POEM OF THE WEEK

BY HARRY WAITZMAN

Tadpoles in Spring

Ice cokes lazy brooks, streams
Thaw and unwind across meadows,
our only cow remembers my name
and sings a song to Harry
from deep within her bovine lungs
as her calf pokes her swollen udders.

I feel the weight of growing up
with no mud on my sneaks,
and Momma no longer telling me
what to do. When I’m older, will
I be a maple, or a fragile willow,
happy as an apple or somber as an oak?

I lost in the yellow whips of forsythia,
The underbrush smacks me as I walk.
Our hired hand taught me
how to play solitaire
and to be lonely as a raindrop
running down the leg of a rooster.