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.
Sit and be still with me.
This quiet bench beside daffodils
ruffle-edged tulips and hyacinth.
Savor sun as do these flowers of spring.
Memories seared in my mind.
Sharing dreams of spring
‘neath comforter of down,
lifted up by love to sound of song.
Seasons’ promise from death to life,
blooms of rebirth near my feet.
I cry out loud so silently,
my questions float upon the breeze.
Why can’t my love return to me?
Your body too deep to feel this sun,
craves warmth from mine, a simple plea,
to sit and be, still with me.
Photo taken this morning. Spring abounds in the beautiful grounds around our condo building in the city. Written for Open Link Night at the dVerse Poets’ Pub. If you’ve not come for a visit, drop on by and meet some of these amazing writers – or post a poem of your own. The more the merrier at a virtual pub!
Junie Z and I,
we had a lot of fun
watchin’ Winky Dink and Me
eatin’ PB and J sandwiches
in front of her black and white tv.
But she liked Gene Autry
that singin’ cowboy,
and Roy Rogers and Dale
croonin’ Happy Trails to You,
like it was just for her.
Me? I was the silent type.
Who would guess it now.
The Lone Ranger was my guy.
No sissy singin’ – just that masked man
ridin’ into those far off hills.
So imagine my surprise
hearin’ good ole Gene
on the radio today
preachin’ at me in song,
There’s no back door to heaven.
And I guess he’d know,
at least in the eyes of Junie Z
after all these years,
but not for tone-deaf me.
Couldn’t resist putting up a more light hearted one for the prompt. Take a listen — ah the childhood memories of me and Junie Z! Posted for Dverse Tuesday Poetics, a poem somehow related to “doors.”
You carried me
over the threshold…
alice found crazy hats
and a tea party…
stalactites dripped slowly
until they began to fall…
fissures…
apertures…
this time
you cannot be
with me…
door to something
somewhere…
and I must
pass
alone.
Tending the bar today at dVerse’s virtual Pub for Poets. It’s Tuesday Poetics and I’ve asked folks to write a poem relating to the word “door.” Although I provided a number of photos for possible use, writers can also use one of their own. This one was taken at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts a few days ago – a space you enter wtih three walls, ceiling and floor covered in mirror or mirror-like materials with beads and jewels hanging from various areas. Looking back at the photo – it seems a passage to another world — perhaps an afterlife? Who knows? You’re invited to visit dVerse and pop through some doors with a group of wonderful writers!
I’d read Blueberries for Sal as a young girl. Robert McCloskey’s 1949 Caldecott winner, set in rugged Maine. And so I recalled that book many years later, spending three glorious days in Acadia National Park.
We spent our indoor time within the cozy confines of a knotty pine cabin. Mornings of hot steaming coffee mugs, looking out windows that opened to the northern woods. Bedtime, covered in faded down quilts, noses chilled as our fire turned to softly glowing embers.
Afternoon walks took us along the coastline, climbing over rock strewn paths with views of crashing waves. Trail number three turned inward, passed ruins of a wall, crumbled stones scattered in wild tall grasses. We walked through a dense birch tree stand. And in one magical moment, the wind whipped up and the canopy of branches swayed. Sunlight streamed in, creating a shimmering lacework overhead.
Our last evening, in denim shirts and hiking boots, we made our way at dusk to the top of Cadillac Mountain. We lie back and watched the sky turn glittering black. Specks of incandescence gleamed light years away. The only sound was our intake of surprised breath as a shooting star streaked from left to right, to another place in time.
sun light dances
through birch tree leaves and disappears
as stars skitter into view
Written for Haibun Monday at dVerse Poets’ Pub with Bjorn tending the virtual bar, asking us to write a haibun about a walk we’ve taken. Photos from Acadia National Park, Bar Harbor Maine.
Chrysalis dream
mezmerising solitude
finding peace within.
Photo from Provincetown, Cape Cod.
Casting her eyes to heaven
she meandered through what was.
If only
she’d sensed his other half,
those gentle hands fisted as
love pummeled, possessed too far.
She lie now, crumpled to the floor, that
human mass he abandoned in the night.
Sometimes poetry can be written to call attention to an endemic problem. This is dedicated to all those who face domestic abuse. Written for dVerse in a unique format that takes one or two lines from another poem and uses these words, in order, as the end words of the new poem. Photo credit: Linda Lucerne
Ferlinghetti’s poem titled 21 is from the 60th Anniversary Edition, City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology, edited by Lawrence Ferlinghetti:
Heaven
was only half as far that night
at the poetry recital
listening to the burnt phrases
when I heard the poet have
a rhyming erection
then look away with a
lost look
‘Every animal’ he said at last
‘After intercourse is sad’
But the back-row lovers
looked oblivious
and glad
Telephone chatter,
chirps heard round the neighborhood.
Eunice knows
what clara knows
what maybeth knows
what celia knows.
Biddies gathered round the wire
in times gone by.
Word Count: 27. Written for Rochelle Wiseoff-Fields’ Friday Fictioneers (photo prompt appears on Wednesdays) Photo credit: Roger Bultot. Apologies to those expecting fiction here….saw this photo and could not resist! When we were first married (early 1970s) we lived in Marengo, Iowa — the last place in the USA to have 4 digit phone numbers (think about that!) and of course, we also had party lines. For those of you too young to understand, those were the days of rotary dial phones where 5 or 6 or sometimes more families all shared the same “line.” We always picked up our telephone receiver (the piece you listened to and spoke into) carefully, and didn’t start dialing until we knew it was “free.” OR, chuckle deviously here, you could listen in to what was going on in the neighborhood!
Intruders are we
amongst orange-red hoodoos.
Otherworldly creatures,
knobby limestone
eroded by wind and rain,
guarding slot canyons
and plateau rims.
We tread silently,
specks of time
wandering through your midst.
Written for dVerse — prompting us to write poetry about the SouthWest USA. Photos are from a trip in 20013 to Bryce Canyon. A magical place indeed.
lillian the home poet 