March 2022
Bio Note: Our Wisconsin winters are seriously cold, and we've found ways to dream ourselves warm around meals and garden planning. Hence these poems! You can find others of mine at The Hudson Review and Poem-A-Day recently.
Splitting the Bacon for Breakfast
You pry a frozen chunk for defrost,
then cut and separate the bits to sizzle
and crisp in the microwave--count out
the result, dividing strictly by two but
generous with the odd one out
to share with our morning oatmeal;
you can have it, you say, and I,
knowing my role, say no, for you—
before we split the leftover bit
crisped to perfection like the rest:
going halves, the secret to our deal.
March 16, Madison
Dear Ones—just today the red-winged blackbirds
are back, taking up posts every hundred yards
along the ice-locked bay, and sandhill cranes
bugle overhead, searching for last year’s nesting place;
the sparrows are mating in our backyard yew.
We’ve taken the afternoon to prune the grapes
and raspberries, set the battered tomato cages
on their newly mapped plots, water the spinach seeds
we planted yesterday in the black earth that opened
only last week, all of us pushing the season,
taking our chances, sneezing from snow mold.
In our basement under grow-lights next year's
harvest already sends up tentative sprouts.
©2022 Robin Chapman
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