mile or two because of all the mayflies, the off-white inkblots of their anonymous deaths. Imagine living one’s life in a state of arrested development, and only on your last day undergoing not one, but two radical transformations, one after the other: growing wings, breathing air, and mating just once, having gained reproductive parts in exchange for the loss of a mouth.
spring again
scheduling my first
Covid shot
spring thaw
trees retrieving their reflections
from the ice
It’s not every year we get snow in dogwood season. This particular year, the wild weather simply adds to the impression that the world is completely out of whack.
spiderweb
catching snowflakes
their little spikes
Marooned in our homes, tempers fray. We wonder how long this will go on, worry about finances and food shortages. I watch a pair of scarlet tanagers—treetop birds—reduced to feeding near the ground and foraging for invertebrates in the creek.
redder
than our open mouths
tanager
But spring is always a puzzle: the innumerable ways that spikiness blossoms and leaves us.
For anyone in the rural U.S., power outages are a way of life, so one of the most surprising things about the pandemic so far is that the lights have stayed on. I stand on the ridgetop as darkness falls, gazing at a very bright Venus high in the sky; below that, a sliver of moon, the black bulk of the Allegheny Front, and then the usual display of interstate exit lights, street lights and house lights. And in a town of 5000, however Appalachian, there must be at least a few Muslim families breaking their Ramadan fast.
spring evening
scent
of a backyard grill
8:30 and already most traffic has stopped. Way off down the ridge I hear the first whip-poor-will.
night forest
a glowworm’s
slow blink