Squalls of powder swirl,
cloud out the rising Spring sun.
Soon ascendant, Sol is a seasoned fighter
and can take a punch.
My calendar says daffodils
and I should be working
the soil in the warmth of bird-song
looking for fiddleheads,
my hands turning the earth.
But everything is covered in white
and the breeze sneaks through
austere woods like a ninja
to strike me in the face.
Then just as suddenly, stills.
The flakes bloom in size,
muffle all sound save the crack
of an old maple's limb,
that so near renewal
could not shoulder
one more day of winter.
Bill Wunder is the author of Pointing at the Moon (WordTech Editions, 2008) and a chapbook, A Season of Storms (Via Dolorosa Press, 2002). His poems have twice been nominated for The Pushcart Prize, and in 2004 he was named Poet Laureate of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Bill has been a finalist in The Robert Fraser Poetry Competition, The T.S. Eliot Prize, The Walt Whitman Award, and The Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards. Recently, his work has appeared in The Manhattan Review, Lips, The Paterson Literary Review, Mad Poet's Review, Drexel University On-Line Journal, Wild River Review, and others. Bill serves as Poetry Editor of The Schuylkill Valley Journal, and lives with his two black labs in Bucks County.
