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Dogwood – Poem of the Week

Are you tired of winter? I am.

We’re having crazy weather. It’s too warm, or too cold, and both we and the environment in general seem confused. It’s February and I see some trees starting to bud–which is perhaps a bit early for north-east Ohio. We have a dogwood tree in our yard, and it is confused about the seasons at the best of times. I wonder how it will react this year, given the erratic weather patterns.

So, as I said, we’re having crazy weather. Maybe you are, too. The odd weather is pretty widespread right now. We go from frigid to warm to freezing rain to fog. Or frozen fog.

Today–Sunday as I write this–it was 55 F when we got out of bed, 45 F when we left the house for church, 40 F when we got home. With 30 mile per hour winds that started Saturday night and will continue until Monday morning. We’ve had a bunch of power outages today. Power permitting, I’m posting this Sunday night, just in case Monday morning the situation is worse.

Dogwood tree in bloom
Dogwood, local park, 2017

The photo above is what a healthy dogwood in bloom ought to look like. It’s not how ours has ever looked. This one was photographed in a park near our home. Our dogwood only manages a few pathetic blooms, and never in May when the others around here bloom. Ours seems to be working against the better-late-than-never plan.

This week’s poem is a couple years old, so predates this year’s weird winter. Maybe our unusual weather will re-boot our dogwood’s sense of seasons, get it back on track. If March is more lamb than lion, maybe we have a shot at that. On behalf of our confused dogwood, I’m hopeful!

Dogwood

A hard winter. The dogwood
lazed all spring, bare arm
raising ulna and radius skyward.

July: a few leaves budded, proving
what lived. We pruned the excess.

By September, more buds but
flowers, not leaves. Late
and off-cycle, out of sync.

Then winter, and the moon’s eye
scrapes again over bark and twig.

If you enjoyed Dogwood

You’ll find more of my poems on this blog or in the collection Stars Crawl Out From Their Caves, which is available in both ebook and print.  

Missed a poem of the week? Links to prior weeks are on this page.

Published inMy PoemsPoem of the Week