Décima: Dreaming of Music

I combined two prompts for this poem, Linda’s paint-chip poetry for the week and also Ronovan’s Décima challenge using “dream.” I hope this is good because I wrote 4 or 5 décimas in the past few days but didn’t feel confident sharing any of them.

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Saxophone solo, smooth as dreams,
Piano keys accompany —
Both ebony and ivory —
Talent rare as saffron, it seems.

Courage in a lion heart gleams:
New life imbued into spirit,
Rocking the boat but fine with it,
The boat was sinking anyway.
A living spring will gush today:
Music shall play, songs not tacet.

 

By RWJHughes – taken from my sheet music, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19344310

The May Full Moon

This is for Frank’s haikai challenge about the Flower Moon, which happens to be tonight. Also, May is the month when Catholics honor Mary in a special way, and one of the traditional activities is called a May Crowning. Here is a picture from one that I participated in last year.

Soon a May crowning:
In many-starred night-sky cloak
Flower supermoon

Picking Blueberries

This poem is a true story. Here is a picture that I took this morning of the bounty! 

How beautiful, the fruity blue

Clusters in the sun, the sweetness

Of the berries bursting among leaves —

I underestimated the potentiality

Of their spring fruit-bearing,

Filling entirely a purple bowl,

With ripe orbs so quickly full.

Lilies are not only white

This haibun is written in response to Frank J. Tassone’s prompt about Easter lilies. Easter is celebrated for 8 days on the Catholic liturgical calendar, and the Easter season lasts for several more weeks. I am grateful for each of my friends, especially for those who have stayed in contact with me during this crisis, but I still am having such a hard time not being able to see anyone in person!

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I would give white Easter lilies to my friends, to say, “Pleased to have made your acquaintance.” Then I may bestow, on a certain someone, lilies of yellow, to urge us to “live for the moment.”

though love is patient
fights against separation
from the Beloved

 

Photo by Evie Shaffer on Pexels.com

Souls Entwined

This is for NaPoWriMo day 5, and I am sharing it with Writers’ Pantry today. It fits the prompt found here about soulmates.

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Even if there’s no romance, you are my soulmate:
You know not the consolation your prayers create
Inside this butterfly soul; your voice is springtime
Through the phone lines, your treasured words sunshine —
May we meet again, when we reach our common goal.

 

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon

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Note: The person who I wrote this poem about says that he prays for me every time he sees a butterfly, and I also love butterflies, hence the term, “butterfly soul.”

Small Things

For the second day of NaPoWriMo, here is a response to the Weekly Scribblings.

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I went outside this morning

And it wasn’t so cold.
The birds continue chirping

(They have Twitter without social
Distance) — and new flowers bloom
And it isn’t so cold.

This flower is in a little vase in my kitchen.

My Home Is A Monastery Now

On this first day of NaPoWriMo, I am posting a haibun in response to Frank J. Tassone’s prompt about the virus.

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Almost exactly two years before this quarantine started, I spent my spring break visiting a monastery. I was considering the life of a cloistered nun, as I was very attracted to their way of life and prayer.

I loved every minute of that time and even visited again that summer. However, in the end, it was not to be, and I have not pursued it any further.

Now is my new chance to be a cloistered nun.

Black-and-white clad nuns
Flock together in spirit
As bells are tolling

 

Lightness

Equinoctial hope:
Night itself sleeping longer
Reaching for lightness

Photo by Bess Hamiti on Pexels.com

A haiku for Frank J. Tassone’s prompt about the equinox, which is tomorrow.

see the darkness in the light

A haibun for this week’s first-line Friday, for Heeding Haiku with Chevrefeuille, and for today’s Weekly Scribblings on the theme of “contagion.”

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Everyone breathed easier at the first signs of spring. the sun seemed a little bit happier to get up in the morning. People began to shed the extra weightiness of winter coats.

Everyone breathed easier — until they didn’t, thanks to the contagion that oppresses so many, no matter the weather: depression.

Groundhog sees shadow
Six more weeks of winter left
Despite the snowdrops

East Wind

For Frank’s prompt

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East wind blows, playful
Beckoning to adventure —
Land of the sunrise

Photo by Nita on Pexels.com