In this long March 2.0

March 2015-

Last Day of Winter

So sing blue sky without
memory on the cusp
of seasons exchanging gears.
March in transition chilly
with a deceitful light promising
warmth but delivering
stark fingers puzzle scissors
purple brown sleeping limbs.

The air in the room hisses
in more chilly silence
Students bent to their task
glance out the window
hoping an answer appears there.

A flag flutters stiffly at the end of a pole
like it was an end of the broadcast day
announcement.

But this is mid-morning
for such a terminal signal
a sign-off, a blizzard of white noise
so the clouds defuse the light
and the classroom darkens…

A blanket of gray descends…
bringing with it a big black old memory
of a time like this before
where the silence bores into the ears
and fatigue of vague weariness
invites the eyelids to begin to droop

There is always the sleep of change
reminding each fleeting season
just how short our time on earth is
in March.

-Greetings from Gridville 2007

*

Skip The Gutter

And then one day
winter starts coughing up
bits of spring.
In the beaten curbs
garnished in a smear of fetid mud clots
and it all looks so very freshly hacked up.

At the wheel just before noon
your eye catches her form shrouded in dust
strolling along the edge of the road
just insolently enough off the curb.
To pull your glance into the slit
of the rear view mirror.
Yes, there she is all dolled up
in black from head to toe
From the cape to the heeled boot
being propelled along like a
fragment of torn paper ripped out from
a fashion supplement,
just blowing down the gutter.

And you wonder
will spring come this year
to all those sullen faces
at the wheel
trying to skip the pot holes
that the snowplows dug
looking out from the ruts
that they all insist upon
living in.

Another Rubber Eden 1997

*

Fragments of the March

Light upon the lake
Sound waves frozen in mid-break

Broken Shafts of weak March sun
newly poured upon cracked and
shattered sheets of hyper-white
entrenched ice
a history of persistent bitter air
trapping flowing waters still born
beneath.

Light upon the Lake
Their waves frozen in mid-break

Barely Marching sun
arrested impressions
strange frigid contours
rivets of pressure
compacted tighter
isobars deceptive surface
unlikely to support any weight

Yet enough to entrap
a fool’s misstep

Light upon the Lake
Sound waves frozen in mid-break.

*

Of texture and Color

Waiting in the door
the bartender with some
exasperation shrugged
all I heard was a spicy bloody Mary.

I nodded in agreement and immediately wrote down
You change the pens color in me.

It was the creme feel to the page
somewhere in the sheep and oil skin

To the touch that defines the lines content
in context calling in a fluid hue
all that two parallel paths
can carry between them
all they can contain
in the ear that listens
closely for what the eyes sees
left for you upon
the creme of the page.

You can’t touch color
or so they say.

However the request to bathe
in tone and shade is to extend
to reach out the hand and try

Touch were all the colors
never answer to their proper names
and refuse to simply run out and dry.

Perhaps then it is that desire
to request the color of the pen to change
is what so very few can do for each other
-to each other.

No one chooses anything here
The first glace into the others face
that rings the bell or
reverberation between
the four eyes looking into
the creme of the page
as it goes……………..ding.

*
Mad March World

In this light
March simply has
no where to go
but……on.

The step in the day
a longer presence
of illumination into
the afternoon later now
every new year born
in this same way.

There is this sense of urgency
a sort of headless Madness
that ignites
brittle tree limbs to
fan fine struck fingers
in complicated silhouette

flung across the horizon
like a bottle of India ink
spilled and splattered
upon a pale blue sky page.

I send these words
mere reflection
auditory stenography
purely dependent
on perception systems
beyond my grasp or control

Along the prescribed channels
as the pale blue light
drains the light
from the sky’s page.

*

Watch your back

The Romans named
the month March
I always thought
Drag would work
here much the same.

Not a new year anymore
quickly the cement days
harden
into a pattern
a past
a clear path of either
charge or retreat.

But in this illusion
thinking there is still time
fades Winter evening
as Spring light lingers
longer in the sky reach
forestalling twilight longer.

The anchor of passing days
leaden, barbed, heavy ways
digs in to the bottom every passing day
arresting progress in the cruelest way
Restrained
to drain away
in being held back
securely in place.

March nowhere
Drag all the time
crying some feeble
consolation…

There’s still time
Still Time…

No.

There isn’t any still time ever
in fact

There is no such a thing.

Sometimes Grief-2012