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Below zero.
The chimney smoke is shaped
just so.
Ever notice how vividly sculpted the smoke is on
a very cold day? Our breath, too, moves from misty toward
monumental.
L.A. winter--palms, roses...
where my parents lie
it snows.
I was in L.A. when I wrote this, my parents buried
in Minnesota.
Icy rain outside.
Warmest thanks to whoever
invented inside.
The sky blinding blue,
Trees still snow, dropping
Bright wet pliffs and pluffs.
Each branch limned with snow,
familiar text in a new
startling font.
December sunset,
tangible feathers of cloud
sweep the sky.
Winter morning -
like a blanket, aroma
of baking bread.
Child, mooning about
in wet snow, answers, blushing,
my third "Hi".
He was, perhaps, shy, or perhaps just enthralled
with the new, sticky, angel-welcoming snow.
Winter -
the trees are just
stick figures.
Bright day a-twinkle
with gust-stirred snowflakes -
the world feels admired!
Admiration, some say, projects upon the admired
a bright flitter, much like the brightness that falls
from the air when the sun gilds snowflakes.
Dirty white mountains
horizoned yesterday's curb,
today - gone.
Blizzard - this morning
the whole world has vanished
in a twinkling.
Even with shades down,
it's winter - crow racket,
carpet static.
I hope you've noticed how prickly the carpets get
with sparks held in ambush in winter's dry air.
No kids show up
to be paid to shovel snow.
Where are they - online?
Three feet of snow,
a whole geology -
where did it go?
Geology because it forms small hills and mountains,
because it is a landscape in itself, and because, until
it melts, there are layers of successive snowfalls with
different degrees of dirtiness and hardness.
Snow is dry rain.
My cheeks are getting the snow
all wet.
Snow and more snow.
The world must have been
a typo.
Another senryu pretending to be haiku - depending
upon a metaphor too quirky for haiku, because it yanks
attention to its cleverness and away from a world full
of snow that fills someone's vision. The metaphor refers
to "White-out", the white liquid used to cover
up typos in the days when people still used type-writers.
Much has died
in the quiet cold. This wind
sloughs it away.
Winter night.
In the broken trees, wind
sulks...sulks...sulks...
The headlights catch
eddies of sparkle -
tomorrow's slush.
Cold. Cheeks and ears sting -
pricked by the sharp points
of snowflakes?
February night -
yellow kitchen light - the last
in the world.
As I approach the house at night through snow drifts,
that kitchen light, the last one burning on the block,
takes on a cosmic warmth.
Paw pricks in new snow
point to a back yard I've
never seen – ours.
Snowing. Hot cider.
Folksinger sings every song
with the same sadness.
There's an extended version of this in the tanka
section.
Ice on every twig
and grass blade, each a throat
caroling "light".
January moths --
where is winter? Somehow
we'll have to pay.
Must be that Puritan Ethic: When it's warm in January,
I fear cataclysmic weather to come.
Floating Polka-dots...
vanish into a snow drift--
a Dalmatian.
Warm January --
the chill, like chili's bite,
is an aftertaste.
Midwinter: At last
arrives the snow! -- flustered,
late for Christmas.
Doesn't "flustered" sound like the look
of large soft flake clumps drifting down and swirling
thickly?
A kid toes ice
to hear it creak and see
a bubble squirm.
Cold, mostly gray, but
where broken, blue and gray
are sharp-edged.
Ice melting, each branch
trimmed with tiny water buds
filled with sunlight.
Every house, fence post,
mailbox wears a white hat. Snow
makes things heroic.
Really a senryu, depending as it does on word play:
the white hat (snow) worn by heroes in old cowboy movies.
Low winter sun slips
through holes in the lace snipped
out of sky by trees.
Hmmm -- made sense to me when I wrote it, but I'm
beginning to have my doubts...to which you are welcome.
Winter -- smoky haze
where trees unravel
into sky.
First car on new snow:
White ribbons of ornate
Navajo rug patterns.
Watching the stream,
network of black branches
etched on the retina.
From snow drifts,
snaggled tips of fence posts --
the whole world my yard.
The yard seems endless because so many boundaries
are buried in snow drifts.
Fences buried in snow,
but neighbors chat and smile,
meeting.
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