January 2023

night sky
wide with starry
moonrise, floating inside
cloud-waves that pulse, primal,
elemental,
unknown

Happy New Year!

December 2022/Icebound

gravel roads follow
me, my feet covered
in ice, blinding wind
blankets the sky, eyes
immersed in elsewhere—

clouds waver
the horizon, wisps
of images scatter
me moonfaced
across the dark window—

I am beyond
ripe for picking, afraid
of falling into the midst
of an isolated
silence, stuck in solitude–

waiting for a pinprick
of light to gather
me in, a reminder
of what lies
fallow, waiting—

not growing yet, but
hushed, all aquiver, molecules
cocooned inside
themselves, waiting,
dancing wildly—

layers shifting, waiting
to become repatterned, re
arranged over and under,
waiting—this is the way
of healing, beginning, return

For December, where Brendan at earthweal has asked us to consider The Witch of Winter.

September 2022

end of summer–
still sweltering and tired
of the relentless sun

gratis, an impulse to channel
ancient oceanic immersion
keeps me company

I draw on memories
of sand as floor,
the harmony of waves

water flashes through me
like a train I’ve boarded
that has abandoned its tracks

adjoining these ruminations
is an unmasked eagerness
for the refreshing chill of autumn

but I wonder if the shape
of the year still exists–
or if it will always be now

flooded, burning at the edges–
marching into the pages of a book
we didn’t mean to write

I consulted the Oracle 2 words Jane generated this week for my September circle/grid poem. The shape of time seems to get more distorted by the day.

July 2022

neither brave nor free–
our leaders bow down to Mammon,
cast life aside

Find the cost of freedom
buried in the ground
Mother Earth will swallow you
lay your body down

June 2022

slipknot
the thought

ready to fade away–
the story lost, mislaid

between image and words—falling,
asking to be caught up, calling—

and if it were–
what then?—now here,

now unconfined, a seed
to open, finally freed—

surprise breaks through
in green and blue

After I saw Muri’s hexaduad the other day I wanted to try one. I took a rough poem I wrote recently, and revised it to fit. It’s a pretty flexible form, despite the rhymes.

We’ve had so much rain and so little very hot weather that it’s lush and green here in NYC to begin June.

April 2022

inner visions waiting to
be seen suddenly
present as if what the earth
imagined and what
now exists had no border
between them at all

February 2022

The snow gathers everywhere, grown from nothing, reflecting the hidden sun like feathers dancing. I awaken to a world both light and dark, suspended in the wind. I can’t see the morning moon behind the whirling veil, but I know it is a waning crescent, almost new.

At night, I light candles and think of those lost to me, all the spirits now absent from this world. Do I only imagine that I hear their voices singing on the currents of the stormtides? Inside my memories I assemble the seeds they entrusted to me, promise to plant them in the unfolding aurora of spring.

cold winter nights—sky
dazzles to infinity–
translucid, complete

For the new month, the New Moon, and dVerse Haibun Monday, hosted by Frank, where the subject is winter.

November 2021

what carries the truth?
wind scattering fallen leaves–
fragile, decaying

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!

July 2021 with blue door

let yourself be
enchanted with each moment
as it appears

July makes me long for the ocean, so my grid is composed of ocean doors. But I also found a blue house door into the garden level of a brownstone that makes me think its owners are reminding themselves too every day of the sea.

You can join Thursday Doors here.