Ready the March ?

March 2020- Call for prices-

Mad March World

In this light

March simply has

nowhere 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.

 

3/11

 

Fragments of the March

 

Light upon the lake

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

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

Waves frozen in mid-break.

 

3/11

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 crème 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 to each other

-for each other.

 

No one chooses anything here

The first glace into the other’s face

that rings the bell or

reverberation between

the four eyes looking into

the crème of the page

as it goes……………..ding.                                                      3/11

 

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.

 

3/09