The bluejay calls against the blue and gray sky
The winds rage, sending the trash of late winter 
scudding down the road 
to find its place in the raspberry patch
twisted and filtered and combing its clumsy debris 
against the locks of hairy stems
like the artist cleaning his studio,
the writer saying goodbye to all those 
first drafts 
 
I bid goodbye to the winter of 
mixed engagements
empty of old hopes,
fleeting praise
 
turn to old songs
and look once more for the joy,
the seed of contentment, 
the amalgam of dust within the struggle 
for the new life
 
the tiny egg inside the greedy jay,
pulsing to be born
 
03.05.20
                        

We're going right to summer
All winter freakishly quiet 
as if someone had put a bag
over its mouth 
and told it, sternly, 
to calm down,
we have other things to think,
but will we think them? 
 
Winter moped, 
complained about the food,
concluded there was no good place to ski
around here, threw up its hands
at the prices for cuisine New England 
featuring last year's lobsters 
reminiscing, in pink aprons and paper caps,
about special times with red tides and blue water 
... and left town on the early side
 
Now they're doing for spring
No leaves on the trees, 
and high in the seventies
Grown people in shorts pretending 
they're just back from the Outer Bank,
or the jangling Keys, east west or south,
or the Inner Self
or the inland canalway to great age,
in warm and seasonless climes
where the blood slows and 
stare-offs with iguanas pass
for conversation
 
OK, ye gods, I can take a day or two of this
mixed-up March
But do not sell the circus animals quite yet 
for we may still have need 
of lions
  
03.09.20
                        

Sometime 
Thursday afternoon
 
They canceled the world
The trees began disappearing from 
my neighbor's yard, one by
incautious one,
forced to stop growing
by powers who knew better 
 
The cars on the street sheepishly parked in front 
of neighbors’ houses by those 
who have too many vehicles 
for their driveways 
strangely disappear 
and, 
       already, 
           I miss them 
 
and even the trashy come-ons from those 
insufficiently contained recycling attempts 
that blows annoyingly week after week into our yard 
seem a tender reminder 
of a past 
 
that I hoped would return one day
but no one
     is offering 
          a timetable
or a guarantee     
 
03.14.20