Homo aspirāns
It seems our common fate:
to draw our last breath
on an inconvenient date
hoping for better than death.
Leslie Schultz
Dear Readers, This morning, I inadvertently sent the day’s poem out under tomorrow’s date. Hence, two poems in one day, to catch up with deadlines properly labeled. Tomorrow, perhaps, an “April 9, Part II” — or perhaps we’ll observe a day of silence. Time will tell! Leslie
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Skaters: “Lara’s Theme”
They speed, glide, and slow, pirouetting twice,
then pause atop the tiny frozen lake.
Love calls across glare mirrors and thin ice.
I was dreaming but I hear something nice.
Grandma’s new music box calls me awake.
Two tiny skaters glide, then twirl twice
as if they’re dodging tin cans and tossed rice.
My breath clouds the mirror; it doesn’t break.
Love keeps them spinning on the thinnest ice.
Grandma explains: a magnetic device
works under the surface, for goodness sake.
The toy skaters glide, pirouetting twice.
Their frozen figures describe a paradise,
but widows know the flowing of heartache.
Love hurls men and women onto thin ice.
Grandma will remarry; once, twice, thrice.
She understands the motions it will take.
Lovers glide, then slow, pirouetting twice.
Love drowns their molten hearts in melting ice.
Leslie Schultz
This villanelle is based, as they say, on a true story, sparked by memories of my widowed grandmother, her collection of music boxes, and her several remarriages, all ending unhappily. Here she is, pictured in a hopeful moment, in 1969 (younger than I am now), stepping into her first remarriage.
Thanks for your readerly attention this week! Leslie
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Unexpected Leopards
Part of the trouble is that I’ve never properly understood that some disasters accumulate, that they don’t all land like a child out of an apple tree. Janet Burroway, American writer, b. 1937
Each day, so much goes right.
I find my keys, there is ample
hot water and food, the neighbors smile.
Still, you just never know. Things
can go wrong more ways than leopards
have spots. Trouble can crouch
and spring from shadows you don’t
even see. Last year, one by one, four people
dear to me died. Though
they were elderly, each death
knocked me flat. Inside me, right now,
is a singing joy. It is gigantic,
like a huge blue rooster, ready
to break open a new dawn. And yet,
something else could be waiting
overhead, breathing with quiet
malevolence. Really, how
can we ever know?
Leslie Schultz
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Hometown Views
Here we don’t find the same enchantment
concocted by smeary Venetian canals
daubed with painterly reflections.
I can be weary of prairie, especially
in winter, with early spring just
another of winter’s subtly woven hues.
Yet under the bleary lamplight—sunlight—
Northfield can sometimes yield
a veld of vivid pastels, a welter of watercolor.
Leslie Schultz
Paper Birch Near Mill
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Hope to see you tomorrow! Leslie
Bear in Mind: Letter from Minnesota to Our Daughter in Moscow
The piano, with its diurnal keys,
waits for your touch. Over there, where you are,
night is not. Not now. Night is here to tease
us by promising this faint North Star
can be trusted to lead you home in June.
You are dazzled by onion domes, by rare
juxtapositions of bells. Here, a loon
bobs and dives on the river, while you share
potatoes and fish stew with new classmates,
learn traditions of the old Russian bards,
new street fashions, how a smile equivocates,
enhanced or diminished by spoken words.
As the earth turns–each day a little longer–
we know that you–away–grow wiser and stronger.
Leslie Schultz
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Hope to see you again in April! Leslie