The Garden of the Seasons: Finding the Light in the Snows of February

Still Falling 

You can almost see it falling, that nearly immaterial impersonation of matter 

Light sees it, catches it

Says 'I know a secret'

It's quiet

Its plan is to slip down, after dark, 

when no one can see it,

one can almost never hear it

one can feel it, if you remove your hat

turn your face up to the sky, the deep blue night

and taste the winter

the softer air

the ambient light 

the subtly melting crystals

on your tongue 

                              Sky Writing

 

The sky is yellow, lemonish

pink, somewhat insinuated by the lemon ice of snow-set tones

a softer blush

an inscrutable silence

that impinges on the the skeletal branches

like jewels in your hair 

Ravine 

Looking down from the path, the water slips beneath our feet, intent on its own progress, 

a dance of elements, throwing off radiance, a harvest of winter sunlight, incidental, as if a mere byproduct,

an accident of water, hurrying to itself 

Photographic Evidence

Old sheds in Iowa? Another winter day on the prairie?

The fence worn, swaying to the march of the seasons 

Branches catch the powder of the quiet fall, 

Another day of timeless snow: the element that teases the senses, erases the centuries, scrambles what we think we know 

Tinting 

Trees yellowing their hair

Where does the color come from? what time of day or night pastels the sky with the flat edge of some tool unavailable to human fingers

Tricks of the season

Threads of time, woven 

in a soft fall 

one of those hundreds of Eskimo names whose speech 

we have yet to learn 

The Garden of Verse Stirs Up the Garden of the Seasons: Three Poems on the Many Faces of March

The March 2021 issue of Verse-Virtual offers poems by 71 poets, an astonishing number and range of participants. In tune with the season, editor Jim Lewis chose an optional theme of "lions and lambs."

 I offered three poems written in March of last year, right before (and as) everything changed. While I didn’t quite enjamb the “lambs” in any of these, I did get “sheepish” in one of these poems. And in another I gave pride of place, in its conclusion, to "lions."

The poem "Sipping About" laments the absence of normal 'spring weather,' whatever that is. And also takes note of what was, last year, an almost snowless winter.  Here's the beginning:

Skipping About 

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 about...

Lions come in for a cameo at the end of this poem. 

          The poem "Stoppage" bears witness to that strangest of moments last year when the world seemed to stop. Here's the beginning. 

Stoppage

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 

To read the rest of these two poems, 

and the whole of the poem "March Winds"

go here Robert Knox  

To access the full range of poems available in 

the March 2021 issue, see Poems and Articles