Travel Muse

On the Way

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Spread your wings to glide
through sun streaks’ warmth,
to reach and feel the clouds.

          In my best dreams
          I fly round and round
          the confines of my room.

Catch the upward draft.
A lazy float through clear air
colored only by the sky.

Magnificent quiet follows
as you bank left, shift course
to a new everything.

          Strap on wings
          hold tight
          and soar.

In response to the Daily Post Photo Challenge: to interpret “on the way”. 
Pboto from a Baltic cruise. 

Wondrous India

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My career took me several times to India. A land of magnificent colors, beautiful people, and simplicity beside urgent modernity.  I was honored to share meals and meet relatives of my students, visit holy places, and experience this wonderful culture. 

Wondrous India

Stone mosque bathed in light,
waits in glistening dark sea
an icon of hope.

Cities teem and swarm
with cars parked beside oxen,
new challenging old.

Low tide finds boardwalk
revealed through waste and debris,
pilgrims’ path to prayer.

Land of paradox:
harsh realities mar the
exalted sublime.

Pristine white heron
scavenges beside children.
Innocent dwellers
of this land called India.

Written for a writing prompt to write in a “series.”  I decided to try my hand at a series of haiku within one larger poem. I found the aspect of “hiding” the haiku form a challenge. To have the sense of the poem meet the reader, rather than the form itself. UPDATE:  

Poetry in Motion

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Watch closely. The mundane
becomes sublime, if we care to see.
Fields of timothy grass ruffled by wind
black steed glistens galloping through fields
sinewy athlete leaps to float over highest titanium bar
sunflowers smile, heads turn to bask in their namesake’s rays
Swan Lake dancers glide and spin across soft lit stage
gulls with wings spread wide, soar above the sea.
I look up from crowded city streets
to see this artisan’s creation
shift colors in the wind
urban ethereal
beauty.

Janet Echelman’s aerial sculpture, As If It Were Already There, soars above Boston’s Rose Kennedy Greenway. It’s made by hand-splicing rope and knotting twine into an interconnected mesh of more than a half-million nodes. Whenever any one of its elements moves, every other element is affected. Its fibers are 15 times stronger than steel but appear lace like. Do watch the short videos. They’re breathtaking! We were mesmerized.  We’ll go back to see it at night, when it is lit with thousands of LED lights knotted into its threads. 

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Follow the Clouds

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Follow the Clouds

Stairs direct eyes, climb to clouds
holy canopy to this house of God
inside wooden warmth minus marble cold
simplicity defines Divine.

Four elderly black women
dressed in crimson choir garb
raise voices in praise
sing hymns as ancestors sleep

I sit ramrod straight, cedar bench stiff
then kneel on threadbare cushions
and for the first time in many years
my spirit soars.

My Photos:  Her Majesties Chappel, St Peter’s Church, is the oldest surviving Anglican church in continuous use outside the British Isles, and the oldest Protestant Church in continuous use in the New World. Located in St. George, Bermuda, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the interior is filled with pew boxes and ceiling rafters of cedar wood that was long ago, plentiful on the island — and then depleted by ship building and disease. The land to the west of the church was reserved for burying slaves prior to the British Empire’s emancipation of slaves in 1834. We were privileged to worship here every Sunday in February, 2015. Also using this for a photo challenge on CLOUDS

From Boston, Paul Revere, Take Notice!

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NaPoWriMo  Writing Prompt:   it’s the eighteenth of April, the 240th anniversary of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.  In keeping with the theme of rush and warning, write a poem that involves an urgent journey and an important message.

Boston marathoners
poised and ready again
take over streets
race their way
to a 21st century
interpretation
of words you once lived.
Boston Strong

A time to remember those killed in the Boston Marathon bombing, pay tribute to first responders on that day of pain and resolution, and praise the indomitable human spririt that rises in the face of evil.  

This Holy Place

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NaPoWriMo  Day 11: no prompt. 

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The candle is lit.
Her resolute hand
sparks bright yellow flames
as gold iconography shimmers.

Statuary bears witness.
Tears spill sadness
as hearts laid open
silently name their fears away.

Well worn kneelers
impress needlepoint cross or dove
on bared knees of any age
bent in supplication.

Tourists shuffle
up and down aisles
whisper loudly
ignore the calligraphy hush.

Believers turned gawkers
their occasional donation
a tip for service
we pay for with our souls.

Sunrise Return to Sweden

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Four years ago, we took a Baltic Cruise, including a day in Stockholm. My husbands’ family is very Swedish. His grandfather, Hjalmer Siegfried immigrated in 1906, at age 22. Painter by trade, he decorated the basement walls to look like the USS Sweden, the ship that brought him to Ellis Island — complete with ship railings, sky, and sea gulls. Some visitors actually got seasick after a Yule drink of homemade glog. Well, honestly, I don’t know if it was the simulated ship or the grain alcohol in grampa’s glog!  Criuise highlight?  The VERY early morning glide through the absolutely quiet and rustic archipelago, leading into Stockholm. Island after island….stunning!  NaPoWriMo day 8 entry, without prompt.

     Dawn in the Archipelago, outside Stockholm….just entering Sweden.  IMG_6095      

Sunrise Return to Sweden                                                             

I stand mesmerized.
Dawn awakens serenity’s beauty
rippled patterns glisten on black sea
gulls hover over softly churning wake.

Moving patterns of white wings
against dark greens and grey rock edges
the occasional light house turns its eye
wood frame homes nestle in their woods.

The ship slowly glides in dark waters
through Sweden’s archipelago
guardian isles to myriad lines of ancestry
protector from the city’s growing girth.

A lone call from among the gulls
pierces still air, a stark welcome
primitive in nature, surely heard before
by our grandfather and his and his and his.

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