A Small Collection of Poetry For Spring

Thursday, 27th of March

Today, I took my vitamins and went for a walk

Did my laundry, phoned mum

When the birds sang in the morning I listened solemnly,

Sipping bitter tea quietly so as not to interrupt

Wiped the mirrors, lit a candle

Repainted the kitchen cabinet and fixed the handle

When the Cohen record played, I swayed along softly

Fingers hugging the old chipped cup of sweetened coffee

Yes, many loved before us

I know we are not new

Consulted the ladybug on the balcony in the afternoon

Asking what did she make of all this, 

Artists of the seventies and love we only know from memory

She did not answer, of course - bless her who has never known

Beyond the love of the perpetual, spectacular now

Maybe that is why ladybugs are statistically happier than us - I looked it up

In the evening, as over my shoulder peered the Moon

Our faces both alight by the screen’s blue

A glass of white wine by the bed, on the dented cover of Joyce yet unread

Instead, 

I washed the post-dinner dishes and stored the leftovers to keep 

Put on new bedsheets and an old shirt

Tossed and turned and still could not sleep so 

I called you.

Requesting a Moment of Your Spring

Oh, will you not stay, just for a little while longer?

We have much of the day left, and so many ahead

Now that the Earth, though a mother to you, is young once more

And you, born and little again with each March that comes ‘round

Even when you are there on your doorstep

To greet it for the twentieth, the fiftieth, the seventieth time

With so many Springs yet unlived in your pockets

Will you not come back in just for a few more minutes?

Just one more cup of honeyed coffee

Just until those flowers over there wake?

The Puzzle

Begin at the edges, add to them until they reach the length of tightropes

Between Winter wind and Summer heat

Between days void of patience and nights drained of sleep

(Where will you fall?)

Between root-stubborn memory and the loose script for the future you keep

And rewrite and rewrite and rewrite and re-

Found a corner! where your street crosses mine

The old diner and its old waiter, unchanged

A rough-faced stone in the river of Time, son to no one

Table for one - but I still order for two (you)

Thursday’s special and a chocolate milkshake

May I ask for a box, pack the rest to take?

A small pile put together and set aside

Of shoes by the door, pairs mismatched, laces tangled

Their respective feet beneath the kitchen table

Sway in the soft way of a body from which laughter is poured

Plated and passed on, a second helping, a fourth

Pass the salt now (and kiss me later), the dressing - it’s the yellow bowl

No hurry, for that night had forgotten to grow cold

One is missing, just as you feared

You knew before you began anew

Yet you hoped foolishly it would appear in the pile of thens and nows

And now you search under the table, through mind-cabinets, high and low

But (were I not the piece in hiding I would come out to tell you)

It will only be complete

If what you miss you let go

A Love Letter to the Season of Birth

Now I sense you in the air

Your honey, your soil, your rain in my hair

Washing the forests, kissing my shoulders

Dad was born on one of your early days, windy and thin

He says it was an angry world back then

But with each year he faced you again

His anger melted into a want to turn it into something kinder, something else

I was born when you were on the brink of becoming something else, too

Something warmer and brighter

But not as sweet, and not quite as true

You know how to hold me just right when I’m blue

What to make of me as I lie unmade on my half-made bed

Limbs tangled with linen and resentment

For how little Winter left me with

But you, more than anyone, know the freedom of having little to begin with

And that this emptiness merely means 

I must sing and long and grow until I fill the space

When the Grass Grows Tall Enough

Bring me daisies, picked barefoot from your yard

And I will weave them together into a crown

Declaring you Patron Saint of Spring, Ruler of Ringing Laughter

Reason for Right Now

Tell me what you dreamt of

Even if the timeline got all tangled in your morning-messy mind

Time cannot find us, anyway, not right here

Not right now

Not with the sunray angled just right

To make the amber streak in your hair glow

Not with the disarray which awaits to be sorted

Not with the dandelions which await to be blown

No troubles to be seen through the tall grass

If we remain silent and lying down

Arms stretched, knees bruised, just so,

Just right now

The Cherry Tree

A scent wild and floral drifts through my open window

Distant bells no longer announce hours but the blooming of each branch 

The graceful white of a January sky, of fresh snow

And now I know where the cherry pits in my throat went

I take my weary self out into the late afternoon

Sitting down beneath it, caressed by its roots

And tell it about the Winter

It unknowingly holds in its petals