Mourning Dove Comments on the Changing Light (from the journal)

Blue is what the

brown winter

dreams of.  3-2-13

Vibrating left and right,

the cold winter light.  3-4-13

Daffodil’s yellow winter dreams

are climbing up the cold winter air

one green leaf at a time.  3-4-13

Pressing up the earthen umbrella,

green fingers its way through.  3-6-13

Tree-hugging snow rounds

the tall woods one trunk

at a time.  3-6-13

Catching the wind,

catching the light,

this tiny shrub’s

new green buds

lean over thin snow.  3-7-13

One, just one,

one poem to go with March’s

soft breath, bright light, dancing wind.  3-9-13

The diagonal sweep of trees.

The sun drew it up one

cell at a time.  3-13-13

Light pours sideways over the paper,

skips over yesterday’s thoughts 
lightly embossed in gray.  3-14-13

Our golden sunrise

keeps rising,

color coming down.  3-14-13

Mourning dove

comments on the changing light,

the new colors.  3-16-13

Holding winter’s snow

all the little green

leaves.  3-18-13

The particulars of troubles

lay beneath it—

the white oneness of snow.  3-18-13

Everywhere the earth

is peopling out with swollen,

rounded buds.  3-20-13

So bright the winter sun—

maple trunk provides

a finger of shaded relief

stretching from the hill

to my face.  3-20-13

From both sides of the road

the flowered maples defy

the lingering winter.  3-23-13

In the sun—the beautiful city,

the many-colored city

rising like a crystal

over the blue harbor.  3-23-13

It’s a long wait for warmth.

Daffodils wait too,

their chins down.  3-23-13

The snow has stopped,

but it drops down now,

from the trees, down in fistfuls.  3-25-13

Breaking off from the weighted holly—

clumps of the unexpected snow.  3-25-13

The white roof

is sprinkled with squirrel’s footprints

turned to shiny ice in the slanting snow.  3-25-13

Green and rust

honeysuckle leaves ignore the cold,

unfold in their own time,

under the blue sky.  3-26-13

An earlier morning.

The trees move like yesterday

in the warming wind.  3-27-13

Waiting for warmth.

The small birds are not waiting.

They speak quietly as they hurry.  3-30-13

The Road Home

A long linear desert.

Here and there a flower of words,

floating up on the updraft.  3-30-13