Blog: March Heat

New Poems In Unlikely Setting

[If poetry appeals - join us at D&R Greenway on April 12 at 5:30, for our  Poets of Preservation Reception and Reading of juried water poems.  rsvp@drgreenway.org to register. Come early to walk Scott and Hella McVay Poetry Trail...   www.drgreenway.org for further information/directions]

My Princeton Patch readers know I've been spending a good deal of time at physical therapy, on the heels (pun intended) of that November hip replacement. 

Who would've 'thunk it' that poems would come in that bizarre setting.  But arrive they do. I'll share the newest with you -- triggered not only by March heat, but also by my having recovered to the point that I'm cleared to kayak in April...

MARCH HEAT

tonight I am distracted

from interminable exercises

by a plethora of blossoms

filling every window

of physical therapy’s temple

high priests preside

as dignity is sacrificed

in the worship of fitness

some vaguely recall

gazing

through this forest of arched legs

and branching arms

as snow slid sideways

smothering panes

in that rare whiteness

my physical therapist admitted

"I am a connoisseur of snowflakes"

…precious few flakes in 2012

not enough for practice

and practically nobody remembers snow

tomorrow or the next

bloom will become blizzard

swooning with March heat

inscribing too-green grass

with drifts of lost promise

                                                            CAROLYN FOOTE EDELMANN

                                                            March, 2012

JUXTAPOSITIONS

in this room full of premature blossoms

I perform final exercises

on the heels of ‘total hip replacement’

March sun suffuses whiteness

that one day should be pears

as I am handed stretching bands,

assorted weights, one bolster

and a ball

here, serious playthings promise

flexibility, stamina, gait

-- and  possibly-- kayaking

relentlessness conspires

with absolute lack of privacy

throughout my fitness attempts

outside, blossoms yearn

for pollinators’ essential arrivals

inside, --completing yet another

“two sets of thirty”--

I perceive flowery profusion

through a tall bright curve

of ivory spinal column

vertebrae and blossoms

my new reality

                                                                        CAROLYN FOOTE EDELMANN

                                                                        March, 2012