overwhELMed…

How eager the Ulmus, spring limbs laden with pendant promise, profligate in its disc-winged seeds.
Yet how tough, unwelcomed, these papery lozenges, these flighted samara, in even this moist and fecund earth. For surely if they succeeded in proportion, then instead of Doug fir and maple, cedar and alder, we would be enveloped by elms.

After spring…

found poem © j.i. kleinberg

signs of spring…

The perfect greens of spring, scale precise upon scale, new growth bright as the robin chick’s gape, this hunger for air, for life, this urge to twirl the slowest waltz.

. . . . .
thujopsis dolabrata – elkhorn cypress

spring at the Supreme Court…

a pair of brides
they stand together
arm in arm
wide skirts
spun outward
above slender ankles
spiky coronets
holding feathery veils

. . . . .
© j.i. kleinberg

the meticulous…

found poem © j.i. kleinberg

outside…

Here in the upper lefthand corner of the U.S., in the early-March garden, spring is mostly a matter of hints and suggestions. The bare wood of the plum twigs and hydrangea stalks now show fattening nubs and leaflets. An inch of red-brown peony pokes up through the soil. The precocious azaleas and rhododendrons seem to gather themselves from their winter bedraggled-ness and ready a crown of tight, yet-colorless buds. Upon the accidental touch, the juniper’s nearly-invisible cones billow forth a cloud of pollen. The cotoneaster, still bearing some of its red berries, pushes out its first tiny, leathery leaves. Hellebores unfurl their shy, downward-facing blooms. But oh, the heather. Nothing shy. Nothing subtle. The garden’s Pied Piper. Just that pure, announcing color that says hang on, don’t despair, spring is almost here and the long, languorous days of summer can’t be far behind.

these…

found poem © j.i. kleinberg

Because…

found poem © j.i. kleinberg

visitor…

The snake was always in the same spot, in the back yard, in a little cleft of soil near the lawn between two mounds of grassy Armeria (thrift). We would surprise each other there — he sunning on the warm grass, I crawling along on my kneepads pulling weeds. We met there perhaps three times, he slipping away before I had a chance to study him carefully, a whisper of glossy striped darkness disappearing under the heather.

But yesterday, having forgotten about him again, I was surprised instead by a pale ghost-snake on the dark soil. A remnant. A gift. A neat trick if you can do it.

I glance at yesterday’s post… “slide through the inner turmoil” …and see the snake’s neat instruction: this is how it’s done.

green…

The morning still and bright, every inch of garden clotted with green.

She fidgeted, impatient, her mind anywhere but on this work of writing, turning again and again to gaze out the window, but hardly seeing, as if the fecund green might inseminate her dozing mind, the bristly spruce tips tickle her imagination.

dawning…

It is so spring.

The sun creeps over the backyard fence to set the crabapple tree alight, a blaze of bright magenta.
The spruce is fringed with tiny tongues of green. Lilacs fatten in the neighbors’ yards. Robins warble at first light. Spiders cast their hungry nets.

A dog lays on her back on the grass, legs in the air, and twists back and forth.

Minted…

The NaPoWriMo prompt for today is to write (or, in this case, find) a color poem.

found poem by j.i. kleinberg

sky play…

Yesterday afternoon, in between storms, scraps of blue showing through slashes in the clouds, I decided to run some errands. In my car, I got no farther than the driveway before my attention was drawn to a trio of crows overhead. They were playing — chasing, diving, tumbling and turning — without sound or direction.

When something fell from the grasp of one of the birds, I saw that there was a toy involved in the play: a peanut, I think. It dropped perhaps a foot before the crow grabbed it out of the air, banked and swooped away, the other two in pursuit.

Over the course of about five minutes, as I craned my neck to watch them stitch and flap their way across the sky, the crow in possession passed that peanut from claw to beak to claw again, the switch noticeable only in the slight redrawing of his silhouette against the cloud-strewn sky.
—–
nutty crow

measuring spring…

You must get tired of hearing about the plums, she said. There was no reply. I could, instead, tell you about how green knots split into tight fists of velvet-wallpaper red on the first rhododendron. Or describe the sturdy rust-washed stalks of the peonies, now half a foot tall. Over here, the daffodils, bent and discouraged by the wind, have nonetheless begun to lift their cheery faces. And the daphne, a sensitive and fussy plant, I was told, is thriving, glossy and covered with modest pale green flowers that should smell like the front door of heaven, but have absolutely no scent at all.

But it’s the plums that greet me when I lift the blinds each morning; they are the yardstick by which I measure the retreat of winter, the advance of spring. The picture that recalls the juicy purple fruit of summer. Will the blossoms, now fading and shriveling, hold on through another night and day of gusts and rain and charcoal clouds, bees dozing wherever it is that bees doze? Or will I have to buzz around the blooms myself to nudge and urge and pollinate?

White petals freckle the ground between green spikes of iris. I stoop beneath low-slung branches and whisper to the plums, hang on, hang on.

Saturday begins…

Luminous morning…sparkle of frost, glowing slashes of contrails are filled with dawn’s brilliance even before the sun has crept above the hilltops.

morning light…

Raise the blinds and
morning pours in low,
snagging itself
on pools of dust,
on spider silk,
smudges, smears,
winter windows,
flecks of food
— spray of salt, an oat —
a boot print on
the glossy floor.
Welcome, spring.
Welcome spring
cleaning.

wedding dress…

through howling dark
and gnashing gale
the plum tree
— bride —
clings to her skirts

in morning’s light
her veil tossed
her slippers slopped
with mud and weeds
she twirls her gown
to lure her flighty
groom
— the bees.

on the cusp of daffodils…

This morning, my mind is a gray blank, reflecting the sky. But outside, the birds dash and dart, swoop in and out of the crabapple tree in chittering pairs — chickadees, juncos, bushtits. Fat robins forage in the sodden beds. A woodpecker, perhaps a block away, offers urgent bursts of percussion. A deep hoof print, a torn tulip leaf, a bulb yanked from the ground, attest to the night’s visitors.

There is an eagerness, a readiness, but also a holding — the purple crocus clenched tight against the assault of rain — as if the plums, the daffodils, the apples, the bees, have slowed to await the luscious warmth of a clear, dry day.

Or maybe that’s just me…

the increments of plums…

In my memory, the plum tree buds one day and blasts into bloom another. But no. These trees are wise to the moods of late winter, the frolics of wily spring.

When frost still coats the soil, the first sign of budding bulges from the twigs, hardly more than a fattening. Then these bumps separate from the wood, assume a roundness, tiny as mustard seeds.

Gradually, imperceptibly, over many weeks, they expand, and twigs freshen, the color of the tree taking on a pale green that plumps and lightens with each passing day.

Now, in the drenched and windblown not-yet-spring, green buds have cracked to show the white petals still knotted beneath, and two or three, their throats filled with rain, have spread their white skirts, released their delicate must, to invite the yet-slumbering bees.

Dear gray,

You look gorgeous on fox, rabbit, poodle, dove. You’re handsome in granite and pearls and hair. Your silvers and charcoals and smokes and taupes enliven artwork, stones, mountainsides, elephants, whales. Your ashen coat fits the mouse, the old mare.

But listen, gray: it’s March. Your leaden weight bears down from cindery skies. Your dusty fog obscures the trees. Your battleship clouds scrape along the hilltops. Day after day. After day.

Step aside, gray. Please. You’ve had your months. Don’t be greedy. Make a little room for blue. For pink and peach, for purple. Let the first verdant burst of spring feel the sun as it muscles up from the saturated earth and the wintered twig.

Take a break, gray. Remember the old adage about absence? Don’t abandon us altogether. Just give color a chance. Please.

Respectfully, desperately,
jik
—–
grayscale