For Linda Kruschke’s paint-chip poetry prompt, I have written this poem. I’m not sure if it counts as an idyll, but I did use a lot of imagery of nature, and it certainly counts as a paint-chip poem. 🙂
Summer
Light: A Ghazal
Linda Kruschke has a wonderful poetry prompt for us this week: writing a ghazal using paint chips! I love, love, LOVE ghazals so was overjoyed to read this prompt on Friday. I not only used a paint chip for the repeating part at the end of each couplet but also used a few others interspersed among the 5 couplets. Linked also with the Writers’ Pantry at PSU.
Grand Plans Beaten to a Pulp
Once again, I have a response to Linda Kruschke’s paint-chip poetry, at the last minute. This is about how, this year, I had a bunch of plans and it’s all down the drain now. 🙂 I am also sharing this with MLMM’s Tale Weaver, because any attempt to plan this year has become an epic fail. Without furthr ado, these are our paint-chips:
January 2020: the year was a
Blank canvas of optimistic possibility,
A green flash to signal, “Go for it.”
March 2020: a rainstorm was brewing,
We began to become tongue-tied,
Under the sea of shocking surprises.
September 2020: somehow we have
Tumbleweeded through a surreal summer,
Crispy leaves and autumn colors are coming.
I am a glass of fresh-squeezed
Orange juice, filled with the pulp
Of pressurized emotions, in my skin.
Equinox
For Frank J. Tassone’s current haikai challenge, autumn / spring equinox. I wrote a haibun.
We may have had all summer to enjoy the sun, and now night and day are even. Yet as autumn begins to descend, I can’t help feeling it’s not a fair fight. I keep waiting for the last leaf to fall — for the other shoe to drop.
Flaming, leaves are red —
In a world that’s upside-down
Somewhere it is Spring
Mid-September Changes
For DVerse Poetics today, I have written 2 nonets based on the prompt, “9 Across for a Count Down.” The first line of both nonets is taken from “To the Light of September” by W.S. Merwin.
It seems as though you are still summer,
Though the smoky sky shrouds much sun,
But the flames are retreating —
Soon may our worries sleep —
May seasons cradle
Even amidst
Change : burning
Fall-leaves
Flame.
Broken shadows across the cracked ground
Point out the path to October:
Mid-September’s hellish flames
Celebrate Halloween
Early, ghost-ashes
Haunt surfaces.
Trick or treat?
Costumes
Change.
Remains
This haibun is for Frank J. Tassone’s weekly prompt. This week’s topic is remaining heat (zansho). I wrote this a few days ago and am just remembering to post it now.
The temperatures climb to triple digits one weekend in September. Is there relief? When the sun tires of emitting such heat, the fires take over.
somber September:
one last burst of heat before
summer turns to ash
When I Think Of Future Plans….
A haibun inspired by Frank’s challenge about crickets, and the last FDDA, about plans for September. I will miss FDDA, but I’m always grateful for FOWC. I’ve also been trying to respond to other prompts, but this is the best one that I wrote today.
Tomorrow begins September. There are no particular plans, but I hope for more time with friends and being able to actually enter the church again. There were no plans for August, either, other than my friends’ live-streamed wedding on the 1st, but the month was better than expected. I’ll take September one day at a time. Too much thinking and I’ll start sinking in anxieties. As always, I’ll be hunting for the silver lining.
in silence a sound:
August chirping a goodbye —
crickets out of sight
Look at Those Faces
For DVerse MTB this week, we are trying our hands at verbing. I do this a lot with friends in my non-blog life, but finding a good idea for it in a poem was unexpectedly hard.Â
Look at those faces:
They sunflowered for a few weeks,
Nature summered for a few months —
See the birds use their beaks
To peck the seeds from what once
Loved the sun’s embraces.
A Quadrille, and Carl Sandburg
This poem is a quadrille for the DVerse prompt today. Our word today is “bum.”
Summer has been a bummer,
But the mind is my delight.
If my face has looked glummer,
I’ve still been able to find bright
Spots: no job but lots
Of music, reading, and poetry.
I am happy to not need
Busy-ness as a bumblebee.
An In-Between Time
Shared with DVerse open-link night. This haibun was a true story inspired by FOWC: Classify.
I used to tutor kids in math, and one of their favorite questions to ask me was, “How old are you?” “That’s classified information,” I would say with a smile, which wouldn’t stop them from guessing: “Are you 16?” No. “Are you 30?” NO! There was hardly ever any in-between.
August — late summer?
Early autumn in Japan,
Hard to classify
