spring

It snowed last night – heavy wet flakes, the kind common sense dictates you not attempt to move, because A) they weigh a ton per shovelful, and B) they will melt away soon enough. The pines along the back yard look as if the weight of the world had settled on them alone, and the grey clouds hang overhead like a heavy sigh.

But the steady drip from the eaves is the faint patter of hope – a heart beating faintly in the thick silence. So, a haiku:

The last snow, fallen –
draped in white, the trees bow low
at Winter’s passing

Hm. It may help to know that white is the traditional funeral color of Japan, land of the haiku. But while that detail might add a little something, I think it works alright as-is. At least for today.

Sorry it’s been so long …

village limits
we step into the day with no illusions—
it is gray, cold and april.
a hawk sweeps the haze with banded wing,
birds sing, the street echoes the chatter of starlings,
the bark of dogs, the redwing’s wulperchee!
the stop sign leans how the plowed snow pushed it.
two chickadees man a bare and brushy elm,
feathers ruffed against the breeze, still and silent,
standing sentry at the intersection.
it’s strange to see them stationary—
with the trees around them singing
why should these two remain grounded?

there is a puckered hole where a bullet rang
the stop sign. Beneath its tilted stem
a balding radial is exposed in the melting snow.
the shoulder is scraped bare and sown with twizzlers,
nesquik bottles, crumpled camel packs and butts.
this is the way out—a cracking street with no lane lines
where village idiots pop their pills, their clutches,
whatever they can—a bleached budweiser slowly turns
over and over across the pavement to the muddied grass,
a plastic sack, a bra pressed flat, damp artifacts
of vice and apathy known since birth; a winter’s worth
of bullshits, to-hell-with-its, i-don’t-give-a-damns.
the birds sing; skin crawls to gooseflesh
as a cold wind rattles the weeds.

J. Thorp
04 April 02

—

*Although written in early April, in Michigan …