Live your life as if it is the only life
Drink the Negroni - drink two
Buy the boots - those red boots with the stitching
Show up for the eclipse
Drive that convertible
Swim in the ocean every chance you get
Shake the pebbles out of your shoes
Learn the names of trees
Raise your expectations like kites in the breeze
Live in a way that you trust yourself to do right
Find laughter
Stomp in piles of fall leaves
The list goes on forever
Love in the crumbling years
brings to mind those trees with gnarled trunks
their skin cracked
branches gone leaving nature hewn resting places
sparrows alight there
life sap finding its way through old twigs
feeding new green leafing out
Old trees their roots entwined
having shared their stories
each wind inspires their dance
that dance never grows old
Amid the surface roots poppies grow
mosses appreciate damp dewed mornings
moonlight lost amongst the shared canopy
tells tales of wandering the sky
there to observe the building of pyramids and canals
Telling us this
time might well be infinite
as love
#NaPoWriMo
NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo
A poem a day for the poetry month of April
The sky at first appearance gray as any white car
left out of doors for a dry season
collecting a layer of dust
then as you look longer
the sky becomes more like marble
irregular white above gray
where closer to the light cast by the sun there is brilliance
Today is cold spring without ice here near the river
while a few miles north a fresh blanket of snow lies over everything
here overnight grape leaves have opened a full inch
lilac buds though like sleepy eyes trying to stay closed
It is said it will freeze again here this month
if so today is a warning to still tight buds to wait
there is a time for casting aside caution
a time for revealing what is closely held
or to hold back a bit longer
As for secrets
your people might think them delicious
until they swallow them and discover they are thorns
better ground into dust and swept out with detritus
of all used up things
#NaPoWriMo
She comes trailing tresses of catkins
skirts embroidered with johnny jump ups
purple and gold blossoms
leaves greener than promises of riches
bold iris swords
laughing clumps of daffodils
lilac buds swollen almost to bursting
Precious white bird
unseen for many days
he thrived throughout the coldest months
I will not think of what might have happened
I celebrate that he graces my life
brings his aura of peace
acceptance
blessings of all that is
grateful for his lingering presence
beyond the earthly being
Claimed by the wild
as we all are
in our time
vanished it might be into the mystery
perhaps to return in some form
or not
🕊️
I walked out into the morning
deliberate in my intent to encounter
winter in its bleakness
gray light bare branches
dried up brown leaves clinging to vines
this is not the white winter I came for
but the flat season that came for me
then a familiar soft sound
turned my head in another direction
white bird in the land of enchantment
appears within seconds
his hello accompanied by rustle of wings
we exchange greetings across species
he brings the wild
the uncertain
the mystery
close
he brings all this like the shroud of cold air
someone brings inside
from the facts of winter
Not here and not now
yet some winter road tells a story
of the shortest day
the longest night
This snow a simple driftless dusting
it sits lightly upon the trees
waiting quietly for new leaves
buds tight and shiny
for now bare branches where crows alight
All who do not flee for warmer places
light the flames
hands made warm by winter grogs in hefty cups
hearts gladdened by what is here
by what has passed
Here is the solstice
there will be more light tomorrow
The cold of winter is mysterious like cat whiskers
here the ground frozen into granite
there soft pliant fluffy soil as it it had spent the night in a sauna
One morning ice points have formed where water tumbles
another just as cold only the roof tops show the white signs of freeze
My shovel point is not a spear
it only scratches the ground
where the tree intends to throw out roots
now enclosed in the nursery plastic pot
red and green coral bells had lain down
seeming too injured to rise again
yet there they are poking their fine forms out and about intrepid as morning ski patrol in the frigid icy air
The plant I least understand the curry plant
lacy leaves delicate lightest abalone blue
a pair of tiny yellow flowers clinging yet
constant as lichen but soft
gentle as sparrow’s breath
between the pomegranate and armillary
Comes now the white bird
amidst a flock of grey doves
he watches as I set his seed near the pond
then saunters across the garden
remembering where two days back
the bird feeder fell to the ground
