"For a Friend Lying In Intensive Care Waiting for Her White Blood Cells to Rejuvenate After a Bone Marrow Transplant" by Barbara Crooker

"Woodland Spring" by Morna Rhys

                                                    The jonquils. They come back. They split the earth with
                                                              their green swords, bearing cups of light.
                                                    The forsythia comes back, spraying its thin whips with
                                                             blossom, one loud yellow shout.
                                                    The robins. They come back. They pull the sun on the
                                                              silver thread of their song.
                                                    The irises come back. They dance in the soft air in silken
                                                              gowns of midnight blue.
                                                    The lilacs come back. They trail their perfume like a scarf
                                                              of violet chiffon.
                                                    And the leaves come back, on every tree and bush, millions
                                                              and millions of small green hands applauding your return.

"For a Friend Lying in Intensive Care Waiting for Her White Blood Cells

to Rejuvenate After a Bone Marrow Transplant"

 by Barbara Crooker from Selected Poems. © Future Cycle Press, 2015.

"Monopoly: 1955" by Barbara Crooker

We start by fanning out the money, colored

like Necco wafers: pink, yellow, mint, gold.

From the first roll of the dice, differences widen:

the royal blues of Boardwalk and Park Place

look down their noses at the grapey immigrants

from Baltic and Mediterranean Avenues.

My grandparents coming from Italy in steerage

measured their gold in olive oil, not bank notes

and deeds. The man in the top hat and tuxedo

always holds the good cards. The rest of us

hope we can pay the Electric Company.

We know there is no such thing as Free Parking,

and Bank Errors are never in our favor.

In the background, Johnny Mathis croons

Chances Are from the cracked vinyl radio.

We played for hours, in those years

before television, on the Formica table,

while my mother coaxed a chicken,

cooking all day on the back burner, to multiply

itself into many meals. The fat rose to the surface,

a roiling ocean of molten gold.

"Monopoly: 1955" by Barbara Crooker from Gold. © Cascade Books, 2013.

"And Now it's October" by Barbara Crooker

"October Moonrise" by Glenn Rudderow

the golden hour of the clock of the year. Everything that can run

to fruit has already done so: round apples, oval plums, bottom-heavy

pears, black walnuts and hickory nuts annealed in their shells,

the woodchuck with his overcoat of fat. Flowers that were once bright

as a box of crayons are now seed heads and thistle down. All the feathery

grasses shine in the slanted light. It’s time to bring in the lawn chairs

and wind chimes, time to draw the drapes against the wind, time to hunker

down. Summer’s fruits are preserved in syrup, but nothing can stopper time.

No way to seal it in wax or amber; it slides though our hands like a rope

of silk. At night, the moon’s restless searchlight sweeps across the sky.

"And Now it's October" by Barbara Crooker from Small Rain. © Purple Flag Press, 2014. 

"Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself," by Barbara Crooker

like this morning, when the wild geese came squawking,
flapping their rusty hinges, and something about their trek
across the sky made me think about my life, the places
of brokenness, the places of sorrow, the places where grief
has strung me out to dry. And then the geese come calling,
the leader falling back when tired, another taking her place.
Hope is borne on wings. Look at the trees. They turn to gold
for a brief while, then lose it all each November.
Through the cold months, they stand, take the worst
weather has to offer. And still, they put out shy green leaves
come April, come May. The geese glide over the cornfields,
land on the pond with its sedges and reeds.
You do not have to be wise. Even a goose knows how to find
shelter, where the corn still lies in the stubble and dried stalks.
All we do is pass through here, the best way we can.
They stitch up the sky, and it is whole again.

"Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself," by Barbara Crooker, fromRadiance. © Word Press, 2005.