September 2021
Bio Note: My most recent poetry collection is Outside From the Inside (Dos Madres Press, 2020). My first appearance in Verse-Virtual was in 2018.
Signs
A brief April snow disrupted our spring.
Amid clumps of snow, daffodils
nodded in the icy breeze. A glaze
of snowflakes sugared the hyacinths.
I worried for them and the tender lettuces,
red and green, I’d only just planted.
But the sun came out; by mid-morning,
the snow was gone as if it hadn’t come.
You’d have to be able to read the signs—
the water drops glistening gaily
on the new leaves, the green moss
wet and velvety, the bushes slick.
Perhaps patience is the key, I thought.
How hard it is to wait out a siege.
The enemy is the invisible virus,
and there is no way out but through.
Once it has passed, we will have to know
where to look to spot the absences
only glaring for those who miss
what has ceased to exist.
©2021 Anne Whitehouse
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