vanishment (draw a bird day)

I found this erasure poem in a folder when I was cleaning last week. I think I meant to illustrate and post it but it somehow got lost in a pile of other things. Although the article is from 2019, things have only worsened in the intervening years.

It reminded me of a post I did early on in my blog life about the passenger pigeon, which once numbered from 3-5 billion in North America. The last one died in captivity in 1914. What happened? Native Americans coexisted with the bird, which they hunted for food, for 15,000 years.

In the 19th century, pigeon was marketed as cheap nutrition, and massive hunts of these very social and easily located birds took place. At the same time, there was a rapid decrease in their forest habitat. But it still seems unreal that such a large population could dwindle to nothing in so short a time.

But we keep allowing it to happen, not only to birds, but to all of life, both plant and animal, everywhere.

I did a monoprint of dead passenger pigeon specimens, which is all we have now. The one above is my printing glass, which I photographed after I finished printing and before I washed it off. The top image is the print, with a little ink detailing on top.

taking wing now–full
extinction reveals loss–
mornings of no sound

9/11/2022

remember—(breathe)–
sky clear crisp blue–
time stands still once again–
ghostname voices–
bone rattled leaves–
bottomless sings the wind

I’ve rearranged some of my previous poetry from 9/11 into a Laurette poem for Muri’s scavenger hunt. Images also from past posts.

Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Volodymyr (Thursday Doors)

Stop war.  Help.
Where to go?
The life left.

Tried to flee.
Stop war.  Help.
For what?  What?

So much grief.
Can’t go back.
Stop war.  Help.

I wanted to wait until the scaffolding on the left side came down to photograph St. Volodymyr, but now seems like the time to look at its front door, scaffolding or not.

The door is a simple one, of plain wood with lace curtains, in contrast to the ornate building itself. The interior is quite spectacular, to judge from the photos here. St. Volodymyr “was first constructed in 1894-96 to be a synagogue by noted New York architect Arnold W. Brunner and became a church in 1958.”

There was an interfaith prayer service held at the cathedral yesterday, attended by Gov. Kathy Hochul and other religious and political dignitaries.

Colleen’s Tanka Tuesday prompt this week was to Create Your Own Syllabic Form. I’m calling mine “333”:
3 verses/3 lines in each verse/3 one-syllable words in each line
Line one repeats as line 2 in second verse and line 3 in third verse

The words in my poem were taken from interviews with Ukrainian refugees and inspired by the signs on St Volodymyr’s door.

Dan Antion hosts Thursday Doors here.

Martin Luther King Day 2021

mid-January–
voice of crow under grey skies–
how to fill the hole

“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”

“Courage is an inner resolution to go forward despite obstacles; Cowardice is submissive surrender to circumstances. Courage breeds creativity; Cowardice represses fear and is mastered by it. Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience ask the question, is it right? And there comes a time when we must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.”

“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

“Never, never be afraid to do what’s right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society’s punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.”

“We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.”

“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”

for earthweal open link weekend

Guns and Grudges

Who knows the questions?  or the time?
What if there is no time?
What if all the time has all been wasted, or lost?

When karma comes around,
where will it go?

Why keep running into the same things?
How did we get here?

If only I knew
how to fix it all–
I would be honored
to be unremissed.

I’ve been having trouble completing things lately. Bjorn at dVerse has us asking Google to finish our thoughts. Perfect.

What I learned:
1) Many of those searching on Google are thinking about death–lots of killing and dying going on.
2) And remiss. Many many of us feel we are remiss.

Saturday Morning September 19, 2020

I did this painting for a prompt (which I later altered and will post at some point), but it works for this message from the Oracle today.

death aches us
in black chants

she whispers:
do not ask me
to stop time

watch the sky–
her ship is a light
singing through the moon

in the language of
a shining wind

May our actions and words continue and honor the legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

nineteen years (September 2020)

crisp clear sky–
leaves echo the wind
as time stops–

listen–ghostlight calls,
condensed into stars

blue light from the depths–
darkness emptying itself
into clarity

time stops once again–
leaves echo songs of the wind

 

My older daughter and I met at the farmer’s market last weekend, and sat on the Columbia campus afterwards drinking coffee and tea.  As we watched a monarch butterfly wandering above our heads, we remarked at the deep clear blueness of the sky.  It reminded us both of a September morning nineteen years ago.

but who’s counting?

just another day
with another mass shooting
(thoughts and prayers optional)

It wasn’t even the top headline on the front page of the newspaper this morning.

I’ll visit the Oracle tomorrow.

posted on dVerse Open Link Night, hosted this week by Mish

 

over and over

 

What dark fire is this
melting the air with fresh blood?
endless broken days,

ghost voices lingering in
an eternity of tears

 

Shapeshifting Moonlight

My haiku “Shapeshifting Moonlight” is posted today as part of Pure Haiku’s Portal Series.  You can read it here, along with all the other wonderful portals in verse.  Thanks as always to Freya Pickard for including my words on Pure Haiku.

 Joyce Fienberg, 75
Richard Gottfried, 65
Rose Mallinger, 97
Jerry Rabinowitz, 66
Brothers Cecil and David Rosenthal, 59 and 54
Bernice and Sylvan Simon, 84 and 86
Daniel Stein, 71
Melvin Wax, 88
Irving Younger, 69

 

Remembering those who lost their lives in the Tree of Life Synagogue on Saturday. May they rest always in a portal of light.