MARCH 1, 2001

The sun is a big old fat ball
of orange cat. The sky is so

blue the snow is blue too.
I am witness to morning,

I mark Fairwater's hours
like a monk at prayer.

Yet this is no cloister. This
is not desert. Morning gleams

upon the fields like a wink
of love. I sing praise. I pray.

*

MARCH 2, 2001

Some blue shell of
sky shows through. Frost

on the windshield
like sunburn. Crows

pretend it's spring
already. Geese

crease the sky.
I go to work,

I don't want to.
"Screw duty," I say.

"Exhaustion is
not destiny."

*

MARCH 5, 2001

The season turns.
Nothing cracks.

The world is fine
when you're not

bleeding, the sun
an echo

everywhere - at
our red house,

at Stellmachers'
downtown, at

the cemetery,
the gravestones.

Clarity itself
shines in all

directions, like
a diamond

clear and blue
and perfect.

*

MARCH 6, 2001

Snow banks along
the highway, how
they've shrunk. Lines laid
on them by wind
all winter are
sharpened now. Yet
what can find its
edge? Where is snow?
is air? What is
sky? is land? What
is horizon?

What is morning
is morning,
is certain.

*

MARCH 7, 2001 (1)

When finally there's fire
in the robin's egg sky -

what I thought was owl calling
is only mourning dove.

*

MARCH 7, 2001 (2)

At the edge
of thaw
and freeze,

at the edge
of ice
and water,

at the edge
of matter
and liquid

and gas,
at the edge
of spring,

we endure,
indeed we do,
on promise.

*

MARCH 7, 2001 (3)

Do I pay too much attention,
waiting for a hawk that's not there?

What do I miss? The snow gleaming
with its million eyes, crows pecking

at gravel, the remaining drifts -
water waiting to water some

plants that haven't been planted yet.

*

MARCH 8, 2001 (1)

A dust of
snow last night.

Blue sky this
morning. Come

and go. Up
and down. Back

and forth. Cer-

tainty. Un-
certainty.

Those raucous,
distant cries -

sandhill cranes,
returning?

*

MARCH 8, 2001 (2)

A sour sky far off
where the wind blows in from.
Snow across these prairies -

some stays on the road.
some runs for Michigan.

*

MARCH 9, 2001 (1)

The clouds seem smug yet
a small wind would rip

the sky. Nothing is
certain except that

nothing is certain.
I love that about

these mornings - you don't
know what you'll get

exactly, but you
know for sure you're

going to get it.

*

MARCH 9, 2001 (2)
-- For Phyllis Walsh, whose line I borrow

"Like a dream on waking" -
yesterday's snow is gone.
The clouds disagree on
everything. Blue sky shows
already. The sun stitches
one minute to the next.
Far off, corn stubble.
Nearby, manure in the snowy fields.
All the naked trees say Ah.
All these flashes of the world -

they're much
too much.

I'm a
lunatic,

admit it,
leaping

from
moment

to moment,
raving.

*

MARCH 12, 2001

Ice on the windshield,
a thin skin of it

in the street. March growls.
A crow in grey sky

flying as if he
misses his lover.

Practical, the geese,
Canadians, they

feed and gabble. I
go to work. I go

directly to work,
I do not pass go,

I do not collect
two hundred dollars.

*

MARCH 13, 2001 (1)

These tracks of birds
in the thin snow

of our driveway -
a secret code

I cannot break.
There is snow, too,

on the windshield,
fine and powdery.

The sky goes more
grey each minute.

Perhaps the day
makes up its mind?

Then the sun breaks
through, bright enough

to burn my eyes
like salt in them.

*

MARCH 13, 2001 (2)

A lone goose
cuts the sky.
Five crows.

Now the sun,
then there's cloud.

Who's invited,
who's not?

There's nothing
so graceful
as the hawk.

*

MARCH 14, 2001

Yesterday's snow
is not the least
memory now.

Here and there
the sky is smudged.
We are such

a solemn lot.
The whooo-whooo
of mourning dove,

as if spring is
come and the birds
find love.

Sandhill cranes
in the distance,
they call and cough.

You almost see it -
winter on its forced
march, retreating.

*

MARCH 15, 2001 (1)

So foggy a morning in Fairwater
town. Before the sun came up, the haze swirled

like snow's breath shimmering beneath street lamps.
Now in full daylight the sky is nothing

more than a fading vagueness. How shall we
get to clarity? When spring comes tramp- tramp-

tramping in, we trust she will have her arms
full of it, the blue wilding newness.

*

MARCH 15, 2001 (2)

A sloppy wetness of wind. Geese
hack the sky. At the hawk's tree,

the grove is ghosted with hoarfrost.
Some things don't pretend: they are

what they are. The fog thickens. Go
on, say "the baby is ugly;"

say "it's a raw, ugly day."

*

MARCH 16, 2001

Again today, gun
metal grey, gloomy,

as if I'll never
get a girl to

kiss me. A softness.
The air nuzzling

like a dog's been bad
and wants forgiveness.

Trees move in some breeze.
Of course you can't

believe what you see -
you lie to yourself.

I lie to myself
every day, I know it

yet I try again
to tell the truth.

To tell the truth.
To tell the truth of

a fat starling and
the clump of silage.

To tell the truth of
the sparrow blasted

crosswise by wind.
To tell the truth of

dirty snow, of crows,
of doors that have closed.

To tell this truth -
I have this and more

than this and more than
I should ever need.

*

MARCH 19, 2001

The sun melts frost
off the tin roof
across West Street

from us, an old
brick building,
Fairwater brick.

This moment of
loveliness -
now, here, always.

There's something to
settling down.
You love a place,

you become the
place and the
place becomes you.

Now the land here
is covered
with snow's retreat,

with geese, with light
laid in union
with you, this place,

and a span of
eternity.
I see two crows -

they promise me
nothing, promise
me everything.

I am home here.
How could it be
otherwise?

*

MARCH 20, 2001

Today is the first day of spring. Or is
that tomorrow? Let's say it's today - we've got
blue sky already, we've got birds singing

their crazy heads off despite the thick frost
on the windshield, despite the bright whiteness
of ice on the pond. And these, in this place -

the suddenness of an old man's face; a crow
in the hawk's tree, acting like he owns it;
blackbirds that pock the sky. The sky recovers.

*

MARCH 21, 2001 (1)

That old lady who lives
just north of Fairwater,

she's full of piss and
vinegar. O, I hope

I'm full of it too,
when I'm her age. She's

eighty-nine. There's beauty
in her kind of toughness,

like white oak you know that's just not going to split.

*

MARCH 21, 2001 (2)

Haze of grey
sky above us.

All the birds
are in love. Or

else they talk
some good romance.

"Wheet-wheet-wheet-
twee-ah-twee-ah."

Fat ol' robin
fluffs his breast.

A female
cardinal but

not her mate.
Sparrows, starlings,

chickadees.
No wind. Snowbanks

like icebergs on
an otherwise

empty sea.
Sometimes we want

tomorrow,
yet we won't let

go today.

*

MARCH 22, 2001

Street lights reveal a heaviness of fog at
4:00 a.m. The air at dawn is thick still.
Soon the sun burns off the haze above us.
Now we have blue sky, now we've got hoarfrost.
Two squirrels chase each other, maybe they
are playing, maybe they are not. Sometimes
it's not wise to advise yourself, yet we
don't ever listen to anyone else.

Out in the country you still can't see the
distance for the haze. Shadow is the soul
of longing. All these shadows, how we ache.
Where sunlight touches the ditch, steam rises.
It's like smoke, it's like a small flame that burns
the grass, it's like the fired imagination.

*

MARCH 23, 2001

A month ago would I have
believed the heaps of snow
could be gone by now? They

are. Would I have believed
our silver maples could
be so red already

with desire for spring? Full
and swollen, the tips of
their branches hang down. Frost

burns off whatever
the sun looks on. Snow and
ice clog up the pond, yet

the Grand River runs through
it. No wind in the flag
at the cemetery.

The dead are mostly quiet
today. Not one of them
complains. Some days their talk

goes on and on like wind,
like the endless water
wending its way to sea.

*

MARCH 26, 2001 (1)

A mere dust of snow
last night. This morning,

blue sky like a great
bell ringing. Every

day is new; every
day is a re-tread

tire rolling on new
ground; every day is

the same old ground with
a river running

through; every day new
water fills the same,

the same old river.

*

MARCH 26 (2)

Crows are more horizontal birds than hawks.

Hawks
are
stern
and
righteous.

Are crows more comfortable with the shift
of balance, a change of fortune, the rise

and
fall
of
things?

*

MARCH 27, 2001

Clouds are ripped to show
some blue, not much. Snow

in the shadows still.
What bitterness will

chill the air? Where might
the shivering light

stray? Who makes the world
who would break the world?

*

MARCH 28, 2001

Everything stays between here and there, blue
and grey. It wants to be bitter; sweetness
is not far off. Spring is coming; birds are
in love or soon will be. We can't go back-

wards; we can't go back. Nature's way - to fall
apart, to decompose, to come undone,
the basic stuff, elemental. Other-
wise we would see what's old come back as new -

fall falling to summer; summer to spring;
and spring to the emptiness of winter,
not a green promise. And I'd know even
less today than what I knew yesterday.

*

MARCH 29, 2001

"Honey," I said "you want to stay
sleeping. Snow." The season turned back.

"This is Wisconsin," we always
say, as if we refuse to be

surprised. "Ah, yes, Wisconsin."
The birds have shut up and the old

haggard sun climbs into morning's
cupboard to hide. The surface of

water on the pond's far side
is speckled like trout. A sulky

wind moves like the downcast boy who
didn't make first team. Metaphor

can take you places you'd never
go otherwise. So, spring, come soon -

I'll break out the wine, the bread;
I'll wake my tired woman.

*

MARCH 30, 2001

Such fog is the other side of
yesterday. What could have been snow
is almost rain, grey and heavy.
We will not step outside ourselves.
We choose to stay confined, as if
these walls of fog imprison us.
Familiar pain is more comfortable
than fear. Each day should be
a gambler's choice. The less you bet,
the more you lose when you win.
We think it's better to suffer
this than to risk suffering more.
O, how we persist in dragging
all history along behind us.