Springtime in Anywhere

Spring is freedom if you hate school. To me, it's being left

Socially and spiritually, intellectually bereft.

Though it's not a social matter, nor the people I miss most.

It's not surrounded (in Church or otherwise) that I've known the Holy Ghost.

I'm simply an animal that requires inspiration –

Intellectual stimulation–to long continue respiration.

At a time when excitement and nostalgia are in order

I come down with a reverse seasonal affective disorder.

If I'm not being creative, or at least academic,

Then I start getting depressive, or even just plain sick.

If I'm not writing or teaching with my life, then what am I doing?

I hate spring.

My Memories of Spring Linger Eternal and Swell Like an Unremoved Splinter In a Land Where Home's June Comes Both Summer and Winter

It could sure be worse.

I've been to Semarang. There,

It's always August.

Winter in Montana, Pt. 2

The first snow of winter

Is always a limp thing.

It is uncertain, non-committal,

Half rain, just Jack Frost's spittle.

It is redeemed by the first real snow,

Which is not interrupted, which grows

Into fluffy, downy ground pillows,

So that when Jack Frost's full fist is upon

Us, we might be cushioned.

Fall in Montana, Pt. 2: Unseen

It arrives a pleasant surprise. It leaves unseen.

With hindsight, we may know where it came from.

The clever may even know what it is made from,

But it cannot be summoned or commanded,

Nor can it be stored and kept on hand,

Because a cool breeze is happiness,

and happiness is a cool breeze.

Summer in Montana, Pt. 8: The Hot Ones Are Always Crazy

Today, I met another hot one.

I saw it darken,

and I heard it talk about its feelings,

But it refused to start crying.

Never trust a thunderstorm warning.

Summer in Montana, Pt. 7: Purple Mountains' Majesty

I've seen purple mountains' majesty

Above the burnt-out plains,

But for a while things look different.

Well, if we get our rain.

Those plains are all greened over.

My eyes think they feel like mold.

My heart thinks they feel like clover.

Summer in Montana, Pt. 6: That Rain They Called For

Yes, I have ever seen the rain

Coming down on a sunny day.

It's true about Montana; just wait

Five minutes and the weather'll change,

The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike,

and I'm glad what they say is absolutely right,

and I'm certainly glad that it's raining.

Yeah, where I come from, rain is a good thing.

Spring in Montana, Pt. 7: Odes to Spring

I wonder why my schoolfellows write odes to spring,
The season of leaving,
This one-way entrance door to four months of not seeing,
The time to leave behind thinking,
The time to be intellectually stagnant,
When I put the pursuit of happiness
On hold for the pursuit of cash,

But then I watch a baseball game
Wrapped in the evening sun's embrace
and the breeze's cool caress,
and I wonder why I haven't.

Spring in Montana, Pt. 6

The weather today

Is swirled, Neapolitan.

My knee feels all wrong.

Spring in Montana, Pt. 5

I'm long familiar with a young campus May,

Bathed in brand-new green,

and even more newly deserted.

It is a pleasure few choose to indulge.

It is a pleasure too fast in passing.

As May grows old, I would trade my paradise,

Straight up, for another fifteen-credit season.

By June, I would trade it for six.

I could get used to the emptiness,

But my mind detests the idleness.

Spring in Montana, Pt. 4

You clothed my heart in a Montana spring.

The first time I saw you, my eyes were bathed in sunshine.

Soon, my mind was overcast by rainclouds,

Ominous and unfulfilled.

What little of your light could filter through

Only intensified the green growing underneath.

Still, I grew cold, covered by an icy maiden snow.

Thoroughly blotted, you no longer colored my heart,

and now it is April once again, and I start from scratch.

Spring in Montana, Pt. 3

On a springnoon to leave winter and summer both bedeviled,

I'm suspicious of everyone who's not a bit disheveled,

Because that means they left their windows all up, and

They've been using turn signals instead of their hands,

Which is, in total, a waste of this rare day

When cool breezes and warm sun are both out to play.

Fall In Montana

They say fall brings the first sign of chill in the air.

I say Chronus kisses me, to show that he cares.

They say fall is a goodbye, brings life to a close.

I say summer's hot, hectic; fall's needed repose.

Some live for the former. I swear by the latter.

The baseball's more pleasant, and actually matters.

The leaves stampede around in great herds and mobs, frantic.

The breeze blows. The world buzzes with natural static,

But God gets the contrast and color just right.

I can't help but smile. I can't help but write

In the fall in Montana.

Fall in Bozeman

They descend like a swarm of locusts with pretensions
Of knowledge and qualities too many to mention,
Hungry for learning, releases and tensions,
Expanding their minds' (and their bodies') dimensions.

If I'm something to go on, they're glad to be here.
There's no comfort like sharing your foibles and fears
With people you love and won't know in five years,
Who are friends in proximity, and at distance, peers.

Summer in Montana, Pt. 5: August

August is a month of misery and new beginnings.

In my corner of the world, it usher's academe's first inning

With the sun's fiery whip and sweat's silken chains.

It abuses, oppresses. It frustrates and strains,

Til one curiosity’s all that helps me soldier on:

The year's hottest hour's just before summer's gone.

Winter in Montana

Winter in Montana lies low, descending

So Celts would think the world is ending

and I myself must hurry home

To light small fires, be alone

Without my guilt and expectations.

I felt it once, and long await it.

Summer in Montana, Pt. 4

If rains are that which cleansing metaphors inspire

Then summer rains in Montana are ultimate clean, the Messiah.

Their nature is to wash away heat and passions' sweat,

and to the sins of envy, avarice and wrath abet.

For I've no cause to covet neighboring pools

Or grow cross with Helios, once baptized cool,

But Savior Interruptus renders one of faith a fool,

As clouds race by, by a meddling west wind pulled.

The rain rolls by, with not a drop unspooled.

Summer in Montana, Pt. 3

If rains are that which cleansing metaphors inspire

Then summer rains in Montana are ultimate clean, the Messiah.

Their nature is to wash away heat and passions' sweat,

and to the sins of envy, avarice and wrath abet.

For I've no cause to covet neighboring pools

Or grow cross with Helios, once baptized cool.

Summer in Montana, Pt. 2

Don't play poker with summer.  You'll lose.

Sunny mornings bluff you out of your shoes

Into sandals, then turn up three inches of snow,

Or you'll dress in the morning for temperatures low.

The weather will hit you with a hundred degrees,

and no breeze, but if you dress for that heat,

Then expect a river-card thunderstorm

Or some hail, with no shelter or way to keep warm.

Summer in Montana, Pt. 1: Rain is a Good Thing

When it rains here in Bozeman, the weatherman complains.

I guess he forgot that rain is a good thing.

When it stops raining, the ground gets drier.

So does undergrowth. No rain starts fires.

The big gray rafts of dark gray clouds are like a balm for my brain.

I get days off work in the summer when it rains.