30/30 is always a challenge for me. I promised myself (and you?) to do 30 poems in 30 days. Here we are on day 23 and I’m a lot of days behind. But some days the muse honors you more than once. Yesterday was a good day. Lots of work reflecting Spring right now. But this one was a little different.

Retirement is a 500 Piece Puzzle

Great Grandma Lettie
Proved right.
Retirement is best borne
On the shoulders of metaphor.

Her last twenty years
Were measured in dirt.
Flower bulbs
In or out,
Fresh cut,
Sold face to face in her driveway—
Especially prized by
Both local funeral homes.

Winters were
The pieces between
Hills of potatoes
Or rows of Gladiolus
Planted like families
All inclining their faces
Toward the sun.

Always in March,
After the dour prophesies of February
Passed unfilled,
Pieces came stirring
And Lettie’s life would ache to green.
There were chores
That couldn’t wait like
Finding the key puzzle piece—
The one needed
For all the others
To fall into place.
It is in March we come to know
The puzzle can be solved.

The entire summer stretches out
And becomes less
Than placing all the pieces.
Knowing it can be done,
The puzzle is already solved.