poem – Page 5 – Roadkill Crossing

Clothesline haiku

clotheslinebybstambaugh — Laundry dries in the sun at an Amish home.

The sun shines brightly,
drying the pastel pallet
of Monday’s laundry.

Bruce Stambaugh
April 21, 2010

Plowing haiku

Row by row Belgians
pull the farmer and his plow
up and down the field.

Bruce Stambaugh
April 8, 2010

I wonder if there has ever been a poem
written about a bad back.
You know. The kind of chronic
back problem that causes enough
pain to prevent you from doing
the simplest of chores, like bending
over to pick up anything off the floor
or putting on your socks or pulling open
a sliding glass door, standard, everyday
stuff that we all take for granted.

Any of those movements or even
no movement for that matter causes
excruciating pain, the kind that is sharp,
stinging, unpredictably shooting down
your legs, first the left, numbing your
little toe while needles prickle your calf.
You adjust, then the right leg gets
the same treatment, and you adjust again,
walk like an old man, though you’re a long
way from collecting Social Security.

As I think further about it, anyone
with such severe pain likely couldn’t
sit long enough to write, print or type
such a poem. Logic would dictate that
such persistent pain would make him
delusional. Besides, even if he did,
the poor fellow would be considered too
wimpy, too self-engrossed, too brash
exuding too much self-pity to dare
write, much less publish such a ditty.

Has there ever been a poem
written about a bad back?
Probably not.

Bruce Stambaugh
March 24, 2010

St. Patrick’s Day Sunset

Could there have been a more generous sunset,
and on St. Patrick’s Day yet?

The perfectly clear, but not empty sky
silhouetted the naked tree line at the top
of the neighbor’s pasture field.
To the right, three does grazed
unaware of my distant spying.

Above them, as if it mattered, Venus shown
bright and true, and still higher above her
the first sliver of March’s eventual full moon
cradled the amazing earthshine tenderly, boldly,
for all who cared to see to see.

I saw. I cared, glad for St. Paddy’s celestial gift.
I don’t know about the deer though.

Bruce Stambaugh
March 17, 2010

Crocus haiku

Warm sunshine transforms

the jutting green shoots into

buttery beauty.

Bruce Stambaugh

March 17, 2010

Snow haiku

Snow cascading down,
Piny bows now burden-free,
Thanks to the bright sun.

Bruce Stambaugh

Feb. 6, 2010

Finding the fountain of youth

The historically maligned Ponce de Leon was actually
well ahead of his time. That’s what I concluded
after a wintertime visit to Florida.

I have three adorable grandchildren,
proof enough that I am no spring chicken.
I won’t mention the other obvious aging clues.
While on my tour of the Sunshine state,
visited so long ago by the Spanish explorer,
I stumbled upon exactly what he was looking for.

The fountain of youth really does exist.
No matter where I went, a store, a restaurant,
a theater, even the beach, the result was the same.
I was the youngest one in the crowd.
Where admission was charged, I received the youth rate,
while everyone else got the senior discount.

I discovered what the conquistador could not.
In Florida, 62 is the new 16.
Poor Ponce was at the right place, wrong time.

Bruce Stambaugh

Feb. 4, 2010

Winter treasures revealed

If it were up to me, I would keep the ground
covered in snow all winter. But, like most things in life,
such a thought is frivolous, out of my control,
like many of life’s circumstantial worries.

But the snow, nice as it is, can’t and
doesn’t last forever. Its demise is inevitable,
as predicable as a January thaw, which is exactly
what eliminated the precious white blanket.

Thing is, I am always amazed at the treasurers
revealed once the snow seeps away, quietly
unnoticed until the ugly winter ground holds
only remnant piles, shoveled or blown, of the previously
fluffy stuff left to torment us of what once was.
With the snowy splendor gone, the yard becomes
a discombobulated rummage sale, strewn with
natural and unnatural items, once sandwiched unseen
between the serene snow and the frozen earth.

Colonies of earthy molehills, a windblown
ribboned evergreen wreath, mourning dove feathers
plucked and neatly deposited in a near perfect
circle on the back porch, where the long-eared owl
or Cooper’s hawk had sat on the railing devouring it.
A lone Budweiser Light can (this is Amish country),
indiscriminately tossed from a speeding car under the guise
of the new moon, now peppered with the snow’s enemy,
grit cascaded by the dutiful snowplow on the adjacent roadway.

There’s more, much more. No need to continue.
By now, you have the depressing picture of the expansive
treasure trove exposed by the sad vanishing of the beloved snow.

Bruce Stambaugh
Jan. 20, 2010