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.
Economics (Draw a Bird Day)
Biodiversity is unprofitable. Industry is profitable.
Old growth forests are unprofitable. Deforestation is profitable. Prairies are unprofitable. Pipelines are profitable. Clean water and air are unprofitable. Manufacturing, drilling, and mining are profitable. Public lands are unprofitable. Private property is profitable.
Healthcare is unprofitable. Illness is profitable. Truth is unprofitable. Lies are profitable.
Extinction is profitable.
dark understories,
multilayered, listening–
a silent swift swoop
The spotted owl is one of the species that will likely lose habitat if the Endangered Species Act is gutted, as those pushing development over preservation, supported by many members of Congress, and the President and his cabinet members, wish to do. We have to find a way to live that doesn’t have greed and profit as its prime motives. We are not just destroying the individual ecosystems that are homes for endangered species; we are killing the delicate balance that keeps everything on Earth alive.
Celebrate Draw-A-Bird Day by asking your leaders to do something to save our planet, so we can have more birds, not less, and a better and richer life for all.
The Moon is Dreaming
I haven’t visited the magnetic Oracle for awhile. She didn’t talk about the moon specifically, but I think it’s inferred.
the language of sleep
whispers beneath a garden
of a thousand dreams
like flowers born dancing with
children and starry-eyed fools
Eclipsed
This curious life–
a burst and then a fading–
star paths to the moon.
Faith stitched taut into nothing—
thoughts held together by wind.
A tanka for Colleen’s #Tanka Tuesday with synonyms for strange and beliefs.
It’s a full moon, eclipsed.
Poem at “Formidable Woman”
My thanks to editor d. ellis phelps for her lovely post about Laura Nyro that includes words from, and a link to, my poem “Gonna Take a Miracle (for Laura Nyro)”. You can find it here.
Turning
Demented, unwanted, our dances are old–
we do not fear the dark.
We cast into circles, the moon for to hold–
demented, unwanted, our dances are old.
Our revenants echo as mountains unfold–
like orbiting stars, their shadows embark.
Demented, unwanted, our dances are old–
we do not fear the dark.
Inspired by Sue Vincent’s prompt photo, above, and also a conversation I had with a friend about a movie she had seen about Africa’s witch camps.
I did two different collage interpretations.
The poem is a triolet. I’m still caught in repetition and rhyme.
Societies all over the world attempt to contain and isolate the difficult and problematic, the despairing, the abandoned, the female, the elderly, the ill, children, anyone inconvenient–there are witch camps everywhere if you care to look.
From One to the Next
Like a murmuring moon,
my lunation turns and repeats,
always unfinished.
As indistinct as air–
unbroken darkness veiled
in expanding light.
Before and after become lost–
the shifting rhymes
remain untamed.
The edge waxes and wanes.
The colors blend and unrainbow–
silent, dazzled, unforeseen.
A quadrille for dVerse (murmur), which also includes this week’s words from the Secret Keeper. It was also inspired by Frank Tassone’s hazy moon challenge, although I’m not sure these verses meet any real criteria for haiku.
With the Moon on my Wings
The past holds the door with the moon on my wings
between now and before with the moon on my wings.
I look to the tree with the moon on my wings
for the power of three with the moon on my wings.
The threshold unfolding with the moon on my wings,
releasing and holding with the moon on my wings.
I look to the earth with the moon on my wings
for death and rebirth with the moon on my wings.
What will be has an end with the moon on my wings
that will fade and begin with the moon on my wings.
I look to the stones with the moon on my wings
to honor the bones with the moon on my wings.
Water that flows with the moon on my wings,
stillness that grows with the moon on my wings.
I look to the air with the moon on my wings
for what is not there with the moon on my wings.
On the spiral is spun with the moon on my wings
what belongs to no one with the moon on my wings.
I create and I heal with the moon on my wings,
I hide and reveal with the moon on my wings.
Do you know me by name with the moon on my wings?
I begin and remain with the moon on my wings.
My response to Sue Vincent’s photo prompt, above. I used the ghazal form, which was a dVerse prompt last week. I had many false starts, which is why I missed the cut off to post it there. I just couldn’t find a rhythm.
The poem I ended up with sounded eerily familiar to me–like I had done something similar before. And I had–one of Jane Dougherty’s poetry prompts, for a ghazal, resulted in almost exactly the same format, and was also based in myth. “Mother of Winds”–you can see it here.
Comment-a-Haiku Poetry Contest: Hearkening
The moon sailing free–
hare pauses in the forest,
listening for light
Vita Brevis is once again sponsoring a haiku meet-and-greet. You can post your own haiku here, and then read all the other ones that have been submitted too.
As I stated in my entry, this haiku was inspired by Jane Dougherty and her many hare poems, like this one or this one. And of course the moon.