I’ve written about my poetry “junk drawer” before, how it is sometimes possible to weld pieces together into something good (or good enough, anyway). But no matter how often those unlikely mashups occur, the junk drawer seems to stay as full as ever.
False Starts
Yesterday, snowdrops pearled the bulb bed
and daffodils raised up their green spears.
The maples were russet with tiny leaflets,
the lilacs freckled with yellow-green buds.
But now it’s gone back to black and white,
each bud and bloom hooded with snow, all
the limbs like chalk on a blackboard of cedar,
the grass a white map drawn in rabbit tracks.
This cruelest month, season of dashed hope,
is, ironically, Poetry Month. Think about it.
It’s as if someone could see in my desk drawer
all those promising openings now abandoned.
