Showing posts with label Seasons Weather and Existential Change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Seasons Weather and Existential Change. Show all posts

Sunday, October 30, 2016

The Myth

You sniff the breeze and feel the difference,
Something new is coming on.

Green was your life,
it was around you and among you.

There were rumors of other colors, out there,
but you were sure they were a myth.

But now, what is this--

brilliant red leaves are appearing
out of your once green ones.

Neighbors all around have become
orange, brown, variegated gold.

Ecstatic color is waking up, and
you discover

you never even knew what color was 
until there was change.


©2015 Donna Jo Wallace

shared with Poets United / Poetry Pantry 326

Saturday, August 13, 2016

The Next Season

Faded brown leaves, dry as ash
crackle under my heels,
swirl anxiously around my ankles.

I look up at branches, clearly visible,
and wonder if my old maple misses her leaves,
feels a little exposed without them,

or, if just before she dropped them,
she worried about letting them go.

Do you wonder, old friend, at what rash thought
made you shed your lovely coat all at once;
do you wonder, sometimes,
if you should have saved a few back, just in case?

Now that birds are on the move, and flowers scent the breeze
do you worry, that your last leaf has come and gone,
that you have nothing left to give?

So I will bring my book, sit under your branches,
and wait a while, with you.


©2008 Donna Jo Wallace
shared with Poets United / Poetry Pantry #315

Sunday, July 31, 2016

Freckle-Face

Summer sun is bringing them on
like so many tomatoes on the vine.

These are my little spots,
the ones that follow my home after a day in the sun. 
I used to think of them as bits of beach that stay.

New constellations emerge, like stars in a country sky - 
some new and faint, some gaining confidence,
others always and steadfastly there.

Now and then I remember my freckle-faced first grade teacher,
the one who said she took hers off and night and put them on in the morning, 
who declared them as beauty marks and wore them with pride.

I never thought of them as a blemish
as, sadly, I've heard some women do. 
I never had a chance to. 

I don't think of them much at all until summer comes,
then they pepper me up, and say 
hello.

© 2016 Donna Jo Wallace
shared at Poetry United / Poetry Pantry #313

Monday, October 26, 2015

The Fires Fly

Long ago I discarded the idea
that the backsides of these little insects
contained the fire their names promised.

Still I let them delicately step
across my hands,
wonder at their magic,

respecting them
above all other six-legged creatures,
pets for an evening, then wild once again.

Now I look, caught by surprise
by the field of fireflies before me,
wild, uncatchable, and free.

sparks,
embers of the earth
wild, hot, and fragile
shooting, swirling, sailing

©2008 Donna Jo Wallace

Friday, October 23, 2015

Haiku

All life is absent
Storm clouds gather, loosen, and cry
Sheets of black rain fall


©2010 Donna Jo Wallace.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Winter

Silently it enters
a chill, a flake.
Lacy polka-dots appear in the sky,
gently they swirl, transform the outdoors
into a child’s play-toy
Snowmen, sledding, snow forts
for a while.

Today
frozen into this implacable mass
it does not play or tease.
It glares sternly and bites with Cold’s harsh teeth.
Ice over snow over ice
this white-hard rock
brings you down and pens you in.
Piles of snow in the driveway
grow faster than last year’s garden.

We frost-encrusted Iowans will not claim
to savor this white beauty (much)
but we wait for it always to come
and we wait for it always to leave
and we seek that thing in ourselves
that will outlast it
once again.

©2010 Donna Jo Wallace.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Haiku

Haiku

One small blue green sphere
Gasping for its own fresh air
Spins out of control

©2010 Donna Jo Wallace.