Two chickens missing

With spring’s at last

comes this sudden moving

in to out, limb to stalk,

thawing patch to puddle,

chicken footprint crosses

here and there bleeding

into the last spongy rags

of snow. The sun writes

an invitation on blue

sky vellum to all of us

creatures — large, small,

chased, chasing — the surfacing

grub, the jerky hen, the hawk

patient in everlasting promise.
Even these white feathers
blossoming in the grass.

questions at the end of March

You cannot tell

from the wind chimes

or from the truck's

barreled rhythm

if it is spring or winter,

but the click of the woodstove

is slowing, and we

are almost out of wood.

The question

remains, whether we buy

another load

or maybe chop and stack

one more dead tree

from the pond’s shoulder

standing

with no thought

in its body of spring

no map of which streams

to open, and when,

no worry of frost

or drought

or whose song is being sung,

neither looking up

nor down. It is a fact

that you cannot tell

from the dead tree

if it is spring or winter

until you burn it

because you need it alive

and clicking one last time

we are drowning

Sometimes it is all just too much, and finding beauty feels like the wrong calling. As more information surfaces about the costs of war, of rape, of power, I am so sick I can't refrain from writing out of this mess. 

We are drowning 

in an ocean,
a human drain

under the plank
that moves with pleasure
on top of us,
an iron vessel that keeps on
floating and sliding through waters
calmed by those themselves
who ride us,

their vision of
clear sailing
in a free and open sky
beautiful to them
who look to the horizon

while we thrash
in the still dark deep
stain below,
hysterically
pulled down
under them
into the
hole

mud season

I laughed out loud just now as I finalized this poem. I started it at around 6:30 this morning, while it was still dark outside. Last I looked (yesterday early evening) Michigan was in that season between winter and spring, when everything is drab, brown, muddy and puddly. When I looked up from my laptop after typing "mudstone" a few minutes ago I saw that it is now light outside, and everything is covered with a fresh layer of white: two inches on the ground, and every twig and bamboo leaf heavy with it. We have had one snowfall after another for a couple of months. But anyway, the mud season will come again soon.

Mud season

When I think

how much

of life is spent

on pavement —

   sidewalks, roads, foundation slabs

I am grateful

for the season of mud

in this field and woods

even as my feet sink

and rise sucking

even when all is drab

no fairy white guise

even when stems

bent and broken

resemble wall-leaning

Bedlam sickness

even when trash

in small blue or red

strips and noblets

reminds me of the sometimes

painful touch of humans

I go ‘round and ‘round

this circled path

boots painted brown with mud

and I parse

out from drabness

cushioned deer beds

of copper needles, green

liverwort mosses knitted

over roots, jade lichen

lacing sumac sleeves,

bronze oak leaves sculpted

into armed Venuses

hanging at eye level,

fallen pine boughs

where hunter green fountains spray

as if to announce there is still water

flowing through this broken branch

its jagged tip

a beautiful sienna

striated in circles

like a miniature butte

in the Grand Canyon

where a river once flowed

its layers

an infinite range

of ochre shades 

of mudstone

March

I worked on a poem yesterday, well more like struggled with a poem. There was so much I wanted to say. But the more words I added, the worse it became. Nothing of the meaning came through. How could adding more words make meaning more obtuse? But so it was.

Then last evening I did a movie and dinner with my poetry mentor, Diane. She told me that this was the second year she'd been asked to judge a national haiku contest. Each judge was given 500 haiku that had been published in journals and had to choose five. Then each judge was given those five choices of the other judges to rank the top ten. She explained that last year she agonized over the process, afraid she would reject something worthy. But this year she did not agonize and enjoyed it.

Sometime after waking up this morning it occurred to me that maybe less would be more in that poem I struggled with. Maybe haiku would express the imagistic meaning I felt far better than the explanatory lines I kept adding. Maybe what is best rises to the surface when more and more is eliminated. I don't know how well this haiku works for a reader (or judge), but it expresses what I feel about this moment of anticipation in nature. The haiku is an opening, for the music.

March 

stems and sticks upright in snow 

bows at rest, ready 

for a cello to play “suite”