Snow settles softly
on grass
on trees
on fenceposts
nestles in the foliage
red green yellow leaves cup it in their palms

first snow
silent snow
god’s hush descending to earth

Rainbow

You blazed,
you shone,
brilliant colors banded across the sky south to north
redorangeyellowgreenblueindigoviolet,
vast, glorious, rose-glow below.

Bright sun, a boom of thunder, then torrents
drenching anyone caught unaware.

But oh, look west, and stand mouth agape,
a turkey prepared to drown,
if that’s what it takes to live this moment.

60 seconds, no more (no less!),
the vision disappears, the impression lasts,
the now-grey day anything but dull.

I haven’t been here for a while. It turns out that recovering from a broken wrist feels like a full-time job. On top of my full-time job. So I’ve had little energy for writing. This poured out of me a couple of days ago, though, as I read and exercised my hand in the early-morning hours.

Stretch

Continue reading →

My phone’s autocorrect turns poem into
po em
as I type a social media post about the poems (about poetry!) I read today.

My blog’s autocorrect turns po into
P.O. as I type this now. Continue reading →

Dawn breaks sometime in the future.

For now, I lie awake, insistent thrum of traffic washing up against my window, one unseen bird calling out, anticipating the day.

“Do worms hear?” I wonder as this bird (whose call I do not recognize, somewhere between cardinal and crow) breaks the pre-dawn calm with a repeated cheep … cheep … cheep. Does the early bird go hungry if it doesn’t remain quiet?