NEW COLLECTION

Yours is a poem waiting, like the narcissus in my yard, to bloom. 

Poor little buds are getting fooled.

I’m afraid they may blossom just in time for Thursday’s frost. 

And that, as you know, will end their short lives! 

So your beautiful start is about being fooled.

But for a moment the narcissus will flower,

brilliant enough to give all who look upon it

a fleeting taste of spring.  Yes!

Being fooled is the star attraction

— and your first stanza sings!  

I just returned from a long walk where I thought about you

and your poem and how much I enjoy hiking

through winter and, as winter becomes spring,

how easy it is to be fooled. 

How we are so easily given to promise.

I thought, too, about how we waste our very best years

trying to create meaning, how we hope

to balance the poet’s desire with the publisher’s standard

and end up mired in identifying orphan lines

abandoned at the bottom of a page

or kerning the space between characters

where meaning is often lost.  In fact, we are

the narcissus in the yard,

pushing up through the frozen earth.

When finally we do break through,

how little time we have!

We should be grateful, I suppose,

for resolute buds that manage against all odds

to come between ambition and discovery.

What is our calling, after all,

if not to be astonished?