Spring as a Poem
Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam
and the deer and the antelope play
“Home on the Range”,
Dr. Brewster M. Higley, 1870’s
A fox in a box
amazed a human
astonished the fox.
A bird box, a fox box
a fox will adapt.
Spring is a coyote pup
free of its dank den
frolicking in warm sand
and popping into a poem.
Canvas gloves grasp phrases,
too lubricious for bare hands,
parse recalcitrant verbs
and sere hollyhock stalks.
Winter has composted a stew
a wild alchemic brew!
You hated the deer
that munched your lettuce
and inhaled peach blossoms.
Long-eared rodents!
You loved the deer,
lived in harmony
with flashing white tails
and soulful eyes.
The deer were ousted,
wanted and not wanted.
Another year of drought
puny snowpack,
crisped forests.
puddled streams and rivers.
Cyclists in psychedelic shades
ride to conquer Highway Fifteen
and Aldo Leopold students
brighten noontime roadsides.
Hands in the air and cheers
for the end of violence
toward women.
Voices of two hundred
mostly young people
in the Silco
in the world,
encircling the globe
for the safety of women
for the power of poetry.
Soul comprehends
I am thou,
the gift of the ordinary,
the plum blossom
that froze the day
of its advent
so brief is life
so precious our gift.
Spring Commemorative Poem
Bonnie Buckley Maldonado
Poet Laureate
Silver City and Grant County, NM
April 15, 2013
