Poems by Joan Mazza
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Heavy Snow in December
by Joan Mazza
Joan lives in Mineral, Virginia, very rural, in the woods at the end of a long driveway.
Not officially winter, yet snowed in for days,
held captive by the weather. A day of sunlight
shrinks the foot of snow a couple of inches,
leaves a sheet of ice below. To stay inside,
contemplate choices and implied insights,
to bake or not bake cupcakes, or make pizza
with organic peppers bought on Friday for dear
Eve who’s snowed in at her home too. To read
and doze, to keep the wood stove burning,
decipher messages the universe is serving
with this time of quiet isolation. The memo
repeats daily. All plans canceled, a blessing
not a curse. To find motivation, a lyric canto
inside yourself. Write verse or prose, but only
write. Ignite 1984, revisit Guadeloupe, where
Bougainvillea blossoms pinked the pool’s
blue surface, where the spell was broken
by one small ripple. You write to know,
to release truths held too long in cages,
on white pages blank as a field of snow.
© Joan Mazza
Ode to the Little Brown Bat (myotis lucifigas)
by Joan Mazza
From Canary Summer 2023
Once I saw you every evening where the sky
opens above the pond and drain field.
Your distinctive jerky flight and wing beats,
wide wingspan for such a small mammal.
I left a light on, a dinner bell drawing insects.
You are said to eat your weight in flying pests
in one night, to live ten years. Farmers love you
for your natural ways, better than pesticides.
Come back and pollinate our fruits and flowers!
With white nose syndrome your population
crashed. Ninety to ninety-nine percent gone
some say. Your bones, fragile as toothpicks,
line the floors of caves. How many of you
will bring your kin back to flourish again?
Where are those of you immune to this fungus?
Find each other! Breed! I’ve built a house
for you on the sunny side of a white oak.
Come back. I’ll leave the light on.
© Joan Mazza