are the sun,
the moon, the sky
and the stars.
Sometimes harder to see
are filaments of joy.
They always hover near.
If we open our hearts
look up, look about,
we will find them.
As this morning dawns
and hope rises,
let us seek at least one.
Let us live today
with the incandescence of joy.
Previously posted and then shared on OLN at dVerse where Mish is hosting today.
Photo: dawn in Provincetown, 2019.
Ship of dreamers
homeland left behind.
We cross vast seas,
anxiety churned by pitching waves.
Land nears.
Hope rekindled,
we stand tall,
crane to see her torch.
Hands clasped, excitement peaks.
Grinning widely we circle round,
dance exuberantly
as she comes into view.
We are joyful Swedes,
ready to begin anew.
Brian Miller, founder of dVerse, helps us celebrate the pub’s 8th anniversary today by providing the prompt. He wants us to capture a moment in our poem, reminding us that moments come with a context. The happenings before and after the moment. Today I write motivated by a Hallberg family photo, taken in 1906, at the moment Hjalmer Hallberg and friends saw the Statue of Liberty, when coming to this country from Sweden. I write in the first person, trying to imagine this moment.
We romantics ~
five decades joined,
content to lie still together.
So much love
as fingertips touch fingertips,
lips linger a bit for goodnight kiss.
My wish as eyes slowly droop,
may we rise together in the morrow
joyful for another day.
Written for Misky’s Twiglet # 183 where the prompt is “we romantics” –
Saturday, October 19th, 2013. A beautiful crisp fall day. Our condominium complex drive was cheerfully planted with bright cushion mums. Little did we know in July 1997, when we moved from Iowa to Boston, how important that housing choice and this date would become.
Our condominium high rise building is across the street from side entrances to Massachusetts General Hospital, one of the premiere healthcare facilities in the United States. As some of you already know, on Monday, October 14th, 2013, my husband suffered a six-minute cardiac arrest in front of our building. He was rushed by ambulance to MGH; put into an induced coma on life support. They lowered his body temperature and gave him a paralytic drug to keep him absolutely still, trying to minimize brain damage.
On Tuesday evening, October 15th, his body temperature was slowly raised as he was weaned from the paralytic drug. We were told he may or may not wake up. If he did, it would not be for at least 72 hours and, in all likelihood, he would not be himself. Against all odds, he woke up at 9 PM that night. Wednesday morning October 16th, he was taken off life support, intubation tube removed, and he correctly answered all questions posed to him by a neurologist. On Thursday, October 17th, he was moved to the cardiac step-down unit, out of intensive care. Friday, October 18th, he had a defibrillator implanted. Saturday, October 19th, he was released from the hospital. And in one shining moment, with our son and daughter on either side of him, he walked back home. Back across the street and back into our lives.
dark clouds dissipate – –
honeysuckle blooms again
bees hum in bright sun
Photo is a bit blurry as I was crying tears of joy when I took it.
Written for Haibun Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets where today I’m hosting and asking folks to write about one shining moment in their lives.
One last moment,
I just needed one.
My son,
your wedding so beautiful.
You pledged a lifetime of love
to this wonderful woman at your side
and I watched, tears in my eyes.
My son,
I looked on, so very proud of you.
Your compassion, caring,
your talent, accomplishments.
All things good.
My son,
I knew you must leave
cleave unto your love.
I knew that
and I looked on lovingly.
And when the ceremony was done
suddenly, in that crowded room,
just before the photos began
you came to me
overcome by emotion.
You were in my arms
sobbing
and I flashed back.
Holding infant-you to my chest
comforting, nurturing.
And then you pushed back
asked for a tissue,
turned and walked to your wife.
And just like that,
you became a man.
But you’d given me,
that one last moment.
Day 29 in National Poetry Writing Month. Today Toads asks us to write about something that signaled almost the end. This was an amazing moment in my life….one that I remember distinctly and that my son, to this day, has no recollection of. For me, I am still grateful I had this one last moment with him as my young son. And by the way, he is a very happily married man with his bride/wonderful woman by his side and three delightful children.
The happiness project,
a heartbreaking work of staggering genius.
Plain and simple:
eat, pray, love
embracing earth.
Day 23 of National Poetry Month: first installment today is written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets. Bjorn asks us to explore “found poetry” — and more specifically, Book Spine Poetry.
Look at the books on your shelf, pick some with titles that speak to you and arrange the titles into a poem! We have the choice of “adding some meat to the bones” — as in filling in some of our own words around the titles.
I love the way these 5 books fit together.
Consider it a belated Earth Day poem!
Pub opens at 3 PM Boston time. Dig out some books and come join us!
In 2005, we rented a vacation home on the Big Island. Our back yard included an ocean inlet to Champagne Pond where at low tide, we swam with glorious sea turtles.
Our most amazing adventure was a lava hike, climbing over fields of hardened basalt. Eventually we came upon fissures where hot lava pooled, spit, hissed, bubbled and oozed ever so slowly. Using flashlights on the return walk, lava glowed red-orange in the distance, as if a jack-o-lantern was lit across the horizon. We also hiked across a caldera, over “waves” of Pele’s hair. We found a small delicate fern peeking out of a crevice. Hawaiian breezes deposit plant life in nooks and crannies. Life reappears in the midst of desolation.
Pele’s anger erupted violently in 2018. Kilauea spewed plumes 12,000 to 30,000 feet high. Fissures burst open. Lava flows destroyed over 700 homes. Lagoon House: A Piece of Paradise, the vacation home so many people enjoyed over the years, was entombed in thirty feet of boiling lava, which eventually cooled to impenetrable basalt. As the owner wrote, the coastline is forever changed. I wonder, how long it will be before a single fern, and then a tree, and then a grove of trees take root. Will the memory of Pele’s reckoning disappear? Will humans be enticed to rebuild what was once called Leilani Estates – and is that even possible?
I look at photos
housebound during Covid spring ~
Pele sleeps again
* Pele is the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes.
Day 22: National Poetry Writing Month. Toads asks us to choose one of four given quotations to motivate our poem of any form. I wrote a a haibun.
Photos from June 2005 trip with our children to Hawaii’s Big Island. Our guided lava hike across Kilauea, at the time, the longest continuously active volcano in the world, now seems ridiculously dangerous and foolish – given the horrific occurrence in December 2019 at New Zealand’s White Island.
In the first photo, I’m waving goodbye to the incredibly beautiful back yard at our vacation rental, the night before we returned home. Little did I know that 13+ years later, this scene would be nonexistent.
QUOTATION USED TO MOTIVATE POST: “A fresh and vigorous weed, always renewed and renewing, it will cut its wondrous way through rubbish and rubble.” William Jay Smith
Stars twinkle,
even behind clouds.
Shine,
wherever you are.
Day 18: National Poetry Writing Month, where the challenge is to write a poem every day in April.
Today’s prompt from Toads: write a poem of encouragement. Photo taken last summer in Cape Cod’s Provincetown.
He was nine years older.
His daddy went off to war,
I was the afterthought.
I was the tag-along
the have-to-take-along,
the dawdling one behind.
I delivered his eulogy
unbelievably far too soon.
Mom and dad sat numb.
All these years later
they wait for me again,
resting on a grassy hill.
Not yet, I whisper.
Not yet.
Day 16 of National Poetry Writing Month and today Toads asks us to write about something that stems from the word “remains” — the word itself does not need to be included. This poem is also posted to dVerse, the virtual pub for poets’ Open Link Night which I host today. Poets may post one poem of their choice, no particular form or prompt. dVerse opens at 3 PM Boston time today.
Easter Sunday 2020,
an unusual and memorable one.
May we each feel the hope and the joy
in the message of this blessed day.
lillian the home poet 