April 2020
Bio Note: I am a longtime editor, slowly publishing poet, and author of six picture books, including From Apple
Trees to Cider, Please! and The Boy Who Said Nonsense (Albert Whitman & Company). In 2018 I moved away from the masthead of
an academic quarterly to work with people who want to share their stories, ideas, and poems in print. It’s been a joy—and
quite an adventure.
Wednesday
Wind whispers and porch flags undulate.
The ShopRite daffodils stabled in
a tumbler on my desk have turned their yellow
pony faces toward the sluggish sun.
My mind a morning nest, I stand and sip,
watching mid-March tease in breaths that puff
or gust across the wide-eyed window panes.
A crisp brisk jolt provokes the flags. They stiffen
and relax. Neighbors jog or whoosh
in work-bound cars. The school bus stops, collects
the boisterous backpacked gaggle bundled up
against the breeze freed mothers lift their chins
into while shiver-strolling back to rewarmed
coffee and a precious span of peace.
In sudden burst some birds proclaim true spring
is on the move. They only need to sing
it once. The sun, at last alert, takes over
like the crossing guard we thought retired
but shows up, eager neon, fit for duty.
Minstrelsy
It relieves the heart to simplify.
A clarifying wind and chimes to cheer:
This is what an open window does,
especially in April. Grass awakens.
Grass awakens. It relieves the heart
to simplify, especially in April.
This is what an open window does:
A clarifying wind and chimes to cheer.
Especially in April, this is what
an open window does. Grass awakens.
A clarifying wind and chimes to cheer.
It relieves the heart to simplify.
Pecan Acres
It’s nearly May, but the upper northeast
is now expecting ice and snow.
From waterlogged Louisiana
the chatty Weather Channel reports
on a case of climate refugees:
an entire flooding town
will be removed to higher ground.
Two miles over, ten feet up
is all it takes—plus federal funds.
The program head is interviewed.
He says in sum, “We’ll see what works
and learn from our mistakes what doesn’t.”
Ah, I think, he made that sound
so easy. A vision of my in-laws’
grassy Manville lot appears,
their home, a tiny cape, now memory.
How many floods, how many cleanups
does it take to get a stubborn
people going? Four risky years
next door was what it took for us,
but in the end, we were lucky
soggy passers-through—for you
cannot discount the root and grip
of clinging onto something blood
and sweat and tear-soaked of your own.
©2020 Felicia Sanzari Chernesky
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