In the tree there is a house
In the clay there is an ewer
The part of the house that is not the tree
The part of the ewer that is not the clay
The part of the human that is not the stone
20211004
https://dversepoets.com/2021/10/04/quadrille-137-throwing-poem-stones/
This is a lean-to in the woods
By the long narrow path.
Where the earth has been caressed
By feet passing
They arise, live, and pass away
As do the trees which are passed
Until they too pass
A shelter where souls can linger
A quadrille for the prompt at https://dversepoets.com/2021/09/20/quadrille-136-lets-linger/
And a tale of trees for the prompt at https://earthweal.com/2021/09/20/earthweal-weekly-challenge-a-timbered-choir/
20210921
Dappled sunlight drips
Through whole punched
Sievetrees
The leopard in my belly
Gnaws his own tail
A rounded needle
Skips across the grooves like
Those rounded shalestones
That lived inside the bend
Of the creek behind grandmas house…
Avert the dread of returning home
20210906
For the quadrille prompt at https://dversepoets.com/2021/09/06/quadrille-135-shake-that-poem-groove-thang/
What do you mean you don’t know how to rise and shine?
Every morning the sun shows you!
Just be as you are
The world will turn towards you
20210902
Added to the open link night at dVerse https://dversepoets.com/2021/09/02/openlinknight-299/
We sit at one table
But In separate chairs
Each eating their own dish
Each dreaming their own wish
Boats tied together down the docks
A chain across the river
Holding the banks together
Stave off the widening sea
The shuddering Rift Valley
I thought the magic of the river
Was in It’s endless flow
The way it plays with alluvium
And tosses trees about
And finds a way around
Whatever it encounters.
And then, she moves through the house.
The desert dam is so high
The lake behind so wide
The dry air laps the lake away
There’s naught beyond the spillway
The sea gasps at an empty mouth
What would the world be like
Had we matured enough
To reach that age when
We care for our mother?
If we hadn’t been turned off
And withdrawn when she
Showed signs of faltering
If we had the ears to hear
What she’s been saying all along
As if those two roads led to
Different places. But maybe that’s it.
Maybe the roads reconverge
And it didn’t matter
which way we went
We would be here anyway.
But had that other grassy path
Felt the tread of our soles…
No, the this or that didn’t matter
Then nor now
There is something though,
More of a how
If we had felt that road
With our souls
Each step a depth of
Reception
And each breath an atmosphere
Of cosmic scope
How can I walk without the ground
How can I breathe without the air
How can I love without fear
How can we achieve what we cannot conceive?
The garden is robust and fruitful
And the garden is everywhere
I turn away from my nieces disgust
To face a nonexistent
Audience, and away from the
Bowls of spaghetti on the table
FLush with red tomato sauce
Which last week was her favorite
The taste of which will now smack
Of windblown whimmish exercising
Childish grasping for the golden
Straws of control and the glittering
Awe of influence
20210826
Victoria prompts us for an soliloquy, mines with with a side of enjambment and a hint of synesthesia, as I try and cope with my new living situation. https://dversepoets.com/2021/08/26/meeting-the-bar-soliloquy/
The garden is makeup, a mask
A good front put up by the old house
Guarded by the smiling red capped gnome
Who is only slightly tipsy, not soused
It’s a lot of work to keep that up
Whose hands have worked that loam
Hauled the water and gently dowsed
The flowers vibrant, the mulch doan
What’s festering there behind windows
Perhaps that gentle agony of a surviving spouse
On the dresser still, his comb
How could she miss that old grouse
20210812
Two prompts with one pome, I tried to turn the house in to a home, but I lingered too long in it and got stuck. So this is a mirrored refrain https://dversepoets.com/2021/08/12/poetry-form-mirrorred-refrain/. And also an outside looking in, https://dversepoets.com/2021/08/10/poetics-outside-looking-in/ but I didn’t get very deep
Can I crawl back to that spot
Beside the mountain stream
Where I was baptized?
Where God came through the sun
And glittering angels rained over me
Can I drag myself back there,
So stained with the world’s mud,
And, in *that* light, stand?
20210810A quadrille, of 44 words, one of which is ‘stand’, for the prompt at dVerse. Join us here:
https://dversepoets.com/2021/08/09/dverse-monday-quadrille-stand/
There was so much more in that moment but these words are muddy too.
Frank Tassone calls for haibun about August at the d’Verse pub tonight. The Society for Creative Anachronism holds their biggest event, the Pennsic War, every august. This event signals the end of summer for me, and so my haibun is about it:
In the ripening of the year the tensions between kingdoms comes to a head, and all the long preparations come to fruition as the wagons are packed and we head off to war.
Armour is cleaned repaired or made anew, swords and halberds by the bundle, sheaves of arrows assembled as the armies drawn nigh each other. The sun is relentless, the storm clouds are legendary and the battles draw out the sweat from the depths of human bodies. That sacred water washes away the past and the future
Now is all there is. Untouched
By distant winter,
Love is the only victor
20210802
https://dversepoets.com/2021/08/02/haibun-monday-8-2-21-august/
This youtubular deluge
Floods like A perpetual Sandy
Perturbulent stirring ol Barnegat
But unlike that refreshing flush
Of bay, the landminds are scoured
of thoughts, left full of mud
Comparison: Cadosia creek
Cold, clear, alive
How can the same word
Stream
Be used for both
20210727. For the prompt at dverse, a quadrille using ‘stream’
Sandy was a hurricane that had great effect on the Jersey shore, and barnegat bay there. Cadosia creek is a mountain stream in upstate New York. https://dversepoets.com/2021/07/26/quadrille-132-your-poem-theme-stream/
