Due to some scheduling issues, I am shifting my weekly publication here to Fridays. I hope this will give my readers a little pre-weekend enjoyment as well!
Our house sits up overlooking the river valley, but to the north side is a sheer drop. At its base is the area where my horses are living. Especially in springtime I love to stand down there and look back up the slope through the wildflowers and desert shrubs.
This sonnet was a recent result.
Spring From the Canyon
Atop the slope the leaves are newly green;
The deepest shade is made by mistletoe
In unkempt bunches where the birds, unseen,
Take refuge from the hawks or spend the slow
Warm April midday hours. And just below
The burgeoning mesquite, a froth of bloom
Is swaying, trembling as the breezes blow
Half warm, half cool; the cloud-dimmed heaven’s spume
Flies, tipping all the flowers plume by plume,
Their colors like a ripened melon’s hue
Just when it's first cut open. All the room
Below is earth and old dry grass with new
Green tips invisible as yet. And spring’s
Bright soul is in these glimpses which she brings.
As a child I learned about the constellation Ursa Major, but mostly I knew it as “the Big Dipper” with its four-pointed cup and long handle. Sometimes I laugh to see a bit of cloud apparently rising from the “ladle”.
A puff of white cloud
steams from the mighty ladle's cup
dipped in the night sky.
There is a mandarin orange tree at the corner of the house. It is flowering now, the blossoms tucked into the lush foliage.
Along the night breeze
the sweet fragrance is floating,
but blooms are hidden.
After a very warm day, the winds aloft shifted to produce a trailing, drifting array of clouds and dust. They caught the low rays at sundown.
Golden
As evening rises,
Curtains of gold
Fall between heaven and earth:
Golden sunbeams,
Golden rain,
Golden dust
Blended together
Are trailing across the land.
Beyond them the sun departs;
Below them the light dims;
But upon them all the gold
Brilliance of day remains
And rests in their folds.