Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Almost Mid-March \ Now Rises April


Alan: Winter, like all of us, can be vain, even as it starts to show its age.



Almost Mid-March


Winter notices its fat thighs.
It thinks it’s a white beast
breathing down all our necks.
But it looks at itself now
and sees: cellulite.  Or at least
the snow sagging and dimpling
under this outrage of sun.
This breeze from afar.

Just days ago winter, sorcerer,
sorceress? – this ungendered maw,
taut belly of need, held us,
batted us around as it willed.
But today?  Today winter
looks at the calendar.
Almost mid-March.  Suddenly

it’s tired, tired of all its tricks
and tired of itself.  Time,
thinks winter, for a vacation.
Time to attend to those thighs.
Time enough to go
and come back ravenous
and roaring one more time.



Nancy: Waiting for a day of mild air, a day when I might take a deep breath and hum an old tune from my childhood.



Now Rises April


as from a winter sleep
     as from a dark constellation

April rises: birdsong, watersong
     green shoots, promise of flowers

saltmarsh perfume, call of shorebirds
     as from a dark sleep

I rise, surprised, take a step
     toward rising light

toward the promise of flowers
     an old woman

singing

fair, fair is the morning

Monday, March 9, 2015

Snow On The Windows \ Climbing March Hill #4


Nancy: When the windows are obliterated with whirling blowing snow, only the mind can escape.



Snow On The Windows


a landscape
a geology textbook
a campsite at Jumbo Rocks
a canyon, walking deep into history
a rolling meadow
a cave
icebergs
Mount Kailas, streaming cloud
I might say
    I am shut in
    yes, I am shut in
traveling
traveling



Alan: Snowstorm after snowstorm, six feet, nine feet, eleven feet... And yet even in this hard winter, early March hints at another season coming.



Climbing March Hill #4


You say, “Look at the sky!”
I see “bruised.”  I see “angry.”
“Livid.”  I see welts,
something stretched out wounded.
Your pain and mine, everyone’s.
Lifetimes of hurts.

I see a storm far to the south,
heavy thumb on the mid-Atlantic states.
Stranded commuters.  A jet
off the runway, almost
in the river.  People running.
I see long tongues of flame.

I see this through another window
than last time.  Another angle,
a little farther north.
I see a furnace banking itself behind spruces,
the sharp line of trees on the crest of the hill we live on.
A blindly biting mouth.

I see winter suddenly afraid of its own mortality.
I see a break in the storms, a chance for the snow to settle.
I see another cold night coming and a clear dawn,
the evening star setting west.
I see seeds waiting under the snow.
“Beautiful,” I say to you.  “Beautiful.”