April 4th
After days of rain,
fog sets heavily between
orchard trees.
Niagara humidity clouds the ground.
Birds somehow fly between branches
even though the tree trunks are invisible;
and maybe they navigate twig tips
the way sailors navigate by stars;
or maybe they are acrobats
practiced in a school of soft-landing.
After days of rain fog glues
whiteness to the scenery.
Some daffodils patches are flowering
while others keep their yellows withdrawn.
A bird philosopher questions flower
choices,
their timing and their consequences.
Are the blooms supposed to be hidden,
and if so, were they hidden so that
some animal can approach them unseen?
After days of rain the bird philosopher
wonders about being taken by surprise by
fog.
If she spread her wings in the clear
evening,
plumage en regalia resplendent
and ready for morning,
only to wake up inside a cloudbank,
SUNRISE SPLENDOR
The sun set forth pink heralds,
a carpet of rose for Neptune’s
warm and winey, sunrise splendor.
Flat meadows stretched
a pale green mat
for sleepy, swishing
summer trees, sporting
green rippled shadows.
Salt seeped winds
breathed whip bracing breezes
across lazy floating docks.
Hammered in muffled submission,
he sauntered back
to his solitary, sleepy world
with sultry beads
of mid summer’s mists,
while birds chattered
in sleepy protest.
Terry Trowbridge
Bio: Pushcart Prize nominee, researcher
& farmer Terry Trowbridge’s poems are in Pennsylvania Literary Journal,
Masticadores USA, Ariel Chart, Poetry Pacific, Carousel, Lascaux Review,
Carmina, untethered, Progenitor, Miracle Monocle, Orbis, Pinhole, Big Windows,
Muleskinner, Brittle Star, Mathematical Intelligencer, Journal of Humanistic
Mathematics, New Note, Hearth and Coffin, Beatnik Cowboy, Delta Poetry Review,
Stick Figure, miniMAG, and 100+ more. His lit crit is in BeZine, Erato,
Amsterdam Review, Ariel, British Columbia Review, Hamilton Arts & Letters,
Episteme, Studies in Social Justice, Rampike, Seeds, and The /t3mz/ Review.
His Erdös number is 5. Terry is grateful to the Ontario Arts Council for
his first two writing grants.