Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
Stumbling Into Spring: NaPoWriMo 2021 - 2. April 7th to April 12th
April 7th
We wait in line
too tense to whine
or to repine
the first shot.
The second dose,
we’re more verbose
for it’s so close
to freedom.
Yet two weeks more
with arms so sore
seems such a chore,
but worth it;
Though we must mask,
content I bask
in every task
that’s normal,
And one day we
might blessedly
dance jubilee
in breathing.
April 8th
I lost the stars today;
they were there, shining,
when I stepped out the front door;
Ursa Major exchanged greetings with me
passing the twisted apple tree;
but someplace,
perhaps where the beechwood becomes green fields,
a sparrow sang, plaintive, sweet and clear,
and I, with all creation, stood, startled;
so when I scanned the eastern ridge again,
I found them gone.
April 9th
The days are much more frequent that I grope
through routine moments than when I was young;
impenetrable mists now shroud that hope
and that too human heart from which it sprung.
The murk descended slowly by degrees,
so subtle that I barely sensed its dawn
and now I pray for those lucidities
that I employed in ages done and gone.
Yet memory can sometimes pierce the cloud
with laughter or perhaps a sunny smile,
those winter joys which sometimes are allowed
to lighten our senescence for a while.
Yet ever in the gathering twilight haze
will I remember you to light my days.
April 10th
I still wear
my father’s blue sweater,
the one Mom gave him that last birthday;
its vee-neck is stretched and the elbows are thinning,
but when I’m looking in the mirror,
it’s almost possible
to see him.
~~~
Furniture
can speak, if you listen;
Mom’s rabbit-ear chairs creak with gossip,
phone conversations overheard in the pantry
or letters full of disappointment
left behind on the seat,
unfinished.
~~~
All those books
which cause the shelves to groan
seem excessive to the observer,
but they’re old friends who spent dark nights and long weekends
as company through my loneliness,
and too great a comfort
to forsake.
April 11th
I sing a song of broken ground,
beneath the robin singing,
a melody of row and mound,
with seed cast neatly all around
and green shoots upward springing.
My tune is made of sun and rain,
of brown soil rich and ready
for spade to turn where seedlings strain
to take the gifts the light will deign
which yield a scent most heady.
Intone the springtime air divine
and dance the planting merry,
for runners lush that intertwine
and summer’s fruit turned into wine
from promise of the berry.
So chant the harmony of earth
and thrice till fine and thorough,
that there might be new life, new birth,
of riches, joy and growing mirth
which rises from the furrow.
April 12th
Listen
for silent things
like owls descending swift
beneath the circling, watchful stars,
themselves
unvoiced
by telescoped astronomers
who gave galaxies names,
but without ears
to hear them.
~ * ~
There I stood,
mute, motionless, transfixed,
like some wide-eyed nocturnal creature
caught by the unexpected glare of brilliant light,
unable to handle the circumstance,
because I could answer
his question.
Queries, commentary, reactions and all manner of responses are wonderful. Feel free to leave anything you want to say here. Thanks very much for reading. There will be more.
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Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
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