Seasons

 

Hydrangeas boast bountiful blooms of blue.

Gardenias’ pungent pleasure is caught upon the heavy air,

suffused into the viscous heat.

Summer comes, and air conditioners hum.

I sweat tilling the earth

and pull up weeds determined to smother my tomatoes growing tall.

 

Fall’s first scarlet leaf spirals down onto the murky pond,

although creamy roses still crown their thorny stems.

A crisp breeze sweeps about and tickles the pink pinched upon my cheeks.

I draw my sweater 'round me as the sun sinks sucking away its warmth

and the gods paint the trees gold and red along the lilac skyline.

 

Gray dawn spills upon a silent shimmering world—

stilled and chilled by crystal glaze—prisms and diamond dust.

Quartz encrusted cedar boughs bend to graze the glassy grass.

Inside the fire is a fury licking at oak hewn only yesterday.

I reach to feel the embers that ease the complaints of well-worked bones.

 

Winter slipped away—

somewhere between that last log on the fire

and a short-sleeved T-shirt.

Suddenly one morning the azaleas were a fiery coral

and the dogwood was bedecked in holy white.

I never got my tulips planted,

maybe then I would have noticed the imminence of spring.

 

Life is but a second

and the seasons come so fast.

When did I become an old woman?