Furious Sky
While the king sun latterned another sector
attending to someone else’s shiny errand,
rain gods schemed with a melancholy sky
and nailed my roof without mercy,
caused it to groan under hammering
as with millions of ribbed nails.
Roof’s wailing jerked me from my
breakfast daze to peer through liquid windows.
Water gushed into gutters like swollen
lake water over a breached spillway.
They groused at the deluge.
It sluiced the pipes that popped
with engorgement, sloshed onto splash guards
and splattered the grass. The lawn whimpered
and whined at being smashed into mud.
The agitated King Kong of slate gray sky
never acknowledged his insult
or grunted a note of sympathy, but
thundered a complaint to the tattle-tale
trees that its gifts were not appreciated.
Polite pines and poplars nodded
meek assent while the stiff-backed red oak
shook its head in impudent dissent.
I pleaded innocent spectator.
Hyacinths
Their long narrow
green leaves burst through
the soil in March
lifting their cylindrical
barrels of blooms
in one of several solid colors,
like multilayered wheels
of flowers posting
a message that Spring
is close at hand.
Their waxy petals
in tight curls
like a lady with freshly
curled hair and a smile.
Late Snow
A white knight’s potion of magic sprinkled
like pixie dust on a sleeping village.
It filtered in silent as a thief in the night,
its only sound snowflakes whispering
down from the colorless sky.
Six inches deep and white as ivory soap.
Clung to tree limbs and shrubs
like Elmer’s glue was poured on every feature.
It filled valleys and rounded the landscape
like the outside morphed into a giant bowl
of vanilla ice cream. It smoothed
the edges of everything,
blurring lines and blending angles,
softening points and protrusions.
If I might object—it left too soon and
left in its wake some brown blossoms
and broken limbs, including those
on a gorgeous saucer magnolia tree.
Wesley D. Sims has published three chapbooks of poetry: When Night Comes, Finishing Line Press, Georgetown, Kentucky, 2013; Taste of Change, Iris Press, Oak Ridge, TN, 2019; and A Pocketful of Little Poems, Amazon, 2020. He has had poems nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. His work has appeared in Artemis Journal, Bewildering Stories, Connecticut Review, G.W. Review, Liquid Imagination, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, Plum Tree Tavern, Novelty Magazine, Poem, Poetry Quarterly, Time of Singing, The South Carolina Review, and several other journals and anthologies.
While the king sun latterned another sector
attending to someone else’s shiny errand,
rain gods schemed with a melancholy sky
and nailed my roof without mercy,
caused it to groan under hammering
as with millions of ribbed nails.
Roof’s wailing jerked me from my
breakfast daze to peer through liquid windows.
Water gushed into gutters like swollen
lake water over a breached spillway.
They groused at the deluge.
It sluiced the pipes that popped
with engorgement, sloshed onto splash guards
and splattered the grass. The lawn whimpered
and whined at being smashed into mud.
The agitated King Kong of slate gray sky
never acknowledged his insult
or grunted a note of sympathy, but
thundered a complaint to the tattle-tale
trees that its gifts were not appreciated.
Polite pines and poplars nodded
meek assent while the stiff-backed red oak
shook its head in impudent dissent.
I pleaded innocent spectator.
Hyacinths
Their long narrow
green leaves burst through
the soil in March
lifting their cylindrical
barrels of blooms
in one of several solid colors,
like multilayered wheels
of flowers posting
a message that Spring
is close at hand.
Their waxy petals
in tight curls
like a lady with freshly
curled hair and a smile.
Late Snow
A white knight’s potion of magic sprinkled
like pixie dust on a sleeping village.
It filtered in silent as a thief in the night,
its only sound snowflakes whispering
down from the colorless sky.
Six inches deep and white as ivory soap.
Clung to tree limbs and shrubs
like Elmer’s glue was poured on every feature.
It filled valleys and rounded the landscape
like the outside morphed into a giant bowl
of vanilla ice cream. It smoothed
the edges of everything,
blurring lines and blending angles,
softening points and protrusions.
If I might object—it left too soon and
left in its wake some brown blossoms
and broken limbs, including those
on a gorgeous saucer magnolia tree.
Wesley D. Sims has published three chapbooks of poetry: When Night Comes, Finishing Line Press, Georgetown, Kentucky, 2013; Taste of Change, Iris Press, Oak Ridge, TN, 2019; and A Pocketful of Little Poems, Amazon, 2020. He has had poems nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. His work has appeared in Artemis Journal, Bewildering Stories, Connecticut Review, G.W. Review, Liquid Imagination, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, Plum Tree Tavern, Novelty Magazine, Poem, Poetry Quarterly, Time of Singing, The South Carolina Review, and several other journals and anthologies.
