April 2019

morning wakes
me at first light as
my mother
used to do,
but not with words—birdchoir sings
through me:  “rise and shine!”

My mother did not believe in sleeping in…when she decided it was time to get up, even on non-school days, she would waltz in, open the blinds, and announce, “Rise and Shine!”  One of the delights of spring for me is that my alarm is the light and the birds (I never close my blinds)–but I always hear my mother’s voice joining the chorus.

I worked on my monthly grid all week, waiting for the NaPoWriMo prompt to do the accompanying poem.  This is not really a recipe, but I think it’s close enough.  The grid was inspired by numerous photos of tulip festivals from all over the world…rows and rows of beautiful color.  April!

March 2019 spring?

 

There’s 4 inches of snow here with more to come tomorrow, but the Oracle was insistant on the arrival of spring…it’s certainly a nice thought.

Spring comes wandering
covers my sleep with flowers
blankets of birdsong

 

October 2018 Currents

 

circle stops, becomes
a point that reappears, falls
evasive, rilling

dancing with currents, a leaf–
pausing on the patterned wind

It took me quite awhile to do my monthly grid.  I wanted to do very tiny squares, but I kind of lost control of the amount.  I intended a small piece of work, but my intentions and results often have different ideas.  Also, I never realized how much uninterrupted time it takes just to go through my bins of cut up paper and decide what to use.  At any rate, it was conveniently finished in time to do a tanka for Colleen’s Tanka Tuesday, poet’s word choice.  I will pick rilling for one, and then currents.  That’s October 2018.

I could have spent a lot more time messing around with these images in Photoshop, but unfortunately, or luckily, I didn’t have it.  So: two versions of October’s circular grid.  The first is done from a scanned image, the second from a photo (the entire collage wouldn’t fit in the scanner).  The color and texture are totally different. Light has many ways of changing what we see.

Linked to Open Link Night at dVerse

 

September 2018/Leaf Koan

almost dusk—color
deepens and rustles insect song–
thick light frosts the wind.

For Colleen’s 100th Tanka Tuesday celebration, she asked us to choose our own words for our poems.  I consulted the magnetic Oracle in two ways for my September leaf grid–the online one, and my refrigerator one, which is currently filled with Zen words.  Two very different views of the season.

between finding out
and insight lives the whispered
silence of why not

 

Pulling Colors from the Sky

Belonging to nothing
spare and straight
in stillness
constellated

Spare and straight
like dusk falling
constellated
listening for the stars

Like dusk falling
on a butterfly
listening for the stars
across whispered air

On a butterfly
wandering
across whispered air
beyond desire

Wandering
in stillness
beyond desire
belonging to nothing

A pantoum for Sue Vincent’s photo prompt, above.

 

The Other Side

The sky beneath the stars–
earthbound orbit
shadowed by the night,
divided by itself.

Earthbound orbit
always pulled away,
divided by itself,
vast and gravitating.

Always pulled away–
completely boundless ancient
vast and gravitating
dark, dissolving.

Completely boundless ancient
held by threads that sail–
dark, dissolving
tides of wing and air.

Held by threads that sail,
shadowed by the night,
tides of wing and air–
the sky beneath the stars.

This collage was done originally for a Sue Vincent Photo Prompt.  I’ve posted the art again, with a new poem, in celebration of the publication of Marianne Szlyk’s book, “On the Other Side of the Window”, which uses it for the cover illustration.

I was delighted when Marianne asked if she could use one of my crow pieces for her book of poems.  I know her from her wonderful blog of words, art, and music, “The song is…”, and was pleased also to be able to meet her at the New York Poetry Festival on Governor’s Island a few weeks ago.

Also linked to dVerse open link night , hosted by Lillian. And yes, yet another pantoum.

 

 

August 2018

Sun fractures my sight–
eyes squinting—landscape breaking–
fevered, tense, thirsting

Elemental oasis–
shifting from was to will be

Back to my monthly grid and another collage.

The world indeed seems to be in retrograde right now.  Perhaps the tide will turn soon…

 

full earth

I consulted the Magnetic Oracle for a haiku to go with my May grid.

moon blossoms between
rain root and seed song—bird boughs
blanket the wild wind

 

 

I Become Clichéd

My windows open me.
My windows cover, enclose, hide.

I am reflected, pushed inside by darkness.
I am reflected, merging outside into the landscape of the sun.

My windows are two-way mirrors.
My windows are tricks of the eye.

How can I exist in transparency?
How can I exist as glass?

My windows know both sides of the story.
My windows reverse me into particles of light.

for NaPoWriMo Day 26, inspired by Robert Okaji’s “Helinski“

and one of Joan Mitchell’s sunflower paintings

 

Calendars

ensorcelled by time–
repeating forms, I cross the
signs marking the gap,

the shift from circle to square–
caught on the edges of lines

I’ve used synonyms for Colleen’s words this week, enchant and shape, for my tanka for  NaPoWriMo Day 25.

The art, inspired by Joan Mitchell’s “Bonjour Julie”, is done on graph paper (at a recent exhibit of Josef Albers’ work I noted that he started with graph paper for some of his work as well).

This is the way I used to present my sweater designs…marker dots of the various colors to show the pattern.  I decided to cross stitch over this design, and I like the combination of texture and color on both front and back.  And, well, grids…