Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts

Sunday, September 16, 2018

August Night

This is a guest post. My 12 year old granddaughter Maddie wrote the poem and composed the photograph when I was visiting in Reno a month ago. On the night before I left we sat outside talking while we watched moonrise and starshine. I will be sure to keep these memories, too.




Saturday, April 2, 2016

April and Poetry

In these first days of April, I am thankful for the reminder that it is National Poetry month as well as National Poetry Writing month.  It has been a good time to pick up a book of favorite poems and spend some unhurried time enjoying it.   Once, I  took an online poetry course in which I learned more about writing the Japanese poetry form, haiku, as well as its related forms.  I signed up for the course thinking I needed to learn more about using fewer words (OK, I hear laughing from somewhere!)and because I wanted to understand this form of poetry better.  I enjoyed it so much that I am still scribbling haiku on napkins and the back of my grocery lists!  Here are a few. I like photographing an image, then writing about it. Most of my poetry now is posted on my other blog, www.stonesandfeathers.wordpress.com.  I invite you to join me there as well.




pomegranate flower heavy
with one rain drop
 promise of scarlet fruit



 forgotten October pumpkin

 collapses in decay

green sprouts inside



wind troubles pond
ripples widen
orange fish swim away



dusty windshield
 heavy raindrops
muddy rivulets chase each other



bees gather
lemon blossom bobs,
wafting fragrant promise of bounty

In honor of this season of Spring and Easter, why not try a new beginning and write a poem?  If you don't want to write, then explore the writing of a new poet, or an old familiar one. The last few years,  I have come to love the poetry of Mary Oliver, Ann Weems, and Luci Shaw.  

Thursday, October 31, 2013

While It Is Still October...

Photo taken at George Ranch Historical Park in Fort Bend County, Texas - just down the road from our house.



Autumn here on the South Texas Gulf Coast does not always have the range of vivid color experienced by areas with more intense seasonal change, but it displays a wonder of softening light and a whole new palette of green.  It is no surprise that poets choose to write about these days on the calendar.

 

I have long liked poetry, but I came to love it in the last few years, and began writing poetry again after years of sticking mostly to prose.  This year, I have found many poems featuring this lovely time of year, so I wanted to share a few with you before the month is gone.  Today is Halloween, October 31, so, while it is still October...


There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804 - 1864


Listen! the wind is rising, and the air is wild with leaves,
We have had our summer evenings, now for October eves!
Humbert Wolfe



I have been younger in October
than in all the months of spring...
W. S. Merwin, "The Love of October"



Leaves rip from the trees 
still green as rain scuds
off the ocean in broad grey
scimitars of water hard
as granite pebbles flung
in my face.


Sometimes my days are torn
from the calendar,
hardly touched and gone,
like leaves too fresh
still to fall littering
sodden on the bricks.



But I have had them—
torrents of days. Who
am I to complain they
shorten? I used them
hard, wore them out
and down, grabbed



at what chance offered.
If I stand stripped
and bare, my bones
still shine like opals
where love rubbed sweetly,
hard, against them.

"October nor'easter" by Marge Piercy, from The Crooked Inheritance