nature

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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

 

 

Nature’s Blessings

lillian4 Comments

Mid night rains nurture
palmetto and loquat trees,
pinball through ridges
on Bermudian white roofs,
then steep in afternoon tea.

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Tanka verse form: 5 lines of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables. Photos and explanation: Fruit of the loquat tree in Bermuda – ripe when very yellow. Bermuda has no rivers or lakes or island-wide plumbed water supply. Each household must collect and store rainwater. Roofs are treated and always white with ridges that take rain water to each home’s underground water tank. A household that runs out of fresh water must pay to have a company “top off” their tank. And yes, the water is absolutely safe to drink – I do it every day! Photo is taken from hill overlooking St. George’s – the town we are staying in for 2 months. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, founded in 1612, and a British overseas territory, hence the reference to steeping tea. The Kiskadee is a beautiful yellow bird found in Bermuda.

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Bermuda Morn

lillian13 Comments

Dark bird shapes in nearby palmetto
chatter loudly as clouds move by,
long fronds ruffle-whisper in ocean breeze.

Across the bay, one by one, lights disappear
grey sky blanket daubed with white blotches
lifts slowly to reveal brilliant blue.

Birds, now distinctly yellow, sing to me
kis-ka-dee, kis-ka-dee
and a Bermuda morning dawns.

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We are in St. George’s, Bermuda till March 29. Arrived yesterday. Photo is view from our deck at dusk last evening. Poem was written very early this morning, sitting on this same deck, listening and watching dawn arrive. Pen in hand….sadly, not the camera. Imagine this same picture, at dawn, with this palmetto home to several Kiskadees! 

Orchard’s Plight

lillian44 Comments

Branches droop, shiny red and ready.
Apples ignored too long, skin once taut
now caved in, ooze on ground below.
Sweet, rot-alicious smell draws gnats
as fruit flies swarm over boot slick ground.
Orchard sulks as farmer tends to corn.

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Written for dVerse Poets’ Pub. The bar is tended by Victoria Slotto today and she urges us to write a poem in the style of Imagism….”the words are pure description.”  Photo Credit: Petra Winkler.

Ancient Grounds

lillian36 Comments

I am the serpent
undulating, smooth mounded earth.
I meander your secrets,
fossilized creatures and bones
soils of thousands before you.
My head and tail mark each solstice
beginning and end, light within me,
but I do not cease in either place.
My spirit continues as grasses
a wave of wind in ancient song.
See me and then seek others,
mounds of shapes for ancient eyes.
Yours too can see my living rest,
effigies and raised birds in earth.
Share my calm. Join my native prayer
and let me be.

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Serpent Mound in Ohio. According to Gloria Steinem’s My Life on the Road, “Like so many other mounds, it would have been destroyed to make room for construction if money hadn’t been raised to save it, in this case, with the help of a group of women at the Peabody Museum of Massachusetts.”  I’ve never seen Serpent Mound but have been to Effigy Mounds in Iowa. Written for dVerse, Pub for Poets’ challenge: write an ecopoetry by exploring and dwelling in our relationship with nature in such a way that implies responsibility and engagement. 

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Dunes of Time

lillian18 Comments

Sand granules shift in shoes
sweat stained belly, dripping hair.
Up and over and down and up
and over and dune after dune.
Some with coarse stubble grass
some ridged from recent winds,
steps sink deeper every step.

Alone with memories,
faces shift like heat shimmers
mirages in my exhausted mind.
One more ridge.
Burning feet stop cold,
pupils dilate, tear ducts long dry
begin to burn, arms lift in shock.

White ripples rise up enmasse,
cacophonous beating wings above my head
thousands swerve. Amorphous sound wave
disappears where blue meets blue.

I stumble, slip down this last sand mound
shocked by their intensity, here then gone.
Lying in cool waters, face to glaring sun
I understand now. They are all gone.

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Published in response to Quickly’s Winter Doldrums: focus on a remembered moement when you seemed to enter into another sense of time.