50+ Lifestyles

Max’s Musings

By Max Molleston

We are all in April, the Princess of Spring, adventurous or quiet, attending her beds and branches as the season expresses earliest wishes. It seems to be the most hopeful time of all our seasons. Some of us set aside time needed to think about the “outsides” of the places we call home. Have we determined new shrubs for new places? Sort of a risk. Do it ourselves or hire it done? Just how far are you in? Are these ideas going to live this year? Any different thoughts on potted plant displays, and where? Blooming wonders in just the right places show your skills and might get you a compliment or two.

Here is how choice of words work in creating a poem. Some years back I led a group named The Quint City Poets. Often we challenged our skills on the spot, at our meeting. The words here were actually put forth by your writer. I chose these: triple, turtle, myrtle, space, lace and place. (right away you rhymers see space, lace, and place, and the initial three.) You are welcome to stop here and create your poem of these six words. I ended up with six lines.

Glorious Work

Our place alone, space for us.
Our lawn with Myrtle and Marigolds,
The bronzed turtle on the pond,
Water in triple trickles running over
a lace of pebbles and sharp stones .
It is work to keep us here, but it works.

The six words used inside a poem of six lines was an exercise, of course. My pride labels the effort worth while. As a friend of mine and I were discussing nothing and more over coffee, his memories of trips to Florida for visits with family brought estate or smaller “ponds” to the surface. Whether ponderous or not, the ponds were likely to host various fish life. All might be endangered. Coastal flyers, Egrets and Heron, and others could easily spot the swimmers and swoop to their “food.” The fish “foes” might pick a pond clean.

Who am I to doubt his comments, as a lifetime resident of fly-over country.

The Poet Janet Lewis lived nearly a century, dying in 1998. Among her poetry I bring back a couple brief reflections on gardens.

Garden Note I, Los Altos

A Spring storm shakes the old peach tree,
Making the branches glisten,
Scattering the dark petals,
While the cherry, Young as any bride,
Hold fast her white clusters.
Garden Note II , March

Nothing more hesitant
Than the way the poplar seedlings take
Nothing more certain than the intention
Behind their wanderings. They float
Over the grass , over the roof , and beyond
My garden , beyond this day ,
As I saw them years ago,
And on this same ground,
Under this same tree .

In Lewis’s Garden Note I “making the branches glisten”, I remembered some language of the poem Birches, by Robert Frost. He likes to blame young lads with some know how, swinging on the birches, bending them. His poem here, just four of its lines.

I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bring them down to stay
As ice storms do. Often you have seen them,
Loaded with ice, a sunny winter morning,
After a rain.

Frost’s poem works on. The winds move the branches and the breakup of the ice on the branches is a memorable piece of imagination, unless you have witnessed. We enjoyed discovering wanderings for April. Grab the rake, the hoe and shovel, and your work can begin. Join me here in June. We can expect Nature and our own plans to begin to shine.