Recycled

Spring has sprung.
The same road
carves out
the dull path
you take through landscapes
daily.
Hidden
broken
things are
revealed in spring.
Chunks of asphalt
wind-strewn limbs.
In between
Not a Thru Street
(but a blur of rain)
and Easy St.
a man
checks his mail
sifts
through stark white
pieces
of unwanted
information
quickly calculates
what he’ll keep
what he’ll recycle.

From Hunger Mountain Journal: Congratulations also to runner-up Samantha Kolber of Montpelier, Vermont for “Jewel Tones,” a Pantoum (in which the second and fourth lines of each stanza become the first and third lines of the following stanza.)

“One of the many difficulties of writing in strict form is the pitfall of allowing the form of the poem to take over the content or the intention of the poet,” writes Matthew Dickman. “In “Jewel Tones” we see the opposite: A poet utilizing the form to carry the very human desire of the person writing it.”

Please check the website of Hunger Mountain Journal for my poem, Jewel Tones, to be published there soon: www.hungermtn.org