Awakening

Secret snows lulled the latent landscape,
A hush of ice, like frosted silver quartz,
Grew gently over the lake, sealing it safely,
While silent evergreens watched, and waited,
Because they knew, and they believed.
In a longer minute, warming winds whispered
Across this virginal canvas, painting strokes of green,
Smidges and smudges of tender shoots and blades,
Into a laced latticework, upon its expectant shores.
Because they knew, and they also believed.
At once, molten, crystal rivulets began to weave and weft,
Down slumbering white-capped peaks,
Tumbling and crashing into the mighty, mother Hudson.
The North Country awakened to its living Spring, afresh,
Because it knew, and always believed.

Read More Poems From The Adirondack Almanack HERE.

Nature, the Other, the Big Outside
In Memory of Howard Zahniser

Okay, now don’t look me square in the eye
but watch my ears wiggle — you see him there,
my father, your grandfather, a wise guy
(who was also a wise-guy), taught me to stare
at nothing hard enough to make my ears move.
It’s a great skill if like me you can’t dance
but still feel the need to strut some and groove
dressed not in Nordstrum slacks but Goodwill pants.

Okay, open that window there — yes, wide.
What’s out there is everything that’s not you.
Sure, nature—the other, the big outside,
what redeems you, where you go to renew
yourself, learn to listen, maybe make vows.
Smell that? Not fire and brimstone — balsam boughs.

Read More Poems From The Adirondack Almanack HERE.