Mulberry Trees Taken by Storm in Winter

Startled

By a tremendous

Wave of starlings alighting,

Assuming shimmering myriad

Leaf-like shapes clinging to branches

Unnoticed because they were bare—

Now a thrumming insistence

Too wondrous to bear.

Paradise Lost in the Onslaught

Those halcyon days of yore?

So old they now seem

To have never existed before.

"One of Those Things"

I know they are nothing

Out of the ordinary,

Uninspired words we find

Ourselves saying when

Something common-

Place happens, which

Happens so often,

So why

Are we at a loss

When they no longer appear?

Advent of Spring

blue wooden

gate creaking

open to a green

Village Hearth in the Dead of Winter

1.

Home was where

The few dying

Embers of the olive

Were always warm

Enough to warm

The cold, weathered insoles

Of our shoes

Before we trudged

Off to school.

2.

School was where

The teacher kept warm

By thrashing us

With an olive stick

When the answers

To his questions

Were not what he wanted

To hear.

3.

The first flowers caught

Rearing their heads

Through the snow

Were always wild

Yellow crocuses in early,

Early spring.