April 2021
Bio Note: I live with my wife in a northern exurb of Westchester. My poems are shaped by years of pop
culture and countless hours of music. Teaching, which in a normal year can keep one young, ages one needlessly during
a global pandemic. I have four collections, including the recently released A Careful Contrition (Shanti Arts
Publishing), as well as two nifty chapbooks.
Early Spring
There is a world within the world.
Rain-slicked emptiness
makes roads echo,
rips reality in two.
Disparate reports
of concussed confusion
change all that we once knew.
There is space
punctuated with
unspoken harrowing dread
in sharp contrast to hello
of drooping magnolia
blossoms blooming,
pear tree buds opening,
vibrant forsythia’s neon yellow,
pretty daffodils swaying
indifferent to latest numbers
of overnight dead.
And skunk cabbage leaves
grow ever thicker
covering ground
as army engineers
turn empty spaces
into hospital beds
for newly sick
growing sicker.
It truly is a world of wonders.
Even as we isolate,
stand apart and cogitate,
ponder long and contemplate
this somber state of change.
Around us hawks are circling
woodpeckers on their noisy mission,
strangers to this plague’s contrition,
and all its senseless loss.
It surely is a pretty scene,
sun-dappled afternoon serene,
as nature goes about its shifts
oblivious to ours.
The world within the world exists,
buried deep in leaves and sticks,
its beauty rolled in verdant mix
to help us past the gloom.
We walk to keep the news away
while nature soars above the fray.
Rejoice. Here is another day
returning slow to form,
adapting to new norm.
©2021 Gary Glauber
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It is very important. -JL