On the Cusp of Something
Pinocchio: [noticing the raft] A raft? That's it! We'll take the raft. And when the whale opens his mouth...
A tawdry and a dreary time
a dictator's dead and there is no snow
but rogue storms through the Rockies
winter in limbo.
A phony season pretending spring,
lovely, yet a peculiar thing
lulls the hot heads from its hint of threat
off-focus of the battle zone.
On the flanks, toboggans in the basement,
cooler heads worry so.
December drizzle and a war without end
with the daily drip, drip, drip, of the dead
to the three-thousandth repeat round number
and the New Year still in old throes;
the breaking Arctic ice shelf alarming the caring,
of the drowning polar bears;
"we're winning!" what global warming?" let's pretend.
Yet the real is not the reality show;
the denouement, not the drop of puppeteer prop-
a sham of a martyrdom-
and the moral tale Pinocchio's.
What's to fear you prefer? Nature's wrath? Nuclear holocaust?
Where's the Hero we hunger for, or the hope?
Who can save us the Future from the looming harms?
© Helga Ross 2007
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Reluctant Bride
The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them:
there ought to be as many for love. ~Margaret Atwood
Where's the snow that fell the year that fled-Where's the snow?
~Samuel Lover
Snow, a surprise to see, to like, at last!
The ground lovely white as a wedding gown,
the diaphanous veil drowning the brown,
she beyond beauty, the bride of forecast.
Rumour has it she has cold feet; is fast,
of late, feeling the heat of the count down;
so she shrugs the cold shoulders and fells the frown
as her suitor pleads, who's pleased that that's past.
But wait-signs are served along with her vows
of no forever; no death do us part;
meaning, all the seasons of her seasons.
Her feelings melting just as ours arouse,
like her spouse, wedded to her fickle heart,
whose need exceeds want: Love has its reasons.
© Helga Ross 2007
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A Wild Coexistence
A Canadian poet enjoys "hot, hazy, humid" lazy
summer days on Southern Ontario's suburban fringes:
A hammock, a hot day, a leaf adrift,
I love these warps and wefts of resistance
as breezes buffet and butterflies lift
alongside, alike, tacking existence;
enveloped, vaulted sky and grassy sea;
suspended, forest core to urban fringe.
A heron lands on quay, his bended tree;
nearby boggy pond, waterfowl still binge.
Echoes persist of habitat's pardon.
I hear the hum of traffic over hill,
phantom footfalls native to this garden,
caring to keep these legacies we kill;
content to cohabit woodlands and lawn,
wildness as vital as the next day's dawn.
© Helga Ross 2004, 2006
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Cardinal Designs
(In praise of Cardinalis cardinalis, the Northern Cardinal:)
Whistles and a flurry of crimson wings
signals he watches when she looks for him;
skyward, eyes, where he sways on cedar, sings,
flinging bursts of flattering hymns at whim.
How odd their courtship leads to this courtyard
the hen shares with the She who crafts alone
Romance poems; his own beguile the bard,
vermilion audacity proudly shown.
Purty, purty, purty, his tenor trill
thrills her vanity. Silly, she know none
but the feathered one fulfills-Her, who will?-
his mate for life-Her home by extension.
The Creator makes Books good as Covers:
Designs good-looking heroes, best lovers?
© Helga Ross 2004, 2006
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