April 14
I hate the blah of April
My friend sighs. I can’t wait for May
when the flowers bloom.
A “flower” being something like a tulip,
I’d guess, a cup to hold nature,
ideally conceived.
Not the bloodroot or the hepatica, not
The blue cohosh or spring beauties,
not what you have to get on your knees
to see.
Not those exquisite small faces,
cupped in last year’s withered hands,
nodding as you pass.
–by MCPerez
April 15
Witness trees, the old man called them,
as we walked the woods behind his house.
Hulking, storm ravaged beasts,
moss-backed and mostly dead.
They held the line between one farm
now gone and the next,
gone, too.
Speaking when the wind is up
in howls and growls and murmurings
of time and loss and cellar walls.
–by MCPerez
Second April morn
of snow. It’s not pretty now
even in the sun.
–by Jeanne Frank
April 16
Snow in March can bend you low
as a sapling
but snow in April
breaks your heart.
She said this looking out over her fields,
where sheep no longer grazed,
with fences down and gates
sprung.
April promises and promises
then takes it back.
Just when you need her most,
just when the ewes come due.
–by MCPerez
April 17
It’s a cold, snow-stunned April morning,
Izzy and I walk upstreet, the way
we often go,
while he sniffs out the latest.
Night messages.
Not just the scribbled tracks on snow
but all the subtext only his nose can read.
He ponders each detail, each nuanced phrase
from fox and fisher, the coyote and squirrel.
They seem to have a lot to say.
He does, too, and always leaves a reply,
sometimes curt, sometimes ripe with hyperbole.
He never runs out of ink.
–byMCPerez
Soft forest earth under foot
Green rugs growing on dead limbs
White snow crunch
Pops of daffodils laughing in resilience
Dog feet crunching in the muck
Stinky
Blessings for full sun
And heat
Soon
Haiku for a woods walk
–by Adrianne Maros
Heard the snow forecast.
Now I regret not picking
daffodil bouquets.
–by Jeanne Frank
April 18
Walking downstreet this morning
snow sweeps across my face and Izzy’s fur.
The Red-winged blackbird
tries to string up his song,
Robins sulk and kick through
snow-covered leaves.
Clumps of roadside Coltsfoot
bow their heads in dejection.
On the creek bed, two muskrats nuzzle.
Izzy barks, they disappear.
Blips in the water
that has its little laugh.
–by MCPerez
April the 18th
Wearily we await the advent of a reluctant summer,
Whose promised relief weakly welcomes us
Who, bound by closures and travel restrictions,
In vain we would enjoy.
Yesterday I tilled my garden,
Turning the rich, dark bosom of earth
Toward the face of an overcast sun
Peering hesitantly through a curtain
Of fluttering clouds
Only to rise this morning to find that
Old Winter, bearded and hoary,
Had laid his blanket of snow overnight
Upon the ground where he slept.
As he had done the night before,
And the night before that,
And the night before that.
An unwelcome squatter,
Intruding upon a long-suffering Spring.
And bewildered the red-breasted robin,
Early bird though she is,
Scratches vainly for the succulent worm
Buried as he is
Beneath the cold, soft down of snow.
While the pale, soft green buds
And the warm, bright scarlet buds
Of a newly awakened spring-ward greening
Struggle to cast off the long sleep of Winter
And the greedy grip,
The final grip
Of its cold, cold hand.
–by Tim LaFave
April 19
The sun brings us all out.
Cars lined up at the nature preserves,
the metallic flash on the crow’s wing,
trillium suddenly up from under
and promising bloom.
Just downhill
a den of foxes, the babies
yipping their arrival into the world.
–by MCPerez
Double Haiku
Wild neighbors appear
on now empty city paths.
Thrilled to witness them.
Four coyotes roam;
three Gambel’s quail rush by; two
roadrunners, just gone.
–by Patty Kay