Category: Poetry

Park Shade

You grew in what became a picnic grove
Providing shade to what is now a park
While dying you were cut and when I drove
One morning past your place expecting dark
I found the stump, your tombstone, your new mark
And knew eventually that so will I
Look up with new perspective on the sky.

Text: Linked to dVerse Open Link Night hosted by Kim.  The form is called Chaucerian stanza or rime royal (or, for those who can spell better, rhyme royal).  I may use this form next week as a prompt.
I am linking this to Jilly’s October Casting Bricks Collaboration Challenge as the first half of a two stanza poem. The form is iambic pentameter with rhyme pattern ababbcc.

Photos: “Oak Stump”, above, and “Hour Walk Through Somme Woods”, below, by the author.  I am linking these to Frank Jansen’s Tuesday Photo Challenge with the theme of “hour”.  I took these during an hour walk in Somme Woods yesterday.

Hour Walk Through Somme Woods

First Frost’s Voice

The first frost tells us that the trend will change. More will come until more doesn’t come anymore. It is corrective whether one learns a lesson from it or not, perhaps how to better stay warm. We do not circle back into last year’s frost. We spiral into this fresh, new one.

WARM THEN COOLER AIR
RIVERS NEED NOT OVERFLOW
TREES DROP DULL, DRY LEAVES

Text: Linked to dVerse Haibun Monday. Victoria C. Slotto is hosting with the theme of first frost’s voice.

Photo: “Autumn Purple Yellow Flowers” by the author. I took this at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Autumn: Cosmic and Mundane

I want the cosmic and mundane
To merge into a truer view,
To turn into a new terrain
That wakes when autumn’s light shines through.

Photos: “Autumn Sunset”, above, and “Early Autumn”, below, by the author and linked to K’lee and Dale’s Cosmic Photo Challenge and trablogger’s Mundane Monday.

Early Autumn

Autumn Awakens

Summer needs to get some rest.
Fall, it’s time to rise!
Have you any dreams to share
Through cool autumn skies?

Text: Linked to dVerse Meeting the Bar.  I am hosting.  The theme is sleep.  There are no other constraints.

Photos: “RIP Summer ’17”, above that I am linking to Frank Jansen’s Tuesday Photo Challenge with the theme “signs”, and “Changing Maple Leaves”, below.   I took both along the Chipilly Woods Trail.

Changing Maple Leaves

Turquoise

It’s a funny kind of blue or green
That seems to match my oddly changing eyes.
Turquoise is a stone I recognize
More than that hidden self that stays unseen.

Text: Linked to dVerse Poetics. Lillian is hosting with the theme of birthstones. Mine is turquoise.

Photo: “Birds and Table at the Park” by the author taken at Navy Pier in Chicago.  The people left and the birds arrived for the crumbs.

Remarkable Forgotten Dreams

Dreams I can’t remember–
I wonder–were they nice?
When I wake I understand
They enhance like spice.
Who was busy through the night?
I can not recall.
Who then turned the morning on?
Who put color in the dawn?
That one did it all.

Text: Linked to dVerse Quadrille Monday. Mish hosts today with the prompt word “spice”.

Photo: “Water Garden” by the author taken at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Pink Guardians of the Entrance

Some say that they are in the way
But I am glad they’re there.
They’re still and bright and love the light
Projecting pink through day and night
To scare away despair.

Photo: “Pink Guardians of the Entrance”. I am linking this to K’lee and Dale’s Cosmic Photo Challenge with the theme of “the stillness and the light” and to trablogger’s Mundane Monday.

Stones

The fantasy of stony stuff
Is that it counts more real
Than anything that we can know
By feeling how we feel.

Text: I am linking the poem to dVerse Open Link Night hosted by Gayle.

Photos: I am linking the two photos, “Pebbles”, above, and “Stones”, below, to Frank Jansen’s Tuesday Photo Challenge with the theme “stones”.

Stones

Questions That Won’t Tolerate Any Old Answers

What will help me levitate
Above my shallow, mundane state,
Paint my dreams in shocking true
From patient red to brilliant blue?

Where’s the shift that turns the night
Into the mysteries of light
And lets the words that stray today
Be only those you’d have me say?

Text: Linked to dVerse Poetics. Bjorn is hosting with the theme of questions.

Photos: “The Shoin House at the Chicago Botanic Garden”, above, and “Morning Observations”, below, by the author.

Morning Observations

Reflections on the Deep End

I rarely descend to the existential depths of metaphysical dread. Why would anyone want to? Besides there’s nothing down there. That’s why it’s dreadful. Why get all miserable over nothing? Sanity stays on the bright surface with the breathable air and the cleansing rain. Or, to put it in other words: don’t look down–the deeper depth is toward the sky.  That leads me to my problem. Although I don’t have anything particularly dreadful to write about, which should make the sophisticated and critical reader question my allegiance to the dark side, I no longer have any motivation to shut up.

SMILING LETS ONE BE
SEASONS’ PLAYFUL METERS RHYME
TIME TO LIVE FORGIVE

Text: Linked to dVerse Haibun Monday.  Bjorn is hosting.  Toni provided the prompt why do we write in the way we do?  I am not sure if I answered it.
I am also linking this to Debbie Roth’s Forgiving Fridays because it occurred to me when I woke this morning that if I really want to levitate to a deeper depth I will have to stop weighing myself down with making sure karma is distributed equitably. There’s plenty of karma to go around.

Photos: “Water Flowers”, above, and “At the Chicago Botanic Garden”, below, by the author.

At the Chicago Botanic Garden