March 2023 (Mad as a March Hare)

Time sinks into quicksand,
manipulated and migrated
by determined legislation–
spring ahead—reset your clocks!

Manipulated and migrated,
Sun surveys Earth with amusement
and continues to keep its own hours.

The determined legislation
impels no change to Sun’s path,
the space it occupies, or how it is viewed.

Spring ahead—reset your clocks!
(The birds will not forget to tell you
when it’s time to rise and shine.)

The Wombwell Rainbow has been posting a weekly poetic form challenge which I always mean to do. This week Paul is asking for poetry that uses idioms. Although it’s the autumn time change that really irritates me, as I dislike the day ending at 3pm, I noted on my March calendar that we will lose an hour of sleep when we “spring ahead” this month. I used the trimeric form which was from a challenge weeks ago, but as you know, I like repetitive forms.

I also used words from the Random Word List.

I did do my usual monthly grid, but using one of the Year of the Rabbits seemed more appropriate to both the month and the poem. And somehow a bird always fits.

February 2023 Imbolc

wearing light–
wind-startled, weightless,
wave-weaving
messengers
ablaze in opposition
to monochrome days

breath held in
the beating heart, veins
threaded with
shimmering
roots, marking the season with
anticipation

gates open
and skies expand, meet,
intersect,
cross between, entwining
elements seeded into
manifestation

the path shifts–
shadowed and cast out
ward, burning
the before
into a now that transforms,
emerged, as after

One of the recent Kick-About prompts was Christo and Jeanne-Claude. This reminded me of their Gates installation in Central Park in February 2005, and I pulled out some of the photos I had taken then, printed them, and cut them into squares to make grids. I did not think of it at the time, as my daughter and I delighted in following the winding paths, as a ritual experience for the mid-point between winter and spring–yet it felt magical, like a journey into a different world. A transformation of a familiar landscape, a stilling of time.

A gate, like a threshold, is a symbol of crossing between paths of light and darkness. The fabric of the gates was constantly in motion, holding inside them the play of light with water, sky, ground, and bare trees. A fortuitous snowfall added to the magic. I don’t know if Christo and Jeanne-Claude had Imbolc in mind at all when they planned The Gates (they were supposedly inspired by Japanese temple gates), but in both time and place it contained a strong resonance with the return of color and the anticipation of spring.

For earthweal, where Brendan has asked us to think about Imbolc, and how it shows up in our lives.

Year of the Rabbit

time to
slow down—focus
on healing, connections–
become the current, flow
deep into e
motion

This year is supposed to be a calm respite after the 2022 Tiger Year. A year when our seeds will bear their karmic fruit.

Red is always an auspicious color for Chinese New Year, and Rabbit is associated with the moon. But it’s also the Year of the Water Rabbit, highlighting emotions, instincts, and flexibility

I drew a number of rabbits with brush and ink on rice paper, and then copied and collaged them with flowers, putting some on moon backgrounds. The other ones will show up from time to time.

The Year of the Rabbit is supposed to be lucky. One website I visited said that “Life will get better soon.” Fingers crossed.

Happy Lunar New Year!

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.

Volcano 5

strange, this
planet—silver
mirrors hidden behind
glistening gold light—self
consecrated
with fire

the locus that gyres–
gravities of orbiting
become somewhere else

Elisa Ang provided the artistic inspiration, below, for my series of volcano poems appearing this week at Pure Haiku. Serendipitously, the Kick-About recently hosted a prompt based on Turner’s painting of Mt. Vesuvius, for which I made a series of collages and wrote a cadralor of volcano-themed poems titled “In Search of Venus”. And Jane’s Oracle 2 words provided further inspiration for me to write five Badger poems to go with the volcano theme.

You can read my fifth poem, which connects with the two above, at Pure Haiku, here. And see the posts and links to the first four haiku in the series at kblog, here.

Thanks, as always, to Freya Pickard for her continued support of my work.

November 2022

can you be present
can presence be
everywhere can
everywhere be
present, waiting

opening the mind
the mind breaking
down unscared opening
the mind breaking
wide open, unscared

silent with life
life listened to
in silence filled with
presence listening
to life with silence

A quadrille for November and dVerse, hosted by De, where the word is scare.

I did my circular grid in two segments and arranged them in different ways to see what happened. November always seems the most elemental of months to me. Looking for simple and straightforward comforts, quiet ways to light up our own versions of the dark.

The Fate of Fools (Thursday Doors)

shadows imitate
doors, dazzle you inside dreams,
whispering questions

shadows imitate
the complex language of choice–
abandoned, you jump

doors dazzle inside dreams,
appear as if sailed, transported
by complete darkness

whispering questions,
thresholds cast riddles—as if
life, opening, free

I wanted to construct a house as a sort of book, so I took a cardboard box and collaged this interior. It’s similar to many houses I visit in my dreams. It did not really work for my book idea (the exterior is also still a work in progress), but it fit well with the last Kick-About prompt. As Phil pointed out to me, it resembles a stage set.

I also have a liking for windows and shadows.

The poem is a troiku, written for the W3 prompt, in response to Steven S Wallace’s poem “In Praise of What is Private”, and his prompt poem, Emily Dickinson’s “Superiority of Fate”. I’ve also used some of Jane’s Oracle 2 words for the week–I realize I never finished what I started with last week’s words, but perhaps it will show up somewhere down the line.

You can find more doors and share your own here at Thursday Doors, hosted by Dan Antion.

October 2022

like a sudden flash,
green turns into fire that falls–
autumn paths open

like a sudden flash–
unexpected, unmasking
the retreating past

green turns into fire that falls,
exposing the skeletons
underneath the veil

autumn paths open–
the earth folds into itself–
dusk-faded, shadowed

Lisa, at Tao Talk, reminded me of the troiku form, which I’ve borrowed from her to use also for Colleen’s #TankaTuesday prompt, where the theme is lightning, suggested by Sangeetha.

It does finally feel like autumn here. Not much color yet, but it’s coming. We’ve had a wet day with the remnants of Hurricane Ian, and the building turned on the heat for the first time this morning.

Happy October!

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.