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.

Topology

It was a
wish, a tiny dream,
a maybe,
an if—I
spoke of it, asked for it, looked
for the opening–

I even
prayed (although not
to that god
painted on
the ceilings of cathedrals)–
but gradually,

or perhaps
suddenly–(how our
memories
deceive us)–
it became unspoken, blurred,
a footnote in time,

filed away–
I would come across
it every
once in a
while and wonder, just for a
moment, where I would

be, and what
would be missing in
the map of
me, if fate
had drawn it differently—if
that portal had verged

The subject for dVerse Poetics, hosted by Anmol, is geography.

I originally posted this watercolor last August, when I had just begun the embroidery.  I like the extra dimension added by the stitching.  It’s a slow process, accumulating like the maps of our lives.

 

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.

 

Resolving the Equations

Multiply the circumstances–
What rises to the occasion?
What remains, over and over,
expecting to return again?

Look between—what is divided?
Multiply the circumstances.
What is buried?  Which measurements
contain dust and ashes, which bones?

Around the patterned interval
tricks appear as what they are not.
Multiply the circumstances–
ghostlines projected in the air.

Symbols transforming the unseen–
abridged, compounded, mythical–
saved by neither fortune nor fate–
(multiply the circumstances)

A quatern for Sue Vincent’s photo prompt, above.  This is another repeating form–the same idea, but with its own distinct rhythm.

 

 

Exposed

Go you darkened, alive,
in silence growing—
go you as wildness
mingling with earth and trees,

holding the sky open
to the wind, seedlings flying,
rooted in air.

Dance you as water falling,
as a jewel crowning–
dance you as the shadow
released to the circle of light,

undressing the stars down
to the bones, falling like moonlight
covered in crystalline wings.

For Sue Vincent’s photo prompt, above.

I’ve been reading Pablo Neruda…

 

 

 

Severed Synapse

I wear myself inside out. My mask is hidden; my thoughts scriven mysteriously in code.  Sleep returns me to my origins.  I fall, resisting, afraid to let go.

I get up and it’s yesterday, dreary and inexact. Memories come together and instantly fall apart.  I am unbuttoned from the brain down.

All those rituals, the names and places, surrounding me lost and confused. No one can count them.  No one can say when or how they disappeared.

completely unfilled,
outlines stand centered between
never and not now

For Colleen’s Tanka Tuesday, a haibun using synonyms for sad and write. The top artwork is actually part of the stitching for a totally different project.  It’s done on iridescent plastic paper, and the scan makes it look brain-like I think.  The collage above I did awhile ago, but it also seemed to fit.

The mind is a delicate balancing act, always.

Noises

Were I Other. Were I spoken in a different voice.  Were I fallen into impossibility.

I would be like stars.
I would echo the feeling
that follows the wind.

Were I made of light. Were I pulsing like oceans.  Were I to open as wide as never and nothing.

I would radiate
rainbows. I would paint moments
with sound. Fill absence.

For Colleen’s Tanka Tuesday, with synonyms for love and time.  I’m not entirely sure this qualifies as a haibun.  In the spirit of, anyway.

The embroidered watercolor is a work in progress.  I plan to keep embroidering it until I stop.