Tag: Poem

Spring cleaning

murky feelings in a hand-me-down shirt linger as last remnants…there but not there…silenced by practicality and a reluctance to discard…the hand-me-down stays much longer than it should…until I vow to keep essentials only and clothes that whisper joy…I give the shirt away and soon a new top comes bearing longer sleeves and a length that drapes my hips with comfort…and the murky shirt feelings? they fly away like dust in the wind.

Spring cleanup

creating new inner space

for today

©️2018 Ontheland

learning to flow

I woke up to the sound of chuckling rain. what a relief, a break from the urgent calls of the sun: come fork mounds of straw off the garden beds! come plant seeds–it’s early spring! come let the seedlings under indoor lamps breathe outside air! come out to mow the grass! I raise the blind and see young blades rising from the earth … they’ll be twice as hard to mow after their feast but what can I do? my body has rebelled, compelled me to rest and so I must.

Easy advice

put to the test again

slow down

Later sunlight returns, fresh leaflets shimmer, birds twitter…no be-twixt and between for them…nor for the cardinal calling from the highest branch.

Kitty cat purrs

Sprawled on resting legs

taking it easy

~

Today Lillian at dVerse invites us to write any kind of poem incorporating two or more brand names. I chose the chocolate category: Chuckles (chuckling rain), Mounds (mounds of straw), Twix (be-twixt) and Kit-Kat (kitty cat). I folded these references into a haibun about my current experience of spring. I am also linking to Haikai Challenge #33: spring rain.

©️2018 Ontheland

spring visitors

The red-domed lady bug makes its way around the edge of the washroom sink. Lower down, near the drain, another one shuffles. I find a piece of paper and lift the second one to a safer place on the window sill. Then I reach for my toothbrush and toothpaste and turn on the tap. What do these tiny bugs feel I wonder. Do they suffer like us if overwhelmed by a torrent of running water?

spring sunshine

life throngs through the window seams

miniature beings

~

©️2018 Ontheland

In response to dVerse Poet’s Pub Haibun Monday: Compassion

compression

Amaya at dVerse gave us an interesting challenge tonight—to select two quotes, each from a different book, and use them as the first and final lines of a poem— in other words ‘bridge the gap’.

there, from spitting on the sidewalk

to chewing gum in class

from picking peas off her plate

to treading on the parlour carpet

from cycling down to the creek

to sassing her superiors

loomed a forbidden world

once alive with wonder

now a flattened minefield—

she felt crushed

as a gleaming metal sheet being

forced into a furnace

~

©️2018 Ontheland

Our choice of quotes could be intentional or random. I took the random route and used lines from page 111 of each book.

The first quote is: “there, from spitting on the sidewalk to chewing gum in class” from Precious Cargo by Craig Davidson.

The final line of the poem is derived from “the way a sheet of metal might be forced into a furnace”, found in The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert.

“How good it would be” a quadrille response to a poem from Dick Allen’s “Zen Master Poems”

“How good it would be to not question.”

to glide

to just be

never minding psychic puddles

and rational muddles

to just be still

Does a dog question its tail?

Does a tree question its leaves?

Does the moon wish for a new path?

~

My quadrille is based on a poem by Dick Allen (1939-2017) published in 2016 in his book “zen master poems” . In this collection of poems Allen writes from within the persona of a Zen Master.

My first line quotes the first line of his poem and my concluding questions mimic his use of questions. To read his poem please follow this link to the Google Books preview, page 6.

For some reason I counted the words in Allen’s poem and discovered that it is exactly 44 words (in other words, it’s a quadrille). My quadrille uses the word ‘muddle’, this week’s quadrille prompt at dVerse Poets Pub.

Spring troiku

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 Bare branches

waving soft fringes of green…

bright chirps from within

a painting against blue sky

etched by sunlight…

life longs to return

leaves under my feet

remember…last autumn

before the snow

~

This is a troiku based on a haiku of Yozakura (1640-1716).  A troiku is composed by writing three new haiku, each starting with a line of a chosen original.  Here is Yozakura’s original haiku (as translated):

bare branches

a painting against the blue sky

leaves under my feet

©Yozakura

The troiku form was developed by Chevrefeuille, host of Carpe Diem Haiku Kai, and my troiku responds to Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation #31: Troiku…bare branches. Embedded in the troiku is a series of three haiku (as mentioned above). The first haiku is my response to this week’s Haikai Challenge #32 twittering (saezuri).

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©2018 Ontheland

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