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JoAnn's Blog

Jump-Starting Spring

 

Happy Poetry Friday! I'm joining the #PoetryPals this month with a poem that includes a box. Mine holds seeds I collected over late summer and fall. Today was that one bright winter day mentioned in the poem, so I planted some little greenhouses, hoping to give the seeds a head start. The containers you see in the photo include everything listed in the poem and more. Now I'm crossing my fingers that we'll see lots of healthy sprouts in spring.

 

In case the poem above is hard to read, here it is again:

 

Jump-Starting Spring

 
I squirrel away autumn's treasures

in junk mail return envelopes

in a plastic spinach box in the cold garage:

turtleheads, touch-me-nots, penstemon,

columbine, cup plants, coneflowers (purple and prairie),

milkweed (common, swamp, and whorled).


One bright winter day,

at our picnic table-turned-lab bench,

I slice empty milk jugs to hinge open like hope chests,

pour in soil, plant seeds, sprinkle water,

add labels on stakes,

close and fasten,
and mark the outsides for good measure.


With groundless optimism,

I line up the jugs in the snow,

counting on nature and miracles.

 
© 2022 JoAnn Early Macken

 

 

Patricia Franz is hosting the Poetry Friday Roundup on her Reverie blog. Enjoy!

 

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What Do You See?

 

When I started thinking about this post, Southeastern Wisconsin was expecting an enormous blizzard. I saw predictions of 14-18" of snow, then 4-8," and then 1-3." As of Thursday evening, winds are howling and the temperature is dangerously low, but all we see here is a dusting of snow. We'll keep looking out the window.

 

No doubt, climate change is making weather forecasting more difficult. I feel sorry for meteorologists!

 

Be sure to check out all the Poetry Friday goodness at Live Your Poem with Irene Latham. Enjoy!

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