poetpotter

Narcissus in my flowerbeds Here come the flowers, the springtime beauties, narcissus, daffodils, crocus—all signs of spring in our northern hemisphere. I can't remember a time when I didn't like spring. Plants poking their stems through the ground, the smell of an April wind, seeing the early spring flowers, and one of my favourites, the yearly trip to the bush on or about Mother's Day, Maybe the only thing I didn't like particularly was the mud that came with spring rains.  And yet, even the rain that made the mud, when there was enough of it, was refreshing. Imagine the rain coming down in huge drops.  I watched one day from inside my car while waiting in a parking lot to attend a meeting. The rain had come up quite quickly and I decided, rather than getting soaked to the skin before the meeting that I'd wait it out where I was.  I watched as the released moisture from the cloud danced all around me. Here's a poem of mine, inspired by the ra...

photo by C. Wilker Today it's snowing, just the light snowflakes borne by the wind. Tracks in my backyard make me think that some rabbits in the neighbourhood had quite a time in the crisp clean snow. We could ask, what if they had a party out there, but I think this was a smaller gathering or one rabbit frolicking around having fun, making his own tracks. Then I think of fields covered with snow and of corn stalk stubble showing through. When I was small, we always seemed to have a lake in one front field, a place that was lower than other areas, at least  until Dad hired people to lay tiles to drain the water from the surface and draw it away. What I remember is skating on the small body of frozen (not deep) water with corn stalks poking through at intervals. Dad brought a few straw bales out from the barn that we could sit on to put on our skates. We played hockey or just skated around the stubble. My memory in a poem: Frozen weeds were goalposts where...

Snow is piling up here in the northern hemisphere. We're getting winter cold and the precipitation to match. We're also getting closer to Christmas, a holiday that comes with faith-based understanding.  Throughout Advent, we wait, even as people in the time before Jesus was born, only they waited for decades, maybe even centuries for the promised one that God would send as Saviour. We wait while stores play Christmas tunes and carols, host Santa Claus and seduce us to buy, buy buy so that our loved ones will be excited on Christmas morning or Christmas Eve, whenever the holiday celebrations are held in our family. We give gifts too, and try to do it without the excess that strains our January and February budgets. Trying to stay within our means and remember that Christmas is about celebrating the Saviour of the world. More on that in a few days. Today, a poem about winter, published by Tower Poetry in its Winter Edition 2004-2005, Vol. 53 No. 2 Frozen Beauty ...