April 2023

the bewitching hour
is always here—the time for
reawakening
is always now—all
of it magic, essential–
strange, wondrous, alive

Happy April! I’m doing NaPoWriMo over at kblog, so I probably won’t post much here this month. But I’m hoping Nina will update us on her rocks–I know she’s been painting more.

Our weather is still undecided, but spring is slowly getting the upper hand.

March 2023 (Mad as a March Hare)

Time sinks into quicksand,
manipulated and migrated
by determined legislation–
spring ahead—reset your clocks!

Manipulated and migrated,
Sun surveys Earth with amusement
and continues to keep its own hours.

The determined legislation
impels no change to Sun’s path,
the space it occupies, or how it is viewed.

Spring ahead—reset your clocks!
(The birds will not forget to tell you
when it’s time to rise and shine.)

The Wombwell Rainbow has been posting a weekly poetic form challenge which I always mean to do. This week Paul is asking for poetry that uses idioms. Although it’s the autumn time change that really irritates me, as I dislike the day ending at 3pm, I noted on my March calendar that we will lose an hour of sleep when we “spring ahead” this month. I used the trimeric form which was from a challenge weeks ago, but as you know, I like repetitive forms.

I also used words from the Random Word List.

I did do my usual monthly grid, but using one of the Year of the Rabbits seemed more appropriate to both the month and the poem. And somehow a bird always fits.

December 2021

deceptive,
this amidst—always
searching for
hereafter–
breath catches, consumed, clinging
to vanishing light

silence waits,
determinedly grey,
unfinished–
holding on
to the bare crowns of branches–
expectant, fallow

wind rattles
inside—brumal, edged
with frozen
promises–
hope hangs tenuous, threaded–
taut, still, wintering

A seasonal dVerse quadrille for my December grid. De provided the word crown as inspiration.

October 2021

fallen leaves
the crunch of footsteps
clear blue sky

reflecting the rain
changeable skywind spatters
colors patterned light

full moon of autumn appears
leaves too soon amidst hopes of endless harvest
fragments linger, gold glittering

stars remember every invisible map
imprinted on the approaching dark
paradigm

earth saturated with bonfires and bones

Two haiku and a sevenling for October and Colleen’s Tanka Tuesday theme, suggested by Franci Hoffman, the harvest moon. The photos are of September’s full moon traveling across the southern sky outside my window. In the first one, it’s half reflected on the window pane.

The artwork is the first page, front and back, of a handmade paper journal I bought on Etsy. I bought three, one each for myself and my sisters-in-law, as we all have great intentions to do art journals–and hopefully this will get us going. I painted the page, and stitched over the front with a technique I’ve been wanting to try. Since the color bled through the paper, I did a small autumn grid on the back.

Happy October!

August 2021

the wheel turns–
we follow our tides
balancing

between waves
ebbing and flowing
together

Instead of a grid or circle collage this month, I decided to use this embroidery that I just finished. I signed up for a series of video embroidery instruction courses–every two weeks there’s a new one, with new ideas and techniques to learn. That was 2 months ago, and I’ve only just finished the first one…

This was a course on Indian embroidery motifs and techniques given by Saima Kaur. We were to choose a few bright colors and a bright background fabric, with perhaps the addition of black and/or white. My satin stitch has always been sloppy and I thought this would give me plenty of practice for improvement. I can’t say it improved much, though, and I also now know for sure that I don’t enjoy doing satin stitch that much. I did like the long and short stitches I used on the shells, and will use that again.

I love traditional art and the motifs of Indian folk art are rich and full of symbolism. This design is a distilled variation of common figures and themes seen both in Indian art and in traditional and religious art all over the world.

inheritance

hands threading needles
accumulating stitches
delicate like wings
flexible strong like branches
like rivers singing
ancient ancestral patterns
releasing through re
peating remembering re
vealing what was always there

seeds growing
anonymous roots
flowering

For Colleen’s #TankaTuesday prompt, a Chōka. Jules provided the theme of discovery.

I come from a family where all the women were textile artists of some sort–sewing, quilting, knitting, crocheting, embroidery–my grandmother even worked as a hat maker before she was married. My mother started me embroidering at a young age, and we did the bird kits, above, together. She loved the color red and cardinals, so that was hers; I stitched the blue bird. And I discovered how much I loved embroidery.

My mother never had the confidence to do her own designs, but always encouraged me in my own explorations. I think of her, and all the women in my family, every time I pick up a needle.

containment

For what shines after all
through the dust in the air?
an opening, a clue, a wall—

what do we see or recall
through the threads made bare?
for what shines after all,

glittering amidst free and fall?
an answer within now and here?
or an opening, silent—a wall,

a shadow, the wind, a spell?
the hand that holds all we can bear?
for what shines after all–
an opening, a touch—or a wall?

For the NaPoWriMo prompt, a villanelle with homonyms.  Also linking to the dVerse (slant rhyme) villanelles for April.

 

Take These Broken Wings

Curse not the king, no, not even in thy thoughts, and curse not the rich in thy bedchamber; for a bird of the air shall carry thy voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter.
–Ecclesiastes 10:20

Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
–Wallace Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”

That which hath wings shall tell
(blackbird whirling in the autumn winds)
The birth of the sky, the void in the flow

Three minds like a tree in parallel
(rising in blueness, the mystery twinned)
That which hath wings shall tell

Blackbirds are involved in what I know
(how to release and how to begin)
The birth of the sky, the void in the flow

A man and a woman are one distilled
(diving divining reflected and twinned)
That which hath wings shall tell

The river is moving in flying shadow
(the question unseen that I can’t comprehend)
The birth of the sky, the void in the flow

Imagine these golden birds aglow
(the crow and the tree and the origin’s end)
That which hath wings shall tell
The birth of the sky, the void in the flow

For the NaPoWriMo prompt, a villanelle with lines taken from an outside text.  I’ve used both of these poetic sources before; you can see examples here and here.  To the words of Stevens and the Bible, I added text from one of my many crow poems, and art selected from my many pieces inspired by crows.

And since dVerse is conveniently featuring the villanelle form this month, I’ve linked to the collection of villanelle poems.

Following the Thread up at Pure Haiku

My haiku “Following the Thread” is posted at Pure Haiku today as part of the Emergence series.  My thanks, as always, to Freya Pickard for supporting my work.

Near

The end is
calling—ice spiders
weaving nets
blanketing
the unrelenting blueness
with crystal cold

Stripped down
to sheer form, chanting
syllables
bleak, bitter–
ancient songs of Boreas–
untranslatable

Gods become
disassembled bits
and pieces,
illusive
fabrications floating on
seas of sinking air

like final
notes of silence pitched
into the
void, cutting
holes with each unspoken word,
unthreading needles

Failing to
transform, to be borne
or reborn–
the years spin,
contracting—the lines
fall, disconnected

A poetic response to the January prompt at Myths of the Mirror, above.  Somehow working in blues always leads me to stitching…in this case I painted two circles and cut the smaller one up and stitched it on top of the larger one.

Also linking to dVerse Open Link Night.