Spring storm dissipates
leaves slow misting veil.
Ants scurry back to work
beneath uncurled ferns.
Trillium carpets damp earth.
White three-petal clusters
speckled by raindrops,
sit atop shiny green leaves.
Whitening clouds skirt the sky,
grey gives way to light.
Star-shaped pink laurels
turn faces to the dappled sun.
Oh ye of jaded belief,
walk these greening woods
and you shall see the signs.
Mushroom thrones beside
fiddlehead playground slides.
Muhly grass, pink pillow puffs
placed ‘neath frills of ferns.
Look with open heart
and you shall find,
the fairy sprites of yore.
A quadrille (44 words) written for dVerse Poet’s Pub where Grace asks us to use the word “green” within our poem. Photos from various hikes we’ve taken.
Nature loves the despised, unwanted dandelions, blessing them yellow.
Come dance in refreshing rain, make mudpies and weave wreaths of dandelions.
Summer’s birthday candles: dandelion seed wisps float across wish strewn air.
The American Sentence as a poetic form was created by Allen Ginsberg. It was his attempt to make an American haiku. As the Japanese haiku is 17 syllables going down in Japanese text, the American Sentence is 17 syllables going across, linear, like just about everything else in America.
In a 1991 interview with Thomas Gladysz, Allen Ginsberg was asked about the sacramental nature of life as an aesthetic for his photography. Allen replied: “I think the notion is a Native American art aesthetic and life aesthetic, but my formulation of it is reinforced by a lot of Buddhist training. The notion is basically that the first noble truth most all of us acknowledge, especially senior citizens, is that existence is transitory – life is transitory. We are born and we die. And so this is it! It gives life both a melancholy and a sweet and joyful flavor…Any gesture we make consciously, be it artwork, a love affair, any food we cook, can be done with a kind of awareness of eternity, truthfulness…In portraiture, you have the fleeting moment to capture the image as it passes and before it dissolves…It captures the shadow of the moment.” Italicized is quoted from Paul E. Nelson: About Form: What Are American Sentences.
They carried purple sateen ribbons
furling and unfurling them into rays of sun,
dancing their way to the shimmering river.
Rivulets gurgled and tamed themselves
lily pads with pale green tendrils appeared,
pillows afloat in soothing cool waters.
Twirling through an iridescent aura,
stars dipped from darkening sky
entwined and crowned their flowing hair.
Bodies sprouted translucent wings
where once streams of violet furled
and their spirits soared.
Written for the final day of NaPoWriMo 2016. April is national poetry month.
Photo is in public domain.
I awake at dawn to sit outside,
watch darkness turn to light,
listen to the fantasia
composed by friends of flight.
Gulls screech, black birds caw,
blend in loud cacophony.
Yellow kiskadees sing their name
kiss-kah-dee atop palmetto tree.
Whistle woo, ee-ooh ee-oohs,
stutter sounds that stop and start.
Nature’s composition,
her ode to sunrise joy.
Sparrows peep and chirp beside me,
ruffle flutter wings then flee
startled by my scratching pen
scoring sounds of brightness in the morn.
Sun warms as notes begin to simmer
overture slowly ends.
Curtain rises on blue skies,
a new Bermuda day.
Thrilled to be guest-hosting dVerse Poetics today! Loving all things fantastical, my poem today uses “fantasia” as it relates to a musical free flow composition. Video from our deck in Bermuda, listening to the dawn. You’ll hear the Kiskadee (yellow bird) quite plainly. And this is one of my many feathered friends who came often to sit with me. Also applying to NaPoWriMo Day 12.
Alaska weeps daily. Generations of ice, layer upon layer, receding.
Our hush, accompanied by the incessant slow drip of her melting tears.
Like a primal scream from self-inflicted wound, the crack of calving
sends shock waves through our cold.
We turn gingerly, hiking sticks in hand, clamp-ons strapped to boots.
Our quiet retreat is nudged by descending mist. A veil to cover her shards.
Earth dies every day.
We stand on the precipice
blind to her needs.
Written for Haibun Monday at dVerse. Prompt is to reach out, write somehow about a silence among us. Photos from our 2015 trip to Alaska. Chunks of ice as the cruise ship approaches Hubbard Glacier; its shelf looks so small here — in reality it is hugely tall and in the sun, appears as this beautiful color. Other two photos from our 5 mile hike to the toe of Laughton Glacier. The close-up is on the toe, rock debris carried as the glacier slowly moves. Look closely, about in the middle of the photo, you’ll see the melting. Incessant melting creating glacier streams. We are all too silent, watching the effects of global warming.
Crocus seduce, daffodils beam,
we walk lighter, brighter.
Young women shed coats,
bellies concealed in down
bloom pregnant joy.
Temptress Spring,
hips swaying in soft breezes,
sashays to bed budding green.
Wakes at dawn,
cold white kisses shimmer,
laughs flurry at our foolish trust.
Photo Credits: That’s me, this morning, April 4. On the porch in my bathrobe appalled at this cruel April snow! Crocus photo by Swirls 71.
Written as a quadrille (44 words) for dVerse using the word “shimmer” and for NaPoWriMo Day 4‘s prompt to write about the cruelest month.
Back permanently bent from years at task,
large calloused hands firm to grasp,
gently assess tendrils amongst the greens.
Red kerchief upon her head, basket nearby
knapsack slung on hunched shoulders
eyes to ground, the healer gathers.
Moon watcher, earth cycles familiar
as her own once were. Old woman
wise in the land, one of generations.
Young girl, the next, hovers quietly
beside rivers, through brambles,
seeks to learn mountain’s gifts.
Veined hands reach, crack dogwood bark
fingers roll to crumble butterfly weed.
Touch, not eye, decides to take or not.
Blue cohash, huckleberry, lady slippers.
Sun fades. Moccasin flower roots,
tomorrow’s liquid for aching throat.
She walks the mountainside pharmacopeia
long Joe-pye-weed from the shores,
reishi mushrooms tucked below trees.
Purple fox glove for Pauni’s heart,
bee balm and peppermint leaves,
hawthorne twigs for ceremonial wreaths.
Harvest complete, they slowly return,
woman healer and one to be.
Stars orbit, complete the cycle
whilst moon waxes and wanes.
Late for Tuesday Poetics when guest prompter Lynn asked us to write something related to mountains; so posting now at dVerse Open Links Night. Photo Credit: Michael and Christa Richert.
Somewhere, light years away,
what was held in trust
shall revive.
The first one thousand miles
between earth’s implosion
and moons’ forever paths,
churns debris, seeds of possibility,
until a shooting star ignites
and a new land births itself.
Small roots find their way
and those that flower understand,
heritage matters.
The Universe remembers
those who strove but could not save
scorched earth, her favorite son.
And so at Latitude 38
she creates a divine place,
reconfigured in her galaxy.
A quiet place of timbers
where midst aquamarine waters,
her children shall try again.
Found Poetry: following titles taken from the bookshelf in our Bermuda rental: Held in Trust by The Bermuda National Trust; First One Thousand Miles by Gordon Phillips; The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard; Heritage Matters by Dr. Edward Harris; and Latitude 38 (a magazine). Photo: from a walk along Bermuda’s Old Rail Way Trail. Poem is inspired by Global Warming, something that too many seem to deny.
Much has been written about the dawn of a new day. For me, it has always been the moments before that, which stir my soul. When dark shadow clouds and navy blue-black sky meld into india-ink black sea. It is all a scrim, a gauzed blanket that lies above and beyond with no horizon line.
The shoreline blurs, smudges, like a charcoal master piece. There are no browns, only shades of ebony and beginning blue. It is a delicious hush. Before the sun begins its slow ascent from underneath somewhere, slowly tinting edges into floating worlds of pink and violet, revealing solid lines and building shapes. Before that color of pales, there is only the unseen, blurring barely to the discernable. In that moment of suspended darkness, there is the presence of hope.
Clouds before the dawn
shadows undulate with hope
darkness woos my dreams
Written for Dverse Poets’ Pub Haibun Monday — this week Grace asked us to springboard from one of three given quotations. I used the following: “Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.” – Mary Oliver A Haibun is prose, followed by haiku and usually underscores nature and some higher truth.
lillian the home poet 