The second half of joy is shorter than the first. Emily Dickinson
everyday a gift wildflowers along the road – snow falls silently
Written for the NAPOWRIMO prompt given the day before National Poetry Writing Month begins. We are to respond to one of Emily Dickinson’s lines of poetry. Several are provided or we may choose our own.
Also will appear at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today is OLN: Open Link Night. Ingrid is hosting and we may post any one poem of our choosing. Pub opens at 3 PM Boston time. NAPOWRIMO begins officially tomorrow. April is National Poetry Writing Month and the challenge is to write a poem every day of the month. Photo is from our trip to Ireland a number of years ago.
During the season of cherry blossoms, after more than fifty years of being separated by more than six-thousand miles, we met again. This gentle man, Kenji, who I knew only for one year, all those years ago. So many changes in the world since last we’d seen each other. Kenji was a foreign exchange student from Japan, during our senior year at my Illinois high school. And now I was a visitor in his home country. There for a few days to experience his beautiful culture. In his hometown of Tokyo for one day. How would it be to see him again?
We sat in a small restaurant over a pot of fresh brewed tea. Shared news about our lives, careers and family. Reminisced too. And somehow, the years melted away and friendship bloomed again.
cold brings frost, stunts growth trees remain rooted in earth – blossoms come again
Written for Haibun Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Frank asks us to consider cherry blossoms. A haibun combines prose and haiku. Photo is from our cruise to China, South Korea and Japan in 2019. Such a wonderful reunion with Kenji Kojima! And how appropriate that our friendship bloomed once again exactly during cherry blossom season in Japan.
“He went to sea in a thimble of poetry.”Poet Warning, Jim Harrison
Wynken, Blyken and Nod my childhood friends, lived in the well-turned pages of mother’s Child Craft book of poetry. Their neighbors always made me smile, the Old Lady who lived in the shoe, Miss Muffet sitting primly on her tuffet and that merry Old King Cole too.
I often dreamed of that crazy cow jumping over the moon, prancing round the stars. I lived in my imagination where no one yelled at anyone, hugging my yellow sort-of-teddy-bear smeared with mother’s lipstick so it always smiled at me.
Those dog-eared pages, oh how I loved them. When mama read to me, all was good and calm and fun.
Linda is hosting Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. She introduces us to Jim Harrison (December 11, 1937 – March 26, 2016), an American poet, novelist, and essayist, and provides us with a number of lines from his works. We are to choose one line and use it as an epigraph at the beginning of our poem. An epigraph is a short quotation at the beginning of a book or chapter (in this case, a poem), intended to suggest its theme.
I still have two of the Childcraft volumes published in 1949, including the Childcraft Poems of Early Childhood. I loved these poems as a child and then read them to my children and my grandchildren too. Photo is from the book.
Our lives are made of moments, some plain, some filled with awe. Looking back I was surprised how many included sipping through a straw!
My mother showed me how to sip orange juice to go with grahams; Then coca cola and ice cream sodas helped make me who I am. Chocolate milkshakes, creamy and thick should be against the law. The memories sweet, of all those times sipping through a straw.
In college I learned about Scotch Mists, served with straws black and thin; As were those Mai Tai’s with rum and gardenias that almost did me in. Anything sipped through a straw was yummy. To me a special treat, Until the memories of hospital stays I do not wish to repeat.
When your lips are cracked, your mouth is dry and your body feels so raw There is no better thing the nurses can bring than water to sip through a straw. It’s funny the things that come to mind; the adventures, the things you saw. My life’s special moments have often come when sipping through a straw.
Straws is written by Lindsey Ein: wonderful writer, wonderful friend, and mother to our dear son-in-law. She shared this poem with dVerse LIVE on Thursday – I’m just a bit late posting it.
Every time I see them it creates an image in the present which in seconds or hours or a day or years, depending on recall, is always in my past.
We gathered to honor the matriarch. From Texas, Illinois, California, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North and South Carolina, Massachusetts, Tennessee, and Virginia too.
She was the rock, the foundation. Granddaughter of Swedish immigrants, upholding the traditions. Her life, lived for so many.
A career in nursing, a ministry of sorts. She offered healing to the afflicted. From surgical assistance to the elderly’s pains, to the scrapes of school-age youth.
She taught her children compassion. Lessons passed on to grandchildren and their children. To nieces, extended family, friends and neighbors too.
She faced the depths of loss and pain, courageous and resilient. Sustained by faith in God and love of life, she taught us even through her death.
Family gathered to pray, to sing, to share a meal. Tears and smiles comingled. Yesterday’s emotional today, so filled with love and caring support. That is the essence of this family, what we share and treasure most.
Those moments of yesterday’s today, far too quickly in our past. But still they give us hope and strength, to face all of our coming tomorrows.
Written in memory of Janice Stewart. The family gathered on Saturday, December 11th at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Wheaton, Illinois to celebrate her life. She will be missed by so many.
PHOTOS: Hjalmer Hallberg immigrated from Sweden. He and his wife, Anna, settled in Chicago, Illinois. The photo on the left shows their five grandchildren. From left to right: George Hallberg, Nancy Jahnke, Lynne Gehrke, Janice Stewart, Donald Hallberg. Neil Netherton, Nancy’s brother, passed away many years ago. He was Hjalmer and Anna’s sixth grandchild. The second photo was taken immediately following the celebration of Janice’s life at St. Paul’s Churchon Saturday, December 11th.
Brother’s cardboard Santa. Crayoned red suit and black boots, thinning cotton-puff beard and cuffs. His first grade art project crafted near eighty years ago.
You three sleep eternally warmed in earth’s loving arms. But each holiday season you live with me again, if only atop my Christmas tree.
Merril hosts Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for global poets. Her prompt for today: “write about any object – a family heirloom, a museum piece, a monument, or a palace. The choice is yours, but there must be some link to history and the past.” The bell and airplane are 90+ years old.
There is a pain too raw. Too personal to write down. Wrapped in the shrouds of death it came too near, but for angels along the way.
Pain of illness, threat of death, most astute tutors of life. Love every mundane moment, cherish them as a gift. Celebrate every dawn.
Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets. Today Ingrid asks us to consider pain and how we can come out on the other side of it stronger. Photo of dawn from one of our many trips.
