GROUNDHOG DAY
Transhumance of sorrow --
seasonal rotation of angst
to graze greener pastures --
evades prescription rays and lamps
Ceaseless snow fertile loams
ice incisors stiff as wire barb:
the herd can only swell
supplicatory eye-rolled moans
If of a sallow cast,
you've worn that February guise
Harried nuns yanked you from
school lunchlines, surely dying --no
intrinsically bilious
from ducts occluded deep within
like cirrhotic liver
of Father X who loved his gin
Green acorns tick with Spring
rattle your patent Easter purse:
hatch late still-winter's night
grub rucksacks of cadaver white
HERR KEPLER'S NOTEBOOK
Time is the bully anchor of the opposing tug-rope team.
The person with a happy home life tracks glitter through the world; the solitary person leaves snowprints.
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"The grasshopper warbler's song comes up out of the earth just as you think the day is quietening down. It has no prelude or warm-up: it starts midperformance, as if switched on by the dark, as it if has been singing like this beneath the earth until it was dark enough to come to the surface. As if, though we hardly hear it, this singing never stops."
A Year on the Wing (Tim Dee)
All writing and cartoons on this site copyright 2008-2010 Julia Martin, unless otherwise credited.
The person with a happy home life tracks glitter through the world; the solitary person leaves snowprints.
-------------------------------------
"The grasshopper warbler's song comes up out of the earth just as you think the day is quietening down. It has no prelude or warm-up: it starts midperformance, as if switched on by the dark, as it if has been singing like this beneath the earth until it was dark enough to come to the surface. As if, though we hardly hear it, this singing never stops."
A Year on the Wing (Tim Dee)
All writing and cartoons on this site copyright 2008-2010 Julia Martin, unless otherwise credited.
I'm lost in the last stanza -- (looking for one of those winks you promised :->) Is "grub" a noun or a verb there? I assume a noun, but I find the relationship between acorns, purse & grubs obscure. I wander off into contemplation of the "Mexican jumping beans" that figured so disturbingly in my playground life.
ReplyDeleteYou've written my obit: she lost herself in the last stanza.
ReplyDeleteGrub indeed is a noun. Am I the only one whose adorable acorns hatched hideous acorn weevil larvae? Aka fat white grubs which add nothing to the charm of one's Easter purse, in which one was hiding said acorns.
I concede that this image may not yet have found its proper home. Hey: at least I've spared you the fireflies in the coffeecans.