nature

…and the bloom shall fade

lillian40 Comments

Her garden suffers from end-of-season neglect. Nutrients wane as days shorten. Young trees, now mature, cast their presence in shadows.  Flower petals and fronds wither to veined brittle frames of their former beauty. They bend closer day by day, to the earth from which they came. Winter’s cold reality approaches, as sure as the moon changes face. Life hovers on a thread.

She sits patiently
window blurred with veins of frost
waits for children gone.

image2

Susan Judd is hosting dVerse for Haibun Monday and provides us with her beautiful photography and the descriptive phrase “beauty in decay” as a prompt for writing today. If you’re not familiar with dVerse, stop in for a visit. It’s a great gathering place for those who enjoy poetry!  Also using for NaPoWriMo day 25.  30 poems in 30 days, that’s April – National Poetry Writing Month.

Bermudiana Morn

lillian48 Comments

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.

How Long Can We Ignore?

lillian30 Comments

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.

Glacier melting.

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.

 

 

Paging Vincent Van Gogh

lillian10 Comments

Hybrid sunflowers
big time flower power.
Fast growing giant Kong,
Bashful Lemon Queen,
bold eye catching.
Ms. Mars, uncommonly gorgeous.
Elf, compact charmer
and Little Becka too.
Madly floriferous Candy,
Strawberry Blonde, Frilly
and Crimson Blaze,
dazzle with sensuous high definition.
Sunny Bunch, Honey Bears
precious beauties,
incredible lovable faces.
All flummoxed on your easel,
sowed one quarter inch deep
in oil, denied full sun,
borders and beds.
Your fame, their demise.

IMG_7325 - Version 2

Written for Day 6 NaPoWriMo, using day five’s prompt: Create a poem using words from a seed catalogue. This is from Burpee’s 2016 catalogue, pages for sunflowers. All words, including title, are exactly as written in Burpee’s except for those italicized. Kong, Bashful, Lemon Queen, Ms. Mars, Elf, Little Becka, Candy, Strawberry Blonde, Frilly, Crimson Blaze, Sunny Bunch, and Honey Bears are all hybrid sunflower varieties. I do love the Found Poetry genre. Photo: from beautiful Cape Cod’s Provincetown, several years ago. 

Fannie Quigley, 1870-1944

lillian21 Comments

Train moved round the bend, civilized now,
not then. Those days, she chose life
off the beaten track. No lookin’ back.
Twenty-six claims staked and panned.
Never hit it rich the way we define it.
Kantishna, home to caribou, moose
and Fannie Quigley. One tough broad.
Slung back whiskey and cussed with ‘em all.
Calloused hands skinned her kill
then rolled flaky pie crust,
bear lard, the secret.
Legendary in her day and beyond,
she took no train but her own.

Written for NaPoWriMo 2016 Day 5 and dVerse Pub for Poets where Bjorn suggests we use the idea of railroad/trains for a poem today. Photo Credits: from our Alaska trip last year. We visited the remote cabin of Fannie Quigley.

Bermuda in Style

lillian9 Comments

Rain pelts, lightning tiara,
emerald green limbs
drip gold loquat jewels,
sapphire seas belt her girth.
Bermuda, dark and stormy,
wears her weather well.

Various storm brewing photos and their aftermath in Bermuda over the past two months. Yes: the water is really that colorful!!  No photoshopping done. Poem offered for NaPoWriMo Day 3 (without prompt). The loquat is a delicious fruit that grows on a tree and is ripe when golden. The Dark ‘n Stormy is also the national drink (made with Goslings Black Seal Rum and Ginger Beer).

Mountain Gifts

lillian30 Comments

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.

melissa-plants-lemon-balm-1165802
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.

Kilauea

lillian12 Comments

Thick viscous red-orange glows
slowly oozes over blackened fissures,
moonlight its only witness.

Pele’s tresses lengthen in waves
undulate, hiss, bubble heat
flow surely, but slowly, angry not.

Ancestral guardian hesitant to erupt
she lives, breathes forward warning
all shall be buried in quiet wakefulness.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Photo: from our lava walk on the Big Island in Hawaii. We walked on Kilauea — it is still continually and slowly flowing, adding land mass. Pele is the Fire Goddess and considered creater of the Hawaiian Islands. Her flows create her hair, smooth waves of hardened lava. Late to the party — I am postint to Open Link Night at dVerse Poet’s Pub.

Bryce Canyon

lillian17 Comments

Paiutes called them Legend People turned to stone by Coyote. I call them mystical.

Silhouettes evolved from ancient seaway. Columns of ochre and orange-pink. Water, ice and gravity had their way with you. Slot canyons so narrow the head strains up for blue. Shadowed red when sun slants in. Thin rims so high there is nothing but everything beside. We tread in awe among these hoodoo pillars. This place of craggy, sharp-edged, smooth, fantastical shapes.

Rocks eroded tall
time escaped in canyons deep
we like specks of dust.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

It was Haibun Monday at dVerse, the Pub for Poets. Rajani is tending bar and asked us to write about a travel experience. Haibun is “richly woven prose amplified by simple yet profound haiku. In its traditional sense, it connects to nature and travel. Photos from trip to Bryce many years ago. 

Watch Me!

lillian38 Comments

I am in my eighty-seventh life on this earth. I’ve always been a feminist. Female, beautiful, and independently sufficient at the same time. I loved my can-can ruffle life in the Parisian bordello. And I donned a bright sash when I pounded my suffragette drum.

But this narcisstic genius body? It’s perfect!

I am bright, erect, and wear my sunny ruffles well. I stand above those two-lip characters, dutch men all of them. Short-lived though I shall be, there is nothing daffy about me! I am JonQuil the magnificent. And I out shine every bloomin’ thing!

trg1

Word Count: 96. Written for Friday Fictioneers. Rochelle Wiseoff-Fields provides the photo prompt and a myriad of folks work their words into what is known as “flash fiction.” Must be a complete story about the photo, in 100 words or less.  FYI:  the jonquil, as well as the daffodil, are members of the Narcissus genus. Photo Credit: The Reclining Gentleman.