The Bellows

The kind of day wherein everything roars—
distant, plosive, tumbling barks of multiple hounds;
twin engines of a lone, low plane;
sweeping blades of a helicopter crisscrossing the sky;
but mostly,
          mostly
Wind
roars, cresting over the surrounding hills…
sighs, curling through trees…
roars, breaking into whispers at the foot of the cliff that overlooks the river…
Its sudden susurrus, an absence,
          palpable
as thunder.

I wrote this last year, but today is this sort of day, so I'm dragging it back out and blowing the dust off. :)

Unconquered

                                             --for Joan

Her stroke was a little death-

a sword-thrust severing synapses

leaving her changed

but unaltered.

She has faced this little

giant, this miniature death,

with her courage intact.

She is a knight who

refused to be unhorsed--

her charger, a wheelchair.

She banners herself in the bright

colors of ascendancy and parades

through the on-going days

of her life, victorious. She is a knight

of the Order Phoenix

risen from the smothered

flames of her former words

to a new voice, still valiant,

still errant, still

unconquered.

Even Icicles Don't Conform

Glass Forests of Our Winter Childhood

Long having left behind our youth,
my brother and I each have children of our own
and a thousand miles between us.
But when snow has softened time and distance,
and ice has preserved crystal clear memory,
and my sons are crashing and crunching
through the winter crusted underbrush
of February's anywhere fields,
I don't have to close my eyes to be transported
to a place and time of walking with my brother
the glass forests of our winter childhood.

Conversations With Owls

Voices lift the silence-
blanketing blued snow-
whitened twilight asking
without seeking
answer through frost-
held stillness,
"Who? Who, who? Who?"

Warmth unfeigned lifts
my answer- I-
who am drifted
unlike he- whose
quizzical brows
rise belied by
his indifferent
flight.

*If you can guess based on textual clues what kind of owls I was talking to and what other kind of owl I made reference to in this poem, I will give you a cookie. If I can find you, and if I happen to have a cookie with me at the time, that is...

Lucy

Loyalty to ashes and love to dust--
Lucy died on a cool-sunned day
and a cold front followed with rain
to blanket her.
Every tap of October sticks on siding
makes me turn to look for the ghost
of her black toenails on the kitchen floor.
The first time, after, that I sat on the porch swing,
the toll of a restless collar bell
heralded the arrival of the cat
to claim Lucy's head's place on my lap--
ginger fur does not seem quite as soft
as her black, folded ears under my hand.
Every dinner's table scraps go unclaimed.
She was just a dog, after all,
but grief is grief
all the same.

September

September, two-faced
lunatic king of dying summer
dresses in bold, rich flowers--
purple Aster novae-angliae,
Queen Anne's Lace--
wields Goldenrod,
manic heat,
oppressive humidity.
Next moment,
out through calico blue
Chicory, Aster linariifolius,
fringed with white lashes,
 Aster dumosus, Mist Flower,
peers the benevolent dotard face
of September
sighing soft breezes,
humming insect songs.