May 2021
Frederick Wilbur
frederickwilbur@gmail.com
frederickwilbur@gmail.com
Bio Note: Spring has come to Virginia—redbuds and wild cherry on full display—but beautiful as they
are, they indicate that there is yard work to do. It is hard to stay inside to write, but I know the labor will
supply many images for future poems; mole hills, ivy climbing the dogwood trees, phoebes nesting in the eaves.
Saving Life for Another Day, Outer Banks, NC
Photo credit: Frederick Wilbur
Beach crowds are surprised when
gathering clouds reach their ultimatum.
The half-dozen rumbles
it takes to cross Albemarle Sound
are ignored
until lifeguards whistle their own ratification.
Mothers and fathers scramble
to strike umbrellas, grab towels, buckets,
stampede their children
up rain-speckling dunes to public access stairs.
Teens text and laugh.
Disappearing into pastel houses,
the kids piece puzzles, parents
pretend, charade-style, to find consolation.
They want their paradise without family
squabbles, without the inconvenient
sabotage of nature, having paid for it
with a maxed-out credit card.
They complain
for a miserable week
of storms before returning home
to mow the forgotten lawn,
grown gloriously arabesque in their absence.
©2021 Frederick Wilbur
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