living color

Shards of robin's eggshell on the sidewalk brick. That robin's egg blue, so called: a teal of bright sky with speckles sleeping. No remains of the egg. An incomplete mosaic. Shrapnel of life, as well as death. On Plum Street. By Solar. Remnants of rain. Beads on windshield. Hint of the hint of sun behind dusky cumulus. The suggestion of buds on branches. This day.

arc of light

Inform, tell, and remind yourself: March is around the corner. The temperature tide will turn. The trajectory projects warmth. More light. It is given. The arc of light shall not be denied. This polar grip will loosen. Believe it.

connect the verbal pointilist dots

Photos. You say you want images. It's a visual world, you declare. Graphics. Pix. Photos. Depictions. But images cannot capture it, this, that, the general and the specific, the particulars that add up; can't capture the tactile embrace or the fragrance; the sequence; can't delineate the processing poetically. We're talking about a Hallmark cliche of springtime with all of its dials turned to the right, with all of its digital reality off the map, into a new reality. Shores of redbud blossoms a breath-taking lavender but not lavender curled and cornered and drifted by breeze. Confetti of flowering crabapple petals, the leftovers of a drunken wedding, inebriated by perfect pitch, the exact moment a blossom has its moment in the sun or rain and showers, cascades to the ordinary sidewalk, the strewn road. Now, that's bloomsday allright!

Illuminati

Hard to believe it snowed more than 18 inches about 10 days ago. There's been a bright orange orb in the sky, an orange orb in Syracuse, home of the Orangemen. This orb, this disk, this disc, this dish, this ... this blinding splash of illumination shocks us with surprise, awakens us, even warms us by the afternoon.

"Here Comes the Orb."

Crocuses applaud in their subsnowpile slumber.

Finches sing arias.

Panhandlers shed shyness.

Litter emerges like atolls in the Pacific.

March Maudness.

shoots shots shoots

after the meridian

shoots spied at the base

of the beech

pale stalks

not even verdant

harbingers

just a bath of sun

and presto

lookie here

news of a shooting spree

shots fired

near Stuttgart

origin: stud garden, we are told

life lived

a few letters

transposed

reposed

all the difference

The Chronicles of Onan

Looks like Onan had some kind of field day. The ground at Burnet Park cleared and grubbed, scraped raw. Where the sumac and brush were. Stripped bare. But down toward the corner of Coleridge (yes, we also have Tennyson, Tompkins, Lowell, and other streets so eponymously named) evergreens were planted with stakes and wires to keep them straight. But back to Onan and his field day. Seed spread like a storm. A swirl of grass seed scattered over the freshened land. A feast of fecundity in waiting. Like insulation blown in. Teal paint. Snowdrift. Seeds. Seeds. Seeds spilled hurled thrown cast broad cast over the naked earth. The spilling of the seed as if in some kind of helter-skelter rampage, even splashed up against the bark of pines. Seed that does not look like seed but rather some cellular fabric dried snot greenish blue carpet. (Not nearly equaling the seminal production of unfettered youth. Ha! Nor arousing the Puritan guilt of finger-wagging dogmatists.) The seeds sleep. And wait. To whom will it matter if and when this protean blizzard ends up as dog-shit-riddled lawn, eye-catching landscape, dandelion heaven, emerald bedding, a fitting reverse tribute to Onan and his would-be offspring? (Seems this seedy syntax simpers and simmers as the wriggling ravings of an old man envious of tidal seminality.)

The Sounds of Spring

No, not the sounds of springs (plural). That's what you hear when the neighbors are doing the nasty on an old bed. And our house is so close, about two yards, let me tell you. It may be a long summer.

We bloggers tend to post photos as well as pictures via words. Images.

Sounds seem to take a back seat, if sounds can sit anywhere.

But I've heard the purple finches, the robins at morning and evening, was that a mockingbird, a mourning dove, the clarion chirp of Mr. Cardinal, a distant train, rain on the roof and on the new sidewalk (the jigsaw crack is fixed).

The sound of fingers on a MacBook keyboard.

Diurnal Emission

It's been said, but can't help being noticed.

The eruption of spring.

In one day going from bud to blossom.

The redbud's lavender on the spiny fingers of branch.

The shock of the new: walking in Burnet Park, along the curb, a dusting of lavenderpinkpurple confetti-ish snow. From what from where?

The crabapple a few hundred yards away, casually blizzarding, I guess.

Photos?

Never.

Could never capture this new upon new upon tawny stale breath of wintergray.

The syntax of spring. The grammar of glory (grammar and glamour are related etymologically).

Deo gratias.

Snapshot

On a hillock by the park's entrance, a three-iron shot from my back door, stands a cluster of pines, in the city confines, and at the foot of these pines a bed of needles burnished a burnt sienna, beckoning me to lie down in their autumnal comfort, their soft cushion with last year's fragrances and brittle repose, so yielding, so inviting.

But I keep walking.