April 2021
Bio Note: "To a Warbler" was the last poem I wrote before Covid-19 swallowed us up. It goes back
to a warm February day just over a year ago. I was sitting with my windows open, listening to the music of a
bird outside, thinking "You should be down south!" I was worried about climate change. Now, after a full year
of pandemic, I am reminded of it all over again with soaring February temperatures and warblers out in droves
celebrating the disappearance of winter in our part of the world. Where I live there is no end in sight to the
Covid-related lockdowns and restrictions. But it's another beautiful, sunny day today. My second collection,
Still Life with City, will be out this year with Pski's Porch.
To a Warbler
It’s mid-February. You should be down south chasing a warm front along the Ionian coast, not perched outside my half-cracked window where a scut of snow fluffed your nest a dusting of years ago. Now, how best explain winter to my daughter? Once [upon] there was a time so cold you’d see your breath blown glass around your mouth. Math-eaten, climate-singed, the change came quick. In the still small span of a few lifted lifelines— dour warnings bedamned—our tempest tossed, its leafless trust trussed to the wings of a hymnal, taxidermied, back-taxed to the be-yonder. O bluet-breasted, hexed & double-crossed your swansong’s bygone beauty breathless, hair’s breadth to lost.
Originally published in Rust+Moth Summer 2020
©2021 Marc Alan di Martino
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the
author (email address above) to tell her or him. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual.
It is very important. -JL