We didn’t get out at all this Christmas or New Year’s because I tested positive for Covid, so this poem below, which I wrote reflecting on the winter of 2020 to 21, was actually just as fitting for January of 2023.

During the lockdowns I had the joy of writing with an online workshop of (mostly North East US) poets led by the never tiring, ever traveling Craig Czury. One of Craig’s tricks to get us out of our own heads was to have us offer a line of one of the poems we’d workshopped to someone else in the group just to see where it took them. I was offered a line by Marge Merrill about touching rocks and inviting toads to her garden.

We lost Marge suddenly and unexpectedly in July of 2021, and so this poem, with one stolen, possibly mangled line is in her memory. She was a joy to work with and I miss her. My thanks to Ed Byrne and Valparaiso Poetry Review for publishing this piece in their latest issue.

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FIELD NOTES WITH HAWK AND TOAD

In memory of Marge Merrill

It’s January. Our Christmas tree is on the curb,
and I tell myself that I am lucky to be here,
but already I’m planning the spring garden.

It’s too cold to be on my knees outside.
The first heavy snow melted in a teaser thaw
and tempted the river to leave its banks.

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