seasons

Blossom Me

lillian16 Comments

Sunny daffodils, wave your ruffled heads.
Delicate cherry blossoms loosed by spring breeze,
softly, silently, rain pink petals upon all below.
Candy-cane red and white tulips stand tall
beside double-layered pinks and yellows.
Soon bleeding hearts will dangle gently
over sweetly petite lilies of the valley.
And lanes will burst forth with lilac blooms,
myriad shades of purple perfuming the air.
Bedazzle me, Mother Nature.
I am so ready for your greening,
most especially
after this long reclusive year!

Written for Open Link Night at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today we go LIVE at 3 PM Boston time and folks have the opportunity to visit, put faces and voices with author’s names and read aloud if they wish. Come join us! Link is on the dVerse site, at 3 PM Boston time.

Also posted at Day 15 NaPoWriMo.

Photos all taken around our building here in Boston, at the Public Gardens and at the Harvard Arboretum….in past years. Spring is still trying to green this year!

Seasonal Change

lillian14 Comments

Sun strengthens,
pries loose snow mask from mountain caps.
Water trickles, begins to overflow,
swiftly runs downstream.
~
Gregarious tendencies
stifled too long.
Confined by lockdowns,
hidden by masks from view.

Vaccinations bloom,
propagate in spring.
Sun strengthens as do we,
spilling out to streets.

It’s Quadrille Monday at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets. Today Sarah asks us to include the word “swift” or a form of the word (not a synonym) in our exactly 44 word poem, sans title. Photo from Pixabay.com
I fervently believe we are emerging from the season of Covid. Stay safe everyone and let’s insure this happens.

Death Stalks a Tanka

lillian23 Comments

Death rattles nearby
cold winter has stripped trees bare.
Branches jerk in wind
create shadows in our room.
I seek comfort in your arms.

Frank is hosting MTB at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today, he asks us to write a Japanese death poem which can be in the form of a tanka if we choose. He explains that a Japanese death poem speaks of imminent death but at the same time, extolls the significance of life. A tanka is similar to a haiku, but longer: 5 lines of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables.

Seasonal Scenes

lillian17 Comments

Summer tourist ignores gawking stares,
is scantily clad
leaving little to imagination.
Too intent on catching season’s last rays
exchanging working haze for lazy days.

Its transition, felled by floral war of sorts,
gold dipped sunflowers droop defeated.
For autumn’s hearty mums,
brass and bragadocious, now gleam victorious.

Written for Tuesday Poetics at dVerse. Today Laura asks us to write a nine line poem. To make it more challenging, she asks that it incorporate a specific line from a poem she’s cited; and that line just happens to be exactly nine words long! Each of these nine words then, in that order, become the first word in each of the nine lines of my poem. Confused?
Here’s the line: “Summer is leaving too, exchanging its gold for brass” from Dorothy Lawrenson’s September. Now, look just at the first word in each of the nine lines of my poem Seasonal Scenes. And now read those first words from top to bottom and voila, they say Summer is leaving too, exchanging its gold for brass!
Photo from pixabay.com

To Everything There is a Season

lillian54 Comments

City folk turned country dwellers
we weathered through the seasons.
First-time home-owners on thirty acres,
we rented out our fields.
Watched corn and wheat planted,
then flourish in hot Iowa sun.

Harvest seasons came and went.
Like shapeshifters,
acres changed their landscaped views.
Plant, tend, reap, rest.
We marked off years waiting,
hoping for a blooming of our own.

And then, pregnant with expectation
we watched my belly grow,
just as the wheat and corn grew tall.
Similar to mother earth that year,
we gave birth, finding sustenance
in the fruits of our labor.

And then one bright September day
we brought our daughter home.
Stood blinking from the sun’s glare
holding her up amidst the fields,
thankful for new life
in this, our season of joy.  

Written for Tuesday Poetics at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets across the globe. Today, Rose is guest hosting and titles her prompt “Waiting on Wheat” – asking us to somehow write about wheat within our poem. Photos are from our homestead in Iowa, in 1974. Yep – that’s me with our daughter on the day I came home from the hospital. In those days, it was common to stay in the hospital for 5 days! Even after a normal birth. My how times have changed! The title for the poem comes from Ecclesiastes in the Bible and was also turned into a wonderful song written by Pete Seeger, first recorded in 1959.

Celebrating National Haiku Poetry Day

lillian16 Comments

kaleidoscope me
fuchsia, orange, purple too ~
flowerlicious spring

Day 17 of National Poetry Writing Month, which is also National Haiku Poetry Day. Toads asks us to write a traditional haiku:
* three lines, 5-7-5 syllabic structure
* must include a kigo (seasonal reference)
* must include a kiru (cutting/juxtapositioning/punctuation that shifts focus).  Here the toy kaleidoscope becomes spring’s profusion of flowers.

Photos: first is from the San Diego Botanical Gardens last month. The lilac photo was taken last May in Harvard Arboretum’s lilac lane.

Stop in at Toads today to sample some wonderful haiku!Â