By Elaine Boettcher
The cold and bitter winds of March
encased in ice the cherry blossoms
snapped the wildly waving limbs
of black and brittle trees,
hurled shingles from the trembling shed,
smack-crashed the kitchen window
Listen to its moans and groans,
its slams and bumps and bangs.
This is a Fury and a Rage
delivered to the earth
a warning to defilers of the land,
a punishment, some think.
Yet, still cling the crisp-ed oak leaves
to their silver speckled arms with
wringing brown and wrinkled hands.
“Not yet,” “not yet,” they cry,
like little ones protesting bedtime,
like older ones protesting death.
Now, as I watch the smudge pot clouds
relay run the vast sky course,
viewing in quiet fascination
switchbacks and flashes of their race
I long to updraft in March’s wind
to borrow power, to steal some strength.
Elaine Boettcher is a retired nursing professor who discovered writing poetry at the Poets Collective in Edgartown, when she returned to the Island to live out the best years of her life.
