Downsizing

In my dreams, I am always clearing

out the cellar. Throwing away the

good things with the bad as I am

annoyed with how long they have

been there. What will we do with

all the stuff before the new owners

move in? We didn’t really move

that often, but when we did

it was life threatening. No

matter how many layers we

peeled off, there were still more.

I would love to walk through

life unencumbered but it is

not to be. I crave too many things.

So I accumulate and let go

over and over again. Even now

I wonder if I should leave all

my treasures in place for my

children to dispose of or shall

I shrink my possessions down

gradually until I am ready for

my smallest home. 

Winters without snow

mean color challenged days

of deforested ambition, a

gaunt and dampened mood.

No star-struck bits of lace

to crystallize attention

and liven up the view.

No silent print of fox who

journeyed through the quarry

secretly at night.

Instead, a plainsong chant

with poverty of pitches

like bumblebees in flight

and colors that recall old

mushrooms decomposing

along the carriage road.

Such winters never grieve

at leaving us uncovered

and shivering in the cold.

Unhinged

The Lord is my seatbelt but it’s up to me

to wrap it around myself. The Lord is a

self-defense course for my granddaughters

but they must show up for the classes. The

Lord is a peace table for the world but we

have to make our way to the seats.

There are no more swords and shields and

bucklers, just the stealth of unmanned bombs

sighted by silent computers. Sometimes

I yearn for an old-time thunderbolt to hurl at

unthinking drivers round about me or a parting

of the seas to swallow up the rude;

or maybe five smooth stones and a slingshot.

I do not go daily into the fray any longer so

it’s hard to find my enemies, but I know they

are out there searching for unguarded moments.

Maybe we could find a way to use dark matter

to hide us from the unmannerly and the unhinged.

The Ides of June

The petals are sodden,

edges frayed—stigma

shriveled like melted wax,

stems falling in heaps—

blurring my memory of

June flowers.

Long drafts of rain and

overcast skies have shrunk

the joys of aerating, mulching

and appreciating my garden

and brought us back to

overcoat weather.

In these last decades of life,

dark evil thoughts fill my

brain at the loss of each

summer day that should

have been—each sunlit hour

that never came.

Busy Little Sparrow

A busy little sparrow is neatening

up my yard again, nit-picking

tiny fits of fluff, housekeeping

miniscule debris from my

just-hatched garden.

This immigrant offspring, common

as crumbs on a sidewalk table,

makes herself at home in city

blocks and parking lots and in

my pocket garden.

Favored by God’s eye, discerned

in song and story, in thrall to

biology; she goes about

her preparations

for coming generations.

I stand en pointe waiting for the

comic sight of scrawny pledges with

open beaks and newborn notions.

As a keeper of plants, I have vested interest

in the propagation of species.

Stop Button

I’d like to freeze-frame

snap, click,

the perfect moments

of nature—when the

neon-yellow tulips are at

their smartest bent, when

the scarlet-red cardinal with

orange beak lands on the black

wire of the seed-holder, when

the blushing robin scrumps

up a wiggling worm—but nature

is never still.

It keeps

on moving and changing. Past

perfection—past lime lacy leaves,

pearlized blossoms and

rich red roses—past

deterioration

right on to

degradation. There is no

stop button. No way of

holding back the eventual

disintegration that always

follows life’s finest

hours.