"Moving Day" and Poems of Winter-Spring

Moving Day

It's Moving Day, and though
I have moved many times
in my restless years,
I can't recall a sadder day
than this one here.
But I manage to bottle my tears
as I reenact an old Irish gypsy ritual--

I go from room to room,
from window to window,
blessing the four corners
and the four walls and the dome,
thanking them for giving me shelter
for the time I called it "Home."

So good-bye, East Window,
I am going to miss you,
and your curtain of dawn
rising over the sky
as I yawned at my coffee
with the sleep still in my eye.

And good-bye, South Windows,
I will surely miss you too,
for your hours of day shine and
warm benediction
over these rooms humming
with everyday living.

And good-bye to you, West Window,
I will miss our cozy, late-afternoon
naps, and the kiss of your tilted sun
scattered through the blinds,
raking brilliantly over my bed quilts.

Good-bye, North Window,
where threadbare limbs
of the old elm tree
knock eerily at the glass,
a Pale Horse,
thundering hooves.
Twilight is passing.

---

A Night with Jack Frost

powdery pillows
and downy white sheets
drop over the rooftops
and drape the trees
like cotton candy
sugary streams
softly coated in silence
and star beams

---

February

Wrapped in snowy white
In the blankets that she loves
Winter lies on a warming death bed

While her days grow dim
They offer bittersweet good-byes
In the guise of

Pretty boxes stuffed with pretty
Chocolates
Cut roses and
Valentines

She sighs----

I am old and round in a heart-shaped world.

---

Ash Wednesday

Today the snow dissolved,
and I saw my front yard
for the first time since Christmas.
And I whispered a welcome
to the squashed leaves
and the scattered sticks
and the stunned grass,
relics of a summer past.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust...

So I removed the cat from
the window ledge
and threw up the sash
and pulled down the screen.
Then I took a deep breath...

Ah, there it was!
The smell of earthworms
and mud all around,
rising as an incense offering
from the ground,
mingled with the dampness
of wood from wind-blown rain.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust...

Even if these signs did not abound,
and I had no calendar to remind me
that today was Ash Wednesday,
I would know spring was coming
because of the way the old cat
sits hourly at that window,
with her tail swinging
like a clock's pendulum.

And because when I open the window
her ears perk,
then her eyes fold softly,
then her tiny nose turns upward,
searching...
finding a long-forgotten friend
in her cat-sized memory.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust...

Last year's palms are burned
to ashes today,
the ashes of purification
and renewal.
Winter is done, the days
of preparation have come.
And I take it all in with the sigh
of an old soul,
while, with the old cat,
I wait at the window.