We are well into April. I have been posting my offerings for poetry month directly onto FaceBook – Haiku so far. Then I skipped a few days and now I have something longer than a haiku. So back to the faithful (and too often neglected) blog. I keep thinking I will start blogging again – especially in this Time of Virus when I am home. Instead I find myself out in my yard working in the soil – which brings me great peace. Spring and Cabin fever combined I guess.

Variations on a Theme

One

There are so many ways to say a thing:
drape it in adjectives and infinitives, cover it
over with adverbs and bristling nouns

or smooth it out and color it dark like chocolate with
bright red cherries in the center tanging
across a tongue hungering for meaning.

This morning it is coffee and berries blue and
hot under plain yogurt, but yesterday
buttered walnuts and raisins spread across the plate.

I grab words as they parade through, fasten them
tightly to blue lines on white pages lest I
find them far down a path I can’t follow.

Outside invisible things threaten, hidden by fog.
Inside the minutes strech like rubber bands
then snap and reak like branches from a dead tree.

The only way forward is through – a truth
which never seems to change even with
all this modern know how.

Two

The way to say things
are many. Parts of speech rule –
a parade of words.

Red cherry centers
amidst dark chocolate zest
meaning sought not found.

Blueberries, yogurt,
morning coffee; yesterday
walnuts on the plate.

I catch thoughts, tack them
tightly to the page – no strays.
Focus repaid.

Fog covers danger.
I long for long days, short nights.
Dreams die in the shell.

Truth will never lie.
It remain outside of time.
Mother Nature wins.

Three

There are days that I can taste poetry, as sweet as skims of cherries tucked between thin slivers of dark organic chocolate. In time of sheltering, that treat and hot black coffee moon-touched with milk serve as breakfast, my poetry pad on the table beside me to catch concepts before they cartwheel into the ether to someone/something more receptive. This morning, low-to-ground clouds rolled in softening the new-blooming iris towering over the late daffodils. The truth is I don’t know how to capture hope, it remains elusive even as the fog is shredded by bright rays from the sun.