Category Archives: Uncategorized

Inspiration: The Child and The Fox, illustration by Hsiao-Ron Cheng

In this fairy tale
the only things hard or clackety
are buttons and birch trees.
For the rest,
wind and shadow
breath and silence
sleeping fox would never
lie so still only
death can wait
so patiently see how
small and so soft
beneath, and beneath
the slow falling snow

This takes either
effort
or relaxing
I’ve forgotten which–
clouds on horizon,
snow on everything else
become
islands far out at sea
mountain ranges
carved out of reality
by the smallest shift

One day of snowstorm
making soup being quiet
alone soaking in sunny
unfamiliar hours of the house
a stranger in these its loveliest
hours I seldom see, the hours
usually devoted to earning
in the world I go back to today
armor of worker armor of good cheer
armor of
ignore this yearning
to be Home.
Meant, I meant to write
something about snow
when there is too much of it
mounded above the car tires
drifted to your waist and how
you carry it, one shovel full
after another, looking for
a place to set it all down.

All night snow
throws itself
into the headlights
dashes hard
towards grille and glass
We squint and curse
its mad determined drive

By morning exhausted
snow has fallen
asleep its last trick to
knit its own soft blanket
then turned tender snow
pulls itself close over the
car’s cold shoulder

by one tough teen critic
unimpressed with the latest
ParanormalRomanceSeries
soon to be
a MajorMotionPicture
“I know it’s a fantasy,” she said.
“But I thought it would be more realistic.”

Starbucks got the idea
from observing this fact
some days are built
for sips of
the elegant
small and strong
Espresso, Haiku.

Other days
for huge gulped
sweet swallows
Venti Macchiato, Russian Novels.

in the snowy yard
one mouse-colored mouse-sized leaf
jitters in the wind

so many layers
snow over ice over-head
cozy winter house

would be simpler
to embrace if only
I knew it was coming
which defies the very
Definition
of Unexpected. Some
days cannot be shoved
in the direction you
planned no matter
Instead I was home
to see how light plays across weekday walls
watch through a Thursday window how
squirrel’s mad treetop dash triggered
tumbling snow from every branch
flurious miniature blizzard now a
crow tries floured snow rises in a cloud
around him and I was here to see.

No matter how late for work
Stop every morning
beneath the dark lace
of your branches
to check on the sky
All three of us
moon tree woman
as still as a diorama
And the diorama
could be titled
Winter Dark or
Get In The Car Already but
just yesterday it changed to
Look, the Sky
Is Lightening