Hope Is the Thing With Buds

It is fine that Emily Dickinson believed
that hope is the thing with feathers.

I choose the broken branches that fell
during the winter ice storm in January

and whose buds opened one April afternoon.

The Spring Rain in Japan

is light and as short as haiku.
When the rain stops, the blossoms fall
in artistic patterns on the ladies’ umbrellas
through air, rain and cherry blossom scented.
Closing my eyes, I record the image.

Kawase Hasui, Spring Rain in Ueno Park, 1930

Seven Thousand Red Leaves

The cloudy afternoon through the red maple –
painted leaves, inked branches, white paper sky.
This could be a haiku about spring
here seven thousand miles away from Osaka
where every line counts as seven beats.

At first, it’s not much of a river

             for Remy

This morning begins silently with little light –

like a river at its mountain source,

just a pool of water flowing downhill –

gathering its kind in increasing potential energy.

A raindrop, seed, a newborn in spring.

 

 

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The title of this poem is an aphorism by William Stafford.  more info

Relativity

Again I watch the sun rise east
climbing over me, stationary in my home,
and setting, as always, to the west.
If at the North or South Poles,
that’s not so. No East. No West.

 

Spring came early this year – a day
early astronomically speaking, but weeks earlier relatively,
based on my garden’s buds and shoots.
Perhaps not North of me and not
the Southern Hemisphere, where spring is autumn.

 

It’s a month of Saturdays in retirement.
Or perhaps every day is now Wednesday,
since weekend days still seem somehow special
hanging off my calendar in another color.
Are there still 24 hours each day?

 

Moon in the east this week is,

a thinning crescent as it slowly sweeps
past four bright morning planets – first Jupiter
then Mars, Saturn and Mercury, the crescent
points at them this morning of equinox.
Golden Saturn invisible to me – but there.