Secrecy at night
Showing dark for light
Of day.
Hold me hoping tight.
Tilt me toward the right
Of way.
What I’m left of sight
Turn disturbing fright
To play.
Linked to dVerse Form Poetry where Grace is hosting featuring this month the “lai”.
Lai
Tag: dVerse
Walking Home
Warm it was, your mother’s hand.
She waited at the school bus stand.
You won’t believe how young she was
When dreams caressed your cheek unplanned.
Linked to dVerse Poetry Forms. I am hosting at dVerse with the ruba’i or rubaiyat form.
Right Sized for Just Enough
The house I’m building in my head
Is either very small
Or big so it excludes no one,
An ark that holds us all.
But since I don’t know everything
And others would build, too,
That fancy house would have to be
Quite small–just what will do.
Linked to dVerse Poetics hosted by Sara McNulty with the prompt “DIY building”.
Photo by the author, “All of us fish in one pond”
Forest Bath
We bathe in wonders. Some manipulate aspects of these aided by theories of gravity or electromagnetism. I try to stand tall with shoulders back so I can breathe deeply which keeps my heart open to resonate with Whatever. I step off the street and enter a dense forest trail. As I move deeper into the woods human sounds smooth out into hums softer than the crunch of my feet on last autumn’s leaves.
Walking this path, I intend to pay attention, but I miss almost everything.
When I choose not to enter some woods, it sprinkles me with thoughts of regret. If I do enter, but pay no attention to anything, I am still caressed. Someday I might understand the rapture of every creature like that of the worms as they return autumn’s mulch to the trees, but, right now, I can’t separate out those drops of this forest bath. I walk. When the path ends I feel refreshed.
WORMS WORK WINTER MULCH
RIVER DRAINS AWAY THE SNOW
FOOTSTEPS CRUMPLE LEAVES
Linked to dVerse Haibun Monday hosted by Toni aka kanzen sakura (www.kanzensakura.wordpress.com) who writes, “In 1980, the Japanese began a type of healing/meditation/relaxation process called shinrin-yoku (森林浴) or literally, forest bathing.” The prompt is to try this yourself and report on your experiences.
Keeping My Imaginary Friend Happy
What a sky-is-blue-grass-is-green day! I love sitting on this park bench with my imaginary friend, Alice. While I’m enjoying reality she’s telling me that if she ever hears another rhyme between “night” and “light” or “death” and “breath” she’s going to do something I’ll regret. Furthermore she insists I stop writing those happy-happy poems because as a fully deconstructed, beyond-whatever-existential adult she would rather have angst, dread and drivel smothering her than sentimentality. I tell her that I kind of like those rhymes. She pulls out some pills, “Here. Take these.” As I swallow sending them down, down into the depths of deconstruction she jumps up from her existential happy place and proclaims, “Haha! That’s arsenic! You’re dead!”
Then Alice cries, “I’m sorry I gave you that arsenic even if it was only imaginary arsenic.” “That’s OK.” (What else am I going to say?) She explains that it is all because she’s not real. That’s why she acts the way she does. I tell her, “Look at those atoms. They’re just empty space! They aren’t any more real than you are!” She stops crying and asks, “Really?” And I say, “Sure!” Then she wants to know about that tiny stuff in the middle of the atoms. She starts crying again. I tell her that tiny stuff isn’t real either. “Really?” At this point I have to think. I don’t want to lie to her, but I don’t want her to start crying again and for all I know she’s as real as anything else I can imagine out there and so I say, “Sure!”
I am hosting dVerse Meeting the Bar Prose Poetry today. The challenge is to write either a prose poem or a poem explaining why prose poetry doesn’t exist. Any similarity to real people in this prose poem is purely imaginary.
Four Feet From My Desk
We’ve thrown so many things away
And lost so many, too,
But this one’s hanging on the wall
Reminding us when she was small
And what she used to do.
She drew a smiling figure
With ears and big, orange eyes.
With care she knew that she could dance
And lovers knew fulfilled romance.
We watched with proud surprise.
Linked to dVerse Poetics One Momento hosted by Mish.
Photo by the author
My Happy Giggles Hide From You
Some days my happy giggles don’t
Do what I want them to.
They hide because I’m feeling sad.
They hide because I’m being bad.
They hide because you think I might
Be someone who is not quite right.
That’s why we hide from you.
The “I” and “you” are imaginary. I just like speaking in the first person. One day I might collect these and call them “Confessional Poetry of Imaginary People”.
Linked to dVerse Quadrille #27 hosted by De Jackson (aka WhimsyGizmo) making use of the word “giggle”.
Photograph: “Birds Who Think I’m Quite Alright To Be Around” by the author.
Young Night
Light can come from anywhere.
The Sun won’t interfere
Though earlier it owned the sky.
The Moon is full. The buildings rise.
The snow-like stars and star-like snow
Reminds one of the cold.
There is a bridge from here to there
And back again from there to here
Off-center and below
That maps attempt to document.
Is there a narrative in this?
Has someone sent a secret kiss
That sets in motion someone bold?
Is there somewhere some consciousness
That daydreams as the night grows old?
This night’s still young, too wise to care.
It’s cloud-hazed, bright and anywhere.
Linked to dVerse OLN hosted by Grace.
Photography: “Red, White and Dark” by the author.
Suburban
This was a field not long ago.
Patterned houses face a street
With quarter-acre lawns or so
And landscaped trees make it complete.
The mailman stops at every home.
You’ll need a car to get somewhere.
Like stars out there we shine alone
In tiny castles all our own
But love will find friends waiting there.
Linked to dVerse Poetics – suburb poetry hosted by Oloriel.
Walking in Circles
From the distance of a lifetime, a spiral describes it better, but the smaller ones seem circular to me like when walking from one side of the room to the other, turning around and then walking back. Or, walking to the library, standing tall with shoulders back so the air can more easily enter my lungs and my eyes can look right at it, trying to realize, even when I can’t, that everywhere I am still able to go and everything greeting me on the way from sidewalks and apartments to trees and clouds are a gift from or a hint of heaven.
I think in circles as I walk in them. Sometimes I pop those thoughts and sometimes I enjoy them again and again like that ancient story of a man and his dog that keeps coming to mind. Perhaps they died much like my ex-brother-in-law who was found burnt in an apartment fire. His dog stayed with him on his lap. It is them I see walk to the gates of heaven and find that sign, “No Dogs Allowed”. The gatekeeper confirms that there is no problem with him going in, in spite of everything, but not his dog. Since heaven wouldn’t be heaven if one were alone, I see him turn around. He takes his dog and they walk toward a scenic, spiraling path that appears before them and everywhere they go is heaven.
GEESE AND DUCKS RETURN
PEOPLE WALK THE PARK IN TWOS
FLOWERS COMING SOON
Linked with dVerse Pub Haibun Monday hosted by Toni Spencer with the theme “the best things in life are free”.
Poetry, Short Prose and Walking 