LET’S REDEFINE POWER

by Melanie Choukas-Bradley

This cherry blossom
Fluttering down three days from now
Holds more power than a billy club
 
This daffodil trumpeting spring
Heralds the quickening glory
 
You can crush you can kill
But you can’t do this
Unfurl sweetly to the sun

 
Melanie Choukas-Bradley is wandering among the cherry blossoms in Washington, DC. She is the author of several nature books, including City of Trees, A Year in Rock Creek Park, and Wild Walking. Many of her poems have been featured in The New Verse News and Writing in a Woman’s Voice.

CORONA

by Dale Wisely

Daffodil corona by Nick Harris

                           1

Crown of stars

Corona

The rarefied gaseous envelope
          of stars, our sun

Unfathomable halo,
           obscured by the relentless
           blaze of plasma, hydrogen, and helium

Only a perfect eclipse—
          miracle of astronomic alignment—
          permits us a glimpse
          of the pearly glow
          flaring out from the black disk
          of the superimposed moon

                          2

Crown of thorns

We take care not to confuse
          illness with death,
          or melancholy with mourning

Now our sickness and our death
          seem inseparable and
          we are blind to the distinction

And in these days
          depression and grief
          run along parallel lines
          and converge on the horizon

          under a crown of flames
          under a crown of glory


                   3

Crown of flowers

Corona

Shaped like a cup or a trumpet,
     the flared center of the common daffodil

amaryllis     paperwhite    triandrus      narcissus  

a perennial: it flowers, dies—

but the gardener does not say it dies,
          she says it “dies back”

It is time to sort our sickness from our death

Die back and grow again another year

Author’s Note: Some of the language in part 1 is from the Google dictionary entry for “corona.” Howie Good contributed the “crown of …” phrases.

Dale Wisely runs Ambidextrous Bloodhound which publishes four journals: Right Hand Pointing, One Sentence Poems, Unbroken, and Unlost.  His chapbook Seven Stars is out in April 2020.

WHITHER WEATHER #4: CAROLINA SNOW

by Earl J. Wilcox

Image source: Outdoor Devil

 
We prefer crocuses
peeping their purple
heads from beneath
the brown mulch
beside yellow, muted
daffodils gazing bravely
toward our February feel
of a bright winter sun.


Earl J. Wilcox writes about aging, baseball, literary icons, politics, and southern culture. His work appears in more than two dozen journals; he is a regular contributor to The New Verse News. More of Earl's poetry appears at his blog, Writing by Earl.