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Featured Poem: To Be Trickster

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By Diane McDonough
Cape Cod Branch

 

I sit under red maple where leaves appear

gold. And the sky, gray, menacing

 

over all — even the holly and tiny purple aster

gracing edges where light never lasts.

 

Listen to birdsong, the blue jay’s complaints.

Squirrel, chipmunk snag seed, meander

 

here and there, fidgety, wary. I am

impatient, crave wisdom, want to be

 

like the oak, birch, black walnut, white pine,

standing stoic as war rages, and injustice,

 

as a pregnant mother’s blood pressure skyrockets,

her son’s premature birth, or death.

 

The trees know, and the crickets singing

their heady song at twilight know

 

some leaves, already vermillion red

litter the ground,

 

others make abstract art

of their chlorophyl deficiency —

 

granny apple green at the stem, smudge of orange-

orange here, and there, underneath all, warp and weft.

 

Clouds part, a patch of blue, a few stars blink

on and off.

 

I make five wishes … eighteen … twenty —

to be less porous,

 

to grow a shell, like a chestnut, or an acorn

shielding tenuous heartstrings,

 

to be trickster, uncaring, camouflaged

by green lichen who cling

 

to branches of trees in decline,

to be a hermit,

 

turn away, walk any lengthy, unworn path,

shelter under a maple

 

and the gray hovering,

until I learn how to let the sadness go.

 

11 comments

  1. Diane McDonough says:

    Many thanks you to all for your comments. It is heartwarming to know my words resonated with you.

  4. Sue Kunitz says:

    Wow! Wonderful! I made an instant connection with your poem. I am so glad you wrote and shared it!

  6. Claire Massey says:

    This tender expression makes me grateful that the poets among us don’t grow shells or become hermits, bravely choosing instead to share the heart’s sorrow with us.
    Claire Massey
    NLAPW Poetry Editor

  7. Karen Morris says:

    You surround your speaker with well selected and well described images of nature, and to express her desire to be able to deal with her sorrow as wishing “to grow a shell, like a chestnut, or an acorn” is very fine.

  8. Barb says:

    Beautiful poem. May God be with you in your loss and sorrow, Diane. Hopefully the writing process was as cathartic for you as it sometimes is for me.

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