THE LAKE GENEVA RENGA
Composed by attendees at the Spring Conference, April 21, 2001
on a handmade scroll courtesy of Roberta Fabiani

SPRING AWAKENING

in the city by the lake
as sprouts of green are starting to appear
the poets gather

green as fresh-sown words
clean as morning thoughts, coffee-warmed, sun-wakened

warming on the beach
rocking on waves
and resting in late afternoon dappled light

like pebbles, like shells, words soak in sunlight's stroking rays
to save the heat to radiate back at night

night falls
as poems rise in the air
we nod, we smile, we sigh

we open the champagne
to celebrate

outside the stars
brighten the lake scene
the poems float gently as kites

*

lights popping like corks in imaginations
the wind flirtatious
a bridesmaid tipsy

and tipsily moves through the graveyard
stopping to tip over stones

whitened and crumbled
trailing her ragged veil
dislodging bones

the bones have seen no light
until this

but they couldn't be in a better place
atop a ridge, scattered in the shade
from eons past

coprolite and fossilized eggs
still containing starry-eyed young

I used to count eggs
for recipes or sale at an open market
but my wife left me

*

the eggs I did bring home
like my marriage… rotten
wouldn't foam

spring foaming white
over the shoreline

frog eggs and soap
foaming pink
over the branches

winter branches… old bones
scratch open the sky

to let out the soul of spring
raindrops of the soul
breathe life into the fallow soil

to nourish and nudge
the tender shoot of promise

from the green coil, damp and waiting
shoots of promise unfold
into the stark spears of reality