When in doubt

Day 2, poem 2.

If You Have Nothing Good to Say,

talk about the weather -- relay the forecast,
recite the current temps, remark precipitation,
offer advice for outerwear or

the lack thereof, discuss how it all makes you
feel, wonder where the groundhog's hiding,
theorize who's responsible for the current climate, and

lament the frustrating inability to be certain of
anything anymore, what with coasts sinking,
ice caps melting, expensive houses going up

in smoke, cheap ones whirled into kindling and/or
the next county, mention the islands of people
swept out to sea this week, or simply pitched

downriver, cite the latest city blocks swallowed
by massive cracks in the earth's crust --

or, better yet, stick to cataloguing
the birds ... geese picking at brown grass, flocks
of robins on the lawn,

ducks paddling backyard puddles,
the usual murders of nesting crows, and, if you're
really lucky, a couple few wild turkey

calmly stalking the middle school sidewalk,
heads high, ignoring the frantic rush of
four lanes of workbound traffic.

Day 1

Challenge: use random rhyme and refrain

A Pair of Ducks

"April is the cruelest month," says old TS, and yes,
it tends to disappoint, anointing us with snow/rain/pain

and filling the yard with hard white pellets of cosmic
despair, with a soggy puddle going pond, dark water

signifying frigid erasure. Even my hairs, worming 
into my head, feel, at the skull, frozen. Cooly cruel. 

I remember when a pair of ducks once visited, sifting 
through the wet wreckage, drifting on the odd pond, 

paddling it with invisible feet. Indifferent, casually cruel, 
it's a month of broken promise, imperfect resurrection, 

mundane depression and dejection, rejection, gray skies 
and dull eyes, the echoes of dead white guys like Eliot

telling me how to survive in hollow voices from poetic 
tombs, when in life they were doomed, dabbling like 

that long gone mallard dipping its beak into dead water
against a dying neighbor's rusty fence...   It's early, now,

and far too late, as cruel skies slide up, golden red
with frigid day one sun. The month has hardly begun

and already I feel ancient, dusty, irrelevant. Done.