Shinrin-Yoku

lillian18 Comments

Serenity, I walk in bliss.
Trees breeze-whisper, nothing amiss.
Soft ferns hushed, shimmer velvetly.
Moist, fresh forest scent, nature’s kiss.
Your lips come to mind. Ecstasy.
I walk in bliss. Serenity.

Shinrin-Yoku is Japanese for forest bathing: bathing in the forest atmosphere, taking in the forest through our senses.

Grace is hosting Meet-The-Bar Thursday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. She’s asked us to write a Sparrowlet, a poetry form invented by Kathrine Sparrow. Here’s the elements of a Sparrowlet:
1. stanzaic, written in any number of sixtains (6 line stanzas) I wrote 1 sixtain.
2. syllabic: each line must be 8 syllables each (Often written in iambic tetrameter – I didn’t!)
3. Line 1 and Line 6 of the stanza is written in 2 himistichs (I had to look this word up)
4. Rhymed, rhyme scheme is BbabaA.
5. The 2 halves of Line 1 are inverted and repeated as a refrain in Line 6. The lst line MUST be the EXACT SAME as line 1, just switched around. You cannot change any of the words. (Punctuation may be changed to accommodate the meaning.)
RRA, RRB
xxxxxxxxb
xxxxxxxxa
xxxxxxxxb
xxxxxxxxa
RRB, RRA

Luckily Grace included an example of a poem written in this form within her prompt. The example for me, was much easier to follow than the definition itself! Pub opens at 3 PM Boston time. Come join us to try this form — or just to see how others wrote with it!

Photo from a trip to see my niece in Ohio a number of years ago.

Journey Gone Askew

lillian35 Comments

She picked one of the two.
Not her roots in rural life,
golden brick road more tempting.
Drove it to wealth,
fancy home in fancy heights
prestige, black tie events.

Ignored the signs.
Exit ramps,
detours available,
this way outs.
Drove and drove,
hard and harder.

Too late she realized,
the road she picked?
Sadly a dead-end street.

I’m hosting Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets. I’m asking folks to choose one adage/proverb from a list I provide, and use it as their inspiration for their poem today. The list includes adages from Aesop’s Fables, Adagia, Poor Richard’s Almanack, the Bible. I also provide one line from a movie, which is the line this poem is inspired by: “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.” Forrest Gump, the movie.

Join us at 3 PM Boston time to see the full list. Then write your poem and post it so we can enjoy together! Image from Pixabay.com

Go Forth, Multiply – Mandate of the Deities

lillian33 Comments

She was born in the fortieth century. Her lineage could be traced to earth, before it succumbed to supreme neglect. It is her wedding day. Carrying a bouquet of hybrid plumeria fertilized by star dust and carnage from deteriorated communication satellites, she slides between Ursa and its latest shard, to meet her chosen mate.

“Where is the payment I required for my body to wed your being?”

Handing her a package vibrating with energy he mouths “It is a moon wrapped in brown paper. As you mandated.”

Once unwrapped, it floats toward her three breasts illuminating them, and then seemingly melts into her circuitry. She smiles, knowing she is now impregnated. Her kind will continue. No longer needing this other being, her eyes turn iridescent green and devour him. She fades into the celestial skies, content to know she will multiply.

Written for Prosery Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Bjorn is tending the pub and asks us to include the line “It is a moon wrapped in brown paper” in a piece of fiction that is 144 words or less, sans title. The line is from the poem Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy, a Scottish Poet who was the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 2009-2019.

Prosery: a form created by dVerse. A line from a poem is given for the prompt. Writers must include the line exactly word for word (punctuation may be changed) within a piece of prose (not poetry) that is 144 words or less, sans title.

Image from Pixabay.com

Time

lillian2 Comments

Time is a glutton,
no pause in its diet.

Time is invisible,
except in heights marked
on a kitchen door,
candles on a cake,
tombstones in cemetery plots.

Time can not spin backwards.
Its lust for more seconds,
more days, more weeks,
more years, more decades,
insatiable.

Time eats each word I write.
Time, the ravenous glutton.

Image from Pixabay.com

Lost

lillian1 Comment

Blizzard blind,
vision veiled by shades of white.
Snow accumulates,
known markers entombed.
She struggles to remember
through haze of memories,
her life without these days
of whirling, pummeling storms.
Frozen iced in daze.
Time shifts. Skies clear.
Sadly, somewhere in her mind,
she remains
buried in the drifts.

Although I am in San Diego for two months, I’m watching the weather channel, seeing Boston get hit with a historic blizzard. Somehow this poem came to my pen. Image from Pixabay.com

Disappointment

lillian25 Comments

Holding kite, excited to run
grinning in sun.
Wind picks up speed
flight guaranteed.

Running down field, kite takes to air
eyes glaze in glare.
Excited screams,
Better than dreams!

String tugs, yanks and breaks. Kite floats free
stilling her glee.
Kite disappears
brings on the tears.

Written for Meet the Bar Thursday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets. Today, Grace asks us to “explore an invented poetry form – The Minute Poem. It’s a 60 syllable verse form, one syllable for each second in a minute. The theme must be an event that is over and done completely, as in a minute. Since the dominant line is short, the effect is likely humorous, whimsical or semi-serious. It was created by Verna Lee Hinnegardner, once poet laureate of Arkansas.”

For me, it’s another “sudoku” poem! That is, a complex form that challenges me. Here’s the elements we must adhere to:
* It must be narrative poetry: tell a story.
* It is a 12 line poem made up of 3 quatrains (3 four-line stanzas)
* Syllabic form is 8-4-4-4, 8-4-4-4, 8-4-4-4 (8 syllables in the first line of each stanza; 4 in the second, thrid and fourth line of each stanza.
* It must have the rhyme scheme of aabb, ccdd, eeff
* It should be a description of a finished event (preferably something done in 60 seconds).

PHOTO: taken in Bermuda about 7 years ago when we went to their Good Friday kite festival.

Childhood Memories

lillian23 Comments

“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.

Derecho

lillian31 Comments

Curtain billows in wind.
Candlelight flickers,
flame shivers, dips,
almost snuffed out.
Metaphorical
for our predicament,
but a gentler scene.

Healthcare systems threatened.
Tsunami of violence,
hatred, inequities.
We cup our hands
around the flame of hope,
trying to protect it
through these storms.

It’s Quadrille Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today we’re to include the word “shiver” or a form of the word (not a synonym) in our poem of exactly 44 words, sans title. Pub opens at 3 PM, Boston time. Come join us!

* A derecho is a wide-spread, long lived, dangerous windstorm.

Straws

lillian5 Comments

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.