Snow Fog Trees

In the fog, the bare trees look
like they are lightly covered with snow.
This early morning walk in early April
is chilling cold reminding me that spring
is still more of a suggestion today.

Crystallizing

I only have to travel a few hours north of home to still find the early morning hours between midnight and sunrise to be more like winter than spring despite what the calendar tells me.

This morning, further north, but still spring,
there were ice crystals on the rocks.

It doesn’t take much change to make
things look different from the recent past.

The future – one or two seasons away?

The Winter of My Content

this mild winter, equinox a line away
on the wall calendar, hurrying snow flurries
that will not stay, friends and family
home safe and healthy on this day,
content in this moment, hopeful future moments.

Photo: Julia Volk

My poem’s title alludes to the line from Shakespeare’s Richard III, “Now is the winter of our discontent…” and I also think of how John Steinbeck used the line for the title of his The Winter of Our Discontent

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.