March 2021
Mary McCarthy
Mmccarthy161@gmail.com
Bio Note: I am a retired RN with a life long love of words and visual art. My poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, most recently The Plague Papers, edited by Robbi Nester, The Ekphrastic World, edited by Lorette Luzajic, and the latest issue of Earth’s Daughters.

Wild Night

Chased out of sleep
By a flaming tiger
Roaring down at me
Like a golden comet
Getting close enough
To singe my hair
And put a hot kiss
On my neck
Sure to leave a scar
That won’t fade
When he drives me out
Into the next day
With its dull safety
The familiar chain
Of hours in step
Like soldiers
All the same
Making me turn back
To look over my shoulder
Remembering his
Breathtaking
Wild disorder
Sweet and dangerous
A fatal glory
So real I can still
Taste it

March

The dregs of winter
And we celebrate
With hyacinths in every room
Making us dizzy with
Their ripe perfumes
We watch cardinals flare
Red in the dark pines
Coming in by the dozen
For our oily sunflower seeds

We too are hungry
Tramping out in the mud
To scour for the first
Slip of new green
For the willows striking yellow
Against the bare blacks
Of slower trees
The eager drum
Of woodpeckers
Announcing return
The leaves thumbing up
Through the earth
Unfazed by snow
And the icy hiss of sleet

Nothing can stop it now
The season’s turn
Rises light
As champagne bubbles
Busy as yeast
In a new loaf
Clean as a baby
Taking its first
Astonished breath
©2021 Mary McCarthy
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