In Winter
I board up myself,
panels of pine,
pining. This heartbreak.
This stale month without
speech or touch.
Though a few birds visit:
the finches, alighting
on deck chairs
draped in winter tarp.
They shuffle their wings,
snipe and chirp,
search my yard for food.
Then they leave, fly south.
I’m merely
landscape or backdrop
or faint memory
of some sorry
time. Some colder time.
writer's note
Felt I was exhausting my bag of poetry tricks (which is the one trick: enjambment) and decided to try something new: a poem as a series of "lunes." A lune, an American version of haiku, is a tercet with a 5/3/5 syllable structure. I really liked the sense of spareness and rhythm this created.
Thumbnail by Anna Atkins, "Spiraea aruncus (Tyrol)," 1853. Metropolitan Museum of Art collection.