Dogwood blossoms bounce on twig ends
Like lace doilies doing a jig aboard a Charleston green joggling
Board
With the cold and old dead leaves
Bouncing up and down outside
The window still wears winter
While acorns dive bomb the roof like Japanese fighter
Pilots pelting the earth, releasing the heavy artillery on
Pearl Harbor’s ships
Floating unknowing, waiting for the unforeseen
All of this bouncing in the wind
Like a lost line from a Dylan ballad
As if some long awaited answer to a question asked in the 1960’s
Will come landing in the yard blowing in on the next flight
On the tail of the windswept tumbleweeds, dried leaves
Of remnant winter winds
The earth is stuck in between a gear shift
Winter to spring like a sixteen year old driving
Grinding, the transition is that of a novice
Grating from, to without well-oiled perfection
Shifting not smoothly from one to the other
No the cold wind still whirls like a flushed toilet bowl cyclone
As a frozen and confused squirrel with an acorn the size of a grapefruit
Stares his cold stare straight through the dirty window
And asks with his eyes
Is there room in the inn it is cold and wintry here in the yard
Blackbirds serenade a shrill birdsong, trilling as if gargling,
The sound a constant attempt at announcing spring
Their overhead conversations sound like an underwater melody
Muddled and muted
Like these early spring days
The tempting temperatures dip and dive
Then rise, like a flirty girl raising her skirt
Then dropping it down again just as we warmed
To the thought
Of Spring
It mocks a bit in its procrastinating
Giving us hot flashes, then cold
Like a menopausal woman
The earth drags along
Forgetting to turn the page to the next
Season
We are stuck in the inbetween
As the boinging sound on tinned roof clamors from raining down
Deadwood and nuts
Keeps syncopated rhythmic time to the symphony of songbirds
Serenading the hot pink garish blossoms of the Azalea bush
Excuse them, they no not what they do
Rushing the season and loudly overdressed
Their gay pink frocks
Make us cry out a little louder
Buried and weary
Worn out by winter’s wiley ways
Yet the dogwoods sway and swing keeping time to the earth’s broken timepiece
Tocking when it should be ticking
Ticking when we thought we had arrived a tocking
A cruel game of wait and see
What April Fools are we
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Joining tweetspeak poetry book club, Poemcrazy, by Susan G. Wooldridge
elizabeth w. marshall 