April is National Poetry Month

Decided to share some spring haiku in honor of National Poetry Month

ducks quack


geese honk -

spring pond traffic jam

           spring snowstorm –

           cherry blossoms

           fall

cherry blossoms

branches droop –

bridal veil

forsythia

caution light –

not yet summer

Contented

I'm breaking all of my blogging rules on this post. I try to maintain a professional non-personal veneer. But - cute girls in Easter outfits. Abigail is almost seven and Maklyla is twoish - three in August.

You can tell they are cousins, and Abby is the leader - maybe even downright bossy. However, Makyla trundles along behind her.

And now - drumroll - an original poem inspired by Easter Sunday:

Contented

she followed her older cousin

six year old wise leader knew to

dash, grab, fill her basket

younger two year old stumbled

on unmown grass

plastic eggs beckoned

chubby fingers clutched a purple sphere

she waved it, delighted

something rattled

pried open to behold a penny

enraptured, she stood

filmy cloud of white dress

billowed, blonde hair windblown

studied her find, ignored entreaties to

seek more

satisfied with her prizes

Joanne Faries

Wilderness Wonder

I call San Saba the "wilderness" because we drive forever down a gravel road, and the chance of a snake encounter is high. Plus the cows keep staring at me. It's far more fun to exaggerate, and I can imagine pioneers on horseback plucking cactus needles from body parts and cursing.

National Poetry Month is almost over, but it's been amusing to match pictures and words. I have not included my own poetry. If it's published on a blog, then most journals consider it "previously published" and will not accept it. Thus, you've expanded your mind here with others' words.

For one that comes into the wilderness with a pencil to sketch or sing, a thousand come with an ax or rifle - Henry David Thoreau

The Morning is Full - Pablo Neruda

The morning is full of storm

in the heart of summer

The clouds travel like white handkerchiefs of good bye,

the wind, traveling, waving them in its hands

The numberless heart of the wind

beating above our loving silence

Orchestral and divine, resounding among the trees

like a language full of wars and songs

Wind that bears off the dead leaves with a quick raid

and deflects the pulsing arrows of the birds

Wind that topples her in a wave without spray

and substance without weight, and leaning fires

Her mass of kisses breaks and sinks

assailed in the door of the summer's wind

Easter Weekend Wilderness

Two Saturdays ago, the day was spent in Tahoe. Eight thousand feet elevation at spots, snow, and twenty seven degrees. This Saturday was spent in San Saba, Texas at Ray's aunt's place. Hill country, ninety degrees, and wind gusts had to be fifty miles per hour. Her place is rugged and not for the faint of heart.Pat is a modern day pioneer (at least in this city gal's eyes).

Her newly built pergola, rough hewn cedar, affords a splendid view of mesquite, cactus, and wild terrain. In this silent serene wilderness the weary can gain a heart - bath in perfect peace - John Muir. Sure, he was talking about California redwoods, but any view like this picture applies.

Spring time and cactus is in bloom. The bright yellow leaps out from the dry hardscrabble land. It's too, too dry. The Texas drought is extreme and it's only April.

Away, away, from men and town,

To the wild wood and the downs -

To the silent wilderness

Where the soul need not repress

Its music - Percy B. Shelley

Happy Easter!

Poetic Bowling Banter

Bowling and National Poetry Month - what do they have in common? Well, at the National Bowling Center in Reno, sixty lanes filled with teams of five men possessed an energy and rhythm, plus a certain pacing and flow that seemed poetic. Colorful shirts and language abounded as balls rumbled down lanes to strike pins with a resounding thwack. Or clunk, depending on the shot.

Most sorts of diversion in men, children, and other animals are an imitation of fighting - Jonathan Swift.

Bowling has its own language, too - in the pocket, leave the ten pin, spares, and strikes. The lanes have an oil pattern which dictate the shot. It's like haiku versus a sonnet versus free verse.

The one nice thing about sports is that they prove men do have emotions and are not afraid to show them. - Jane O'Reilly.

Based on this picture the night before tournament play, Ray was saving himself for the BIG game.

Enough about bowling. Here's outdoor poetry, atop Heavenly in South Tahoe.

I'd call this shot a Perfect Game

Tempting Tahoe

Ray and I enjoyed a weekend in Tahoe, thanks to his bowling tournament in Reno. (The poetry of bowling shall be explored in another post). You know folks, snow is gorgeous when you don't have to shovel it. We rode the gondola in Heavenly, South Lake Tahoe, up to the observation deck and it was magic. I've been celebrating National Poetry Month, and I'm going to let these pictures speak volumes. Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand - Plato I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world - Walt Whitman The great poet is always a seer, seeing less with the eyes of the body than he does with the eyes of the mind - Oscar Wilde Blissfully cold. We smile from a top the world.

April Love

A Map of Love by Donald Justice

Your face more than others' faces

Maps the half remembered places

I have come to while I slept -

Continents a dream had kept

Secret from all waking folk

Till to your face I awoke

And remembered then the shore,

And the dark interior.

The More Loving One - W.H. Auden

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well

That, for all they care,

I can go to hell

But on earth indifference is the least

We have to dread from man or beast

How should we like it were we stars to burn

With a passion for us we could not return?

If equal affection cannot be,

Let the other more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am

Of stars that do not give a damn

I cannot, now I see them, say

I missed one terribly all day

Were all stars to disappear or die

I should learn to look at an empty sky

And feel its total dark sublime

Though this might take me a little time.

April Outward

This brilliant splash of color is tucked amongst bushes on the side of the house. This is a weird perspective. I'm standing on the sidewalk, taking the picture from above the azalea. Like spring in Texas, the loveliness is fleeting. Poetry begins ... when we look from the center outward - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Another April by James Merrill

The panes flash, tremble with your ghostly passage

Through them, an x-ray sheerness billowing, and I have risen

But cannot speak, remembering only that one was meant

To rise and not to speak. Young storm, this house is yours.

Let your eye darken, your rain come, the candle reeling

Deep in what still reflects control itself and me.

Daybreak's great gray rust-veined irises humble and proud

Along your path will have laid their foreheads in the dust.

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom - Robert Frost