Three Snow Day Triolets

The jet stream’s sudden dip creates a lovers’ coup:
a snow day when children are staying with friends.
Should we spend our day reading, writing, and making stew?
The jet stream’s sudden dip creates a lovers’ coup.
Morning kisses on the couch, making love in the afternoon.
Who cares how long we’re snowbound or the school year extends!
The jet stream’s sudden dip creates a lovers’ coup:
a snow day when children are staying with friends.

All day I bring in wood to make a White Man’s Fire.
In comfort we write gloses, triolets, and sometimes kiss.
Our corpse poems burn as one on the same funeral pyre.
All day I bring in wood to make a White Man’s Fire
that will match the sizzle and spark of our desire
while you keep one eye on the weather and closing lists.
All day I bring in wood to make a White Man’s Fire.
In comfort we write gloses, triolets, and sometimes kiss.

Feeling brave, we walk at night on the blessing of new snow,
our gloved hands grip and save each other if we slip
on black ice. I point between trees at the sky’s orange glow.
Feeling brave, we walk at night on the blessing of new snow.
You kiss my numbed face, someone’s car will need a tow.
Should we consider taking a quick California trip
when the weather breaks? Walking at night on icy snow,
our gloved hands grip when one missteps and slips.

John A. Blackard

Chinese New Year

Husband, how will you celebrate all the ways
that I please you and promise to obey you
in the year of the rooster?

I will honor your purest deceptions with a flock
of frightened bird aerial repeaters and a score
of musical pyramid mines, my wife.

Husband, will you hold me in your arms like
the moon's brightness is held within the spaces
of the parking lot across the street?

Yes, I will send out some black diamond missiles
that climb at least twenty-five hundred feet
and finish with reports as loud as our ecstacy.

Husband, I'm listening to a symphony by a composer
that I do not remember. Will you come in
from the porch and conduct with me?

No, but I will perform a duet of peacock fountains
and golden snowflake candles for you that
will help you put on the master's wig?

Husband, I found a lock of our baby's hair
in this book and I thought about that old stucco
house... do you ever think about...?

No, I only remember the crazy jack ground
spinners and catherine three-drive moonwheels
that kept me on the rim of night.

Husband, when you leave for the plant in the morning
and walk beside the piles of dawn-streaked mud,
will you write my name there for me?

I will launch whistling gemini missiles and light
marching cicada comets at the bus stop so
you will know the wild flower of my heart.