Hey! Where’d the sun go?

It was sunny when I went to yoga this morning. Now it’s gloomy and gray. I seem to have spent all of the sunshine either looking at my mat or now grading student work.

Leonard Cohen Gives Me Advice
                                    -- after "Anthem"

Oh, honey, where is your mind? 

You're on the yoga mat but 
swirling like a madwoman in plans
to rearrange the furniture, buy more
shit you don't need, dye your hair
another ridiculous color. You're evoking
people you can't help, those sucked
into a private vortex, inventing problems
that don't belong to you -- 

the hairpin curve in a colleague's career,
a young poet's cracked screens, 
a woman's brown eyes drowning in the front row, 
spots where bodies stubbornly refuse
to appear, blank spots in grade books -- 

as if you're so important to these stories, 
these alternate universes, as if
you can fix the holes in their narratives 
with a few concrete details, 
an active verb or two,
maybe the addition of a character.

You're forgetting, lovely, there's a crack
in everything,
and we're all broken, ashamed, caught
in plot twists we never anticipated,
alternately bored and out of love with ourselves 
and wrapped up in destructive rage
against all the machines.

But those breaks, that's how 
the light leaks in. 
So give up up looking for the perfect
offering, the spell you think will set the worlds
all right -- and, while you have time, 
ring the bells that still can ring.

Spring wins

I’ve been down in the dumps, per winter, and now the earth’s movement is waking me. 

everywhere

the earth keeps shifting
inch by inch 

and here 
sun floods 

stubborn roots
loosens dirt

melts 
air and sap

wakes bulbs 
that thrust shoots 

through winter’s 
debris

everywhere 
life 

reasserts itself
despite us

Twenty Six

“Hope” is the thing with feathers

         --- EMILY DICKINSON

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42889/hope-is-the-thing-with-feathers-314
the little Bird

watching at the kitchen window
we saw a spring sleek crow land
on the rotting birdhouse
where sparrows yearly build 
their nests

our new cat shivered and
stuttered on the sill
with electricity

as the big black bird 
levered a curved bill 
into the crack
at the back of the house
to shred the nest

spray it over 
the new lawn

the crow cawed and 
cracked massive wings
before plunging
again
into the tender bed

silent
we watched an egg
slip down its gullet
then another

while little brown birds
fluttered and chirped
on the wires
in the cedars
along the fence
helpless

I think I said 
something like
the circle of life 
is brutal
before I

turned away
to finish 
making lunch

Suggested soundtrack: Wagner.

Day 30 (the last day)

Challenge: For this last poem, end on a note of hope.


A Taste

The cedar dances again
waking the maple 
whose leaves give off 
an invisible hiss 

breaking free
from winter’s bare skin in
red tufts that unfurl
at the speed of light

while pregnant clouds
hang over
promising baptism
and the grass
beautiful uncut hair

lies lush and waiting
for mounds of tight 
daffodil to add yellow glee
to the scene

now a rabbit leaps in 
to nibble the stumps 
of stubborn bushes
and I tap this out

in the same spirit 
of natural joy 
capturing a taste 
of renewal

feeling myself melt 
just a bit
into the earth’s yearning 
its delicious hope