Ode: To Sunlight

Once when there was sunshine early in April

Not a dim dirty white clouded over sort of day

But a blue-sky day when green moss tendrilled

In wide cracks between bricks glowing with warmth,

A red wheelbarrow and white garden shed nearby

As if for a painting if someone had the time

Snapped by camera or just seen in the mind’s eye

Bright green moss tendrils like mustard seed cress,

Donal moved over pathways in sync with the sun

Traversing its own path in the sky faraway 

While weeding the moss from cracks with a tool

Usually used to loosen wooden beehive frames

Up high the sun not shielded by clouds today

Maintained its slow pace keeping on schedule.

Slanting over raised beds each day predictable 

Plant’s lives depend on it each day so powerful 

Essential life support none can live without it

Although dark matter never sees sunlight

Thought Donal working where the sun shone bright on it

Sliding his hive tool between two red bricks

Loosening roots so he could pull out a wedge

Leaving empty space behind that a moss spore could find.

Long lasting daffodils knew their time was done 

They started to wither and brown in the sun

For more than a month before tulips unfolded.

Seedlings planted from pots gently molded

Carefully watered brought to incipient life 

Conjured into being by Donal’s white-haired wife.

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                        2026

Spring 

A Work in Progress
117

Once again, her rosy fingers touched Donal’s cheek

Fifty-three years married expected to speak

Once again, Briseis enhaloed his white hair

His task more urgent now he stood up from his chair

With age comes economy of movement

Greater understanding of what was always known

How the April sun climbs the cedar trees east of our house

To slant rays across our rooftop 

How each day now the sun climbs higher

So that each day now we see better 

See what dark menace comes

To stand between us and the sun

Trump 

An old man like Asimov’s The Mule

A mutant controlling people’s emotion

A chaos maker forever causing commotion

Forever seeking to be the story

World conqueror Trump

Followed by evangelicals awaiting Armageddon 

Enabled by fantasists all people he’s led on

Flowers long lasting in the long cold spring

Red tinged tulips appearing while daffodils age

Bedraggled by rain then wind and more rain again

But still bold bright yellow though holed by slugs

Trumpeting defiance

We had the time of our lives when we were young

Today and tomorrow, and yesterday too

I’m still in sync with everything you do.

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                   2026

For Odd Helgason 

A Work in Progress
116

First footsteps on the flagstones then pumping of the drones

It’s Catcherside the piper plays up high there in the stones

Watching the music waving its way lit by the moon and stars 

Remembering those long passed away, among them why, why her

The pipes put down he scans the sky so full of constellations

Orion   Aurvandil    Orvandil

An Icelandic farmer was one who knew their names

Odd Helgason who mapped the stars

A relative of those who looted Holy Island

Who sailed to Iceland discovered Greenland

Newfoundland Baffin Bay Ellesmere Island

Hunting for walrus tusks or just going Viking

Brave astronauts go towards the moon NASA at its best

Will they return to a world at war that America has distressed?

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                       2026