March

Words with Friends

snowcus

As you may remember, I’ve finished a full-length poetry manuscript called Words with Friends. I post a request for words on Facebook, and folks contribute one each. I then use all the words in a single poem, one supplied word per line. Here’s a poem about this detestable month.¹

march

be still and you can feel the dirt beneath you crack
with promise of tender shoots and sturdy stems
just like every other march first in your memory
the way it comes in and perches itself on the edge
how it teases you with moist breath, dangles 
the songs of birds, parades these salacious days
then turns beastly cold like spring was all a lie.

herculean will brought you through the last 
(short on purpose, for who could suffer its black
embrace another day) and now the melted snow
has turned the ground to earthy sludge—o sweet
relief in one more stroke of this long-neglected bone
but you lie in defeat on the very ledge of ecstasy 
as cruel march stands upon her ceremony.

as dawn unwraps a sunrise from dark’s quietude
splaying gems behind a vast residential skyline 
my antique bones, again embrittled by the cold,
crack and pop, while sinew squeals uncle in the pitch
of a tenacious wind, and the day begins behind
a veil of viscous film. o march days! you betray me
with morning! you bombastic old-age maker.

your promises are hollow as shell and noisy
as the wheeze of catarrh; march is an infection
on humanity, on animality—just look outside:
buds burst, squirrels and rabbits fornicate like rabbits,
love-locked pigeons flap their wings on the deck railing.
every march moment is the stroke of twelve because this—
this is not serenity. This is frantic, voluptuous spring.

Thanks for reading.

1. salacious (Julie F), memory (Julie H), ceremony (Kathleen M), stroke (Beth S), herculean (Joe M), moist (Cybele P), ecstasy (Janet D), edge (Dave P), beastly (Alix S), black (Kim W), sludge (Jen W), promise (Teena W), embrace (Linda B), crack (Gabi H), serenity (Lynne F), bombastic (Peggy B), antique (Sandra R), uncle (Mindi S), shell (Sarah M), Infection (Maya D.), twelve (Susan M), humanity (Brigit Dd), love (Bruce A), fornicate (Derek B), quietude (Trisha G), viscous (Keith B), tenacious (Sam H) skyline (Beth S)