New York Pitch Conference Reviews, Algonkian Writer Conferences, and Poetry Forums

In the Year of the Coronavirus I Turn to My Garden for Solace


A black capped chickadee
lands on my patio table
eager to check out anything new,
even my cell phone
where she taps away with her bill.
An urgent text?

Then quicker than a wing beat
she is off!

My collie Nastasia sniffs
a compost bin, probes
a gopher hole, her head
vanishing!

A hummingbird flashes
her ruby collar.

I lose myself
in a blue hibiscus,
in the froth
of flowering pear trees.

Is there anything better
than orange orbs
dangling
from branches—or the taste
of sweet and tangy persimmons

or the way my memory clings
to the radiant cloud
of last month’s flowering
Japanese Crabapple?

How it hurts imagining my life short
as a luna moth's,
a brief fluttering
in the chest.

revised