Another April National Poetry Month Poem

A few days after the anniversary of Columbine but I found a rough draft of a poem I started then. Here it is all prettied up.

COLUMBINE

Five minutes before first period
the faculty is alive with how
to present the deaths. Tick.
I read my students Stafford’s poem
about pushing a dead deer
into a river. Look for the good
in it. Why lie? I know nothing.
If I were home in my rented room
I’d dance like a Dervish
in the dismal kitchen
until I dropped like a dead doe
to the white tiles. Tick.
Cream walls, twenty pale kids
at cream-colored desks upon a sea-green
floor beneath a ceiling spangled
with billions of black holes
lined up like students
in varnished desks. Tick.
Leaving Building B I turn
toward the swings. Asphalt
out to the edge where a maple
squirms into a roiling sky,
tips turning red with spring,
life once more finding its way
through stiff veins. All the way
to my car I hold onto that one thing.

SOME HAIKU FOR EARTH DAY

WAR POEM

Small grey bird
pecking at crumbs
left by the roadside
bombs.

CRUEL APRIL

Too early this year
the wild violets open
into snow filled air.

DRIFT

A drift of pale pink
under the rhododendron –
earth welcoming dawn.

COMING TO TERMS

Every Spring morning
is the first and last morning
we will ever know.

Weekend Priorities

Shadow’s plans for the weekend are as above. Is that a smile?
Shimmer has his own pressing concerns: “My dish is empty. Explain yourself.”
I I, however, have a garden out beyond the deck awaiting my attention. There are seedlings that need to be nestled into their final ground. There are plants that are out of place and will be moved along to better positioning or the compost bin. And at the end of the day, a cup of hot black tea.