It’s that time of week again: Paint-Chip Poetry at the last minute! This week, Linda is challenging us to write a Sestina, a word that strikes fear into poets everywhere 😳 (or maybe just me). I have finished only 2 sestinas in my entire life, and I actually liked one of them! I meant to start this poem earlier, but all I did was look at the paint chips:
Spring
The Moonlike Bubble-Egg
This poem is more like a story with line breaks. Anyway, it’s inspired by this picture, by Angela Kelly and found via MLMM’s Photo Challenge #383:
Wielding a magic wand and a bottle of bubble soap,
She blew: most bubbles floated on but one
Froze, on a bed of snowdrops. Under the sun
Its pearlescent orb shone like the moon,
While sun’s rays slowly found their way underneath.
The bubble cracked, the little girl cried —
But it became an egg, fertile as spring, with a new beginning.
Away from School
Today at DVerse, it is haibun Monday, and the theme is, appropriately, “back to school.” I am happy to be out of school, since even though there were aspects of it that I liked, it would also generate so much anxiety and overwhelm. At the same time, here I am post-college, and there’s still a ton of anxiety and depression, so life’s probably not any better. Anyway, I wasn’t going to post this haibun, but today is one of those days when I probably won’t write anything better, so here you go.
Noticing the Flourishing
May’s full moon is on Wednesday, and it is known as the Flower Moon, as Frank, the host of DVerse Haibun Monday, says.
This month, I have noticed a wealth of new flowers in the garden: varying shapes and shades, hues of pink and yellow, almost whatever one could name. Bees are busy pollinating, and the blueberries, too, are growing and ripening from a gentle light-green. We have already picked a bowlful; soon the fruits will fill baskets. The garden is waiting to give many other fruits and vegetables as treasures.
after heat of day
buzz of all activity
rests under the moon
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Quintilla: Healing
It looks like it’s not too late to share some paint-chip quintillas, so here are the words and phrases for the week. I wrote 2 of them today, and I will share with you the happier one. For more inspiration, I looked up the symbolism of jade.
When Winter Thaws
This short poem was inspired by FOWC: Buoyant and MLMM’s Saturday Mix: Opposing Forces.
Winter freezes her: numb thumbs
Until winter becomes spring,
Turning frozen heart to melting.
Frozen in one lonely spot,
Now back to front she floats,
Buoyancy with happy notes.
Time of New Birth
The décima challenge this week is “Birth” in one of the D rhyme spots. It’s a timely prompt, as it’s April. Last time I went to the park, I noticed a profusion of new flowers and multiple ducklings! Linked also to today’s Writers’ Pantry.
Sun rises earlier each day:
It has been hesitant to wake
Yet lately decided to make
The most of it, a better way.
And later the sun also stays,
Shining its rays upon the ground,
Illuminating all around.
Now this April springtime-green Earth
Is filled with blossoms and new birth:
Even more beauty will abound.
A Day in April
What happens when a survivor
Wants to stop surviving?
This piece of identity
Crumbling
What happens when the birds
Make her so happy,
But their songs fly
Like their wings?
What happens is, even when
April is new-born and sunny,
There is an understanding
Of what Eliot meant
When he said April is the cruelest month.
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This is so not the poem I intended to write, but life has a way of throwing stuff at us, right? Hooray for being able to respond to NaPoWriMo day 23 and the Weekly Scribblings at PSU.
Spring Flowers
I colored this picture for Linda G. Hill’s coloring club this month and wrote a limerick to go with it. Pusheen the cat is probably only smelling the fragrant flowers, but to me, it looks like she is chomping on it!
Haibun for the End of March
A haibun for DVerse, alluding to cherry blossoms, also partially inspired by FOWC: Slight, but mostly inspired by my family’s garden.
A warm afternoon at the end of March passes both languidly and much too quickly. The sky is blue, with no clouds blowing in the slight breeze. A monarch butterfly, black-and-orange wings majestic and beautiful flies — almost floats — nearly close enough to kiss the nose of an observer. The bird-feeders, filled for the first time in a long while, attract many other winged creatures, feathered things opening their hungry beaks.
And it is around now, when the cherry blossoms bloom at their peak.
Nature takes her time —
From the outside see Earth spin
Making us dizzy
revivedwriter 