A March Dawn

​
From deep behind
the drooped rhododendron,
the dark shadow
of a bird

darts down to see

if a smudge of ground
thawed free of snow
might  bare a crumb
for its beak.





Bonding


Chris, who did all the readings
teachers assigned, was the only one
in our high school I told my secret.
Who knew that after a week of classes
and a Saturday night party or dance,
I headed home and stayed up for hours
doing what, if my other classmates knew,
would have triggered their disdain:
I read Steinbeck, Wolfe, Flaubert
and, worse, wrote poetry.

So it was to me that Chris, in turn,
revealed his secret. Late on weekend nights
he walked—his parents could not
afford a car—to the spacious home
that Sheila Franklin returned to
after her date with one of the males,
dull as fizzless soda — but from money,
her parents pressured her to see.

Chris would go to the back of the house,
noiselessly open the porch's screen door
and move through moon shadows
to where Sheila, her face uplifted,
sat in a chair waiting for him
while I wrote a poem imagining the scene.

previously published in MUDDY RIVER POETRY REVIEW