December 2020
Bio Note: With family in Colorado and California, an evacuation bag at their front door,
the fires remain a worry, though they aren’t as bad now. At home in Pennsylvania, I’m in a rush to tidy
the gardens for winter and doing it without a coat and gloves. Next month at this time, I’ll have a new
knee and have no idea how that will play into my poetry.
Wildfire Blues
I sing insider blues
Blues dark and pressing
Cali-smoke choking the sun
In layers of Colorado ash
Blues for my kids
Blues for their kids
Blues for the virus
Blues for the fires
I cough outsider blues
Got gray-blues from no hiking
Got smoky mountain blues
And no views of the Rockies
Blues for no work
Blues for no money
Blues for no rent
Blues out of gas
Got deep blue hues
Burying mountain ranges
I sing closed in blues
Missing my mountains
Blues in a shiver
Blues in a shake
Blues in jambalaya
Blues on my table
Acrostic American Sentence
hard frost my granddaughter pinches my arm to see if it's still soft
hard facts
frost
my aging sets me apart from my
granddaughter, she
pinches the soft skin on my hand,
my legs climb one step at a time, her hard little
arm, firm and thin, her legs fit
to twirl in a baby shark-shark-shark dance, her eyes clear to
see colors in sidewalk chalk,
if I want to see young again,
it’s easy, I stand
still and imagine
soft rain and spring flowers, my granddaughter
©2020 Ingrid Bruck
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