New Year’s Resolution


A cliché of diamonds staccatos
across this first verse of sun, across
undisturbed snow as white and composed
as Styrofoam—till you can’t dismiss

what’s winking, what truly is twinkling,
or then the burly squirrel bounding through,
a cartoon ball bouncing out its tune.
Granted, this should finally do you good.

In fact, it should go on resounding
against the discordant rounds without
and within, against the monotoned news,
the refrained and distasteful self-

revelations, against the flatted notes
of familial failures, of aging and its kin,
against the perennial drone toward ever more
of the ho-hum.  Yes, you’d think it should . . .

and it does: this New Year lyric—landscape
writ bright with ice diamonds, wet confetti
free-falling at will from still branches—sings,
albeit pianissimo, against it all.





Wan Sun, No Snow


Mere tufts of snow now dot the downed leaves,
gleaming like wide mushrooms.  Incredible
how quickly that total blanketing
soaked into extinction.

In this most welcome splash of light
nothing seems to mourn: the bleak
yard, the splayed twigs on trees
only conjuring their buds, a blush of blue
soothing its gentle gaze
through the slats of woods.

At last I concede the winter’s
deft control—it settles in my mind
like a cat kneading a woolen throw,
the cat circling twice around before
her graceful lowering into place.

All day the bashful shadows slowly
reposition, gradually compassing northeast.
By dusk, tattered, solo oak leaves lift
in the building breeze, one raised like a bony hand,
waving the season’s inevitable welcome.




Lakeside Bird Feeder, Wet Snow

​
Like the trusty railing, the congenial 
patio table, the steady deck itself, 
and every firm crotch
in every faithful tree, the feeder’s
become a sculpture.

I should have black and white to lace
into the camera to capture
this transubstantiation, this emergence
from the overnight dark and storm
an aesthetic thing in itself,
dangling like an earring
from the gaunt lobe of a different day— 
a white arrow, squirrel-emptied,
aimed straight for the flat sky.

The first little bird to find it, sunup,
can only inquire, perch
and jerk a nervous while,
then quickly move along
in wired hopes the other stops
around the circuit will service
his tiny entitlement, will be
scraped clean and waiting
like a retired guy’s double drive.

By tomorrow I know this wind
and another early thaw 
will have de-transmorphed my feeder 
to its manufactured purpose,
its slick roof and its Plexiglas siding
once again resembling an urbane
enticement to things wild, to some
Nature available outside a backdoor slider.

And I know I’ll have also lost
more impetus for believing
in permanence—except
of the impermanent:
its exceptional knack
for nourishing the dazzle
in this everyday desire.