Poem: Summer Solstice

Summer Solstice

Words fall from the sky
again     only summer is here and
the sun sets stunningly at orange-
red     the mountains vanish in
violet gray light and bring a
sense of stability to the horizon
on the night of solstice frivolity
in celebration of the longest day
full of sun and song     we sit on the
same porch we looked out upon six
long months ago     then holiday
lights streamed through the trees in
neighborhood yards     tonight candles
flicker on glass topped tables and
the drinks are cold     as we watch
the setting of the blazing sun.

Jack Ridl

This is how I think it is. Poets of observation ride the surface of events and life. They don't go deep and get stuck under their own emotions. They stay aloft to notice the present moment moving between layers of interpretive reality. Where we are now is simply next door to all there is that waits for us to open the blinds in the morning.

"Yesterday, when I dug into our garden's
matted earth, I felt your hand slide
into mine as if it were putting on
a glove. We went together
into the awkward ground, turned the soil,
let it slip between our fingers."

From, I Am Wearing Your Shirt by Jack Ridl

Diamonds

As a girl sitting in the backseat
of the '52 Packard    my nose
pressed the glass of the window    As

my father drove us through the
Country Club Plaza    As
    I dreamt
of living there
when grown and
sleek and
independent.

As a woman with a career,
I moved from Iowa to a job
within blocks of the Plaza    and
I lived on Ward
Parkway across from Brush
Creek    in an elegant brick
building named Carlyle,
after the poet.    And

I became a poet
while living on "Poets Row"
walking romantic evening walks
through streets lined with
diamonds.

Enchanted, I drove from work to home
through the Plaza holiday lights    and
sometimes wept with joy    As

I was finally, really home    As
life turned simple amongst ornate mosaic towers and
red tiled roofs of rose stucco buildings.

I was where I had always wanted to be --

Imagine, dreams waking as you walk through them
You live in them    As they happen    and
they become
no longer dreams.

8 directions

His surefootedness convincing -- all stocky
And slow, all fur and big pawed
Plump from the fullness of summer.
The earth is brown with green forest floor walked
Upon not only by big bears -- also rabbits and
Deer, squirrels and elk, hikers and horses.
The scene scans full with thought, imagination,
Description. Look here through artistic eyes -- 8 directions,
Observations and creative strokes.

A Poem Flew

Thank the muses that a poem flew into my heart

this morning. Whenever I am the target of these
arrows of fancy I write gratefully and fastly. I
witness the pen moving and the ink--
this time the color brown--
flowing onto the page as the sun
sometimes sparks off the wetness
and then--like when the coffee maker
makes its final spurt--it is done. My hand stops moving as words drip to an end and the mind ques quiet and I earnestly read what has transpired in this attack of physical words in familiar hand on the page that is now full. For a moment my body is calm, my mind at rest. 

[Note: this is not the poem that came to me in a flash--that poem, over there, was written in blue and this, as I've said before, is of brown ink with an occasional spark of sun.]

A place at the table

Is this the beginning?

I want to write a poem but what do I say? I have nothing to add to the conversation. No springtime celebratory words. No weather reports of approaching thunderstorms with dangerous lightning and high wind. I seem to have forgotten how to feel the inner joy of writing a tragic poem. Writing artful words plays perhaps within the top 4 or 3 or 2 favorite things to do each day forever. The land that I play on is dry. No sprouts of words or paraphrase. No droplets of iambic pentameter falling into a couplet or two. Dairy Hollow I'm coming to you. Save a place for me at the table. Feed me and give me rest, but please, expect nothing.

What is possible

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness (George Santayana). And I think, "Oh here I am! Here I am again!" I can hold no more. As Jane Hirschfield's, This Was Once a Love Poem, shines up from an email newsletter I am reminded of an extraordinary poet who always catches my heart. Recently, I stumbled onto the work of Danny Gregory's illustrated journals which I immediately ordered in print so I could touch the lovely detailed  drawings. Here as I write are handouts and books from the class on Buddhism I am immersed in. A brochure from ARTS peeks out from under my Google tablet (a device which, btw, delivers too much of the good ---one book order at a time).  I'm exploring a new project which will become a companion piece to The Tao of WordLayers which I've been sharing with others the past several days. I feel that I cannot stop and want to do more play with colors and things of color but there is also laundry to do. I'll turn, for just two seconds, to the geraniums blooming in the south window as the sky prepares to open and rain down on the soot covered piles of February's snows. I am fully grateful for these moments.

Rejection letters

Sometimes it takes the same amount of effort and energy to lose as it does to win. I remember the Hungarian Goulash and the recipe I followed so very carefully but failed in my interpretation of 6 garlic cloves and 6 bulbs of garlic. The bulbs went into the goulash. The result was so horrible that we moved immediately on to the desert of lime sherbert and sugar cookies. Thank goodness for that tart sherbert. I had worked all afternoon on this dinner of Hungarian Goulash and concluded that good honest effort does not in itself guarantee success. For a writer, receiving rejection notices for hard work done is a similar story. Does all the effort and product go down the disposal? Perhaps, sometimes it should but . . .  remember the tart and the sweet. In the present tense the rejection simply means I put my heart and soul into a slice of poetry pie. There are more pieces to savor and the initial work is done. Maybe the meringue was a bit off  or perhaps it was a perfect poem read at the wrong time or a perfect piece of key lime pie tasted by a chocolate aficionado. "Keep baking and keep sharing your best words" says wise old Ms. Muse.

Moving Picture

Moving Picture

I'm getting ready for a poetry contest. This is a way for poets to get something published. There is a tremendous desire to share words--as there is to share life itself. Well, at least I have this blog as a practice of sorts. I've reworked the following poem to the point of loving it more then the day I first wrote it.

Woodland Symphony

We were staying in a cabin in the woods and I had never lived in the woods before. During that first trip I sat in a cedar rocking chair on the porch listening and this is what I heard:

Cock-a-doodle-do
squawks the oboe
playing rooster
in prelude to
a rising morning sun.

At symphony's center
woodland critters play
weaving sounds
in rhythmic pattern
of tinted harmony.

The conductor stands
to the side with
hands held behind as
baton loosely swings as
fingers slowly drum.

Chirping chirps
the piccolo birds
hum humorous notes
no note in minor key.

A big honker honks
to others across the way
French horns tuning
in fun filled fray.

Heard on the left and to the back
percussion impacts
the woodpecker pecks.

Horses trumpet from nearby corral
calls of whinnies and snorts
a stanza of fits and starts.

Cows bassoon their moos
in harmonic key crafting
multiples of musical interludes.

Symphony saturates each morning moment
measure by measure the melody happens
in promise to sing throughout the day and
soothe with vespers at Evensong.

All quietly soft
the light of the score
we sleep in the indigo night
of northern Arkansas.

http://www.wordlayers.com/woodland.htm

Within the Thunder (Pt. 2)

within the thunder. . .I've been working on a revision of the first poem written after that mind-numbing concussion where only color and image existed. Perhaps this is where I belong for the images I put down were from heart and not from mind. Seriously, the dyslexic that I am has always struggled with word. Making sense of words through spelling and grammar continues to be a struggle. Either I accept that I cannot write or I continue in battle. However, out of the mess of speaking through writing came the magic of WordLayers which is a personal victory out of war into art. I go in and out of consciousness not from concussion but from creativity.

See Website

I wrote all the words

In the beginning of any project or endeavor--like a new year--there are strings of wisdom and unresolved questions that tag along. I have given little thought to where I go from here--after the accident. Tomorrow, I am to begin my old normal life and I do not know how that will look. Rather than "normal" . . . it is not. A new normal will come into the days that follow. I will form new. My work will form new. What I did and what I do will form new. Change is here and I cannot see what that means. It is after the accident. Something has ended but what starts now? What takes the place of recovery? When at an impasse, it helps to look through old journals because lessons learned seem to lead to. . . lessons learned. This morning I found words about change and recovery--over and over again. The New Year comes no matter when the new year begins. The following was written several years ago.

I wrote all the words I needed to say (the angry, nasty, cry-baby whines,  prayers, pleadings, incantations) until I was speechless — no more words. And it was exactly here that I discovered silence inside-out.  And it was exactly here that I was free and ready   to   recognize the spiritual at the core of this experience.

Words Matter

I happen to be writing
with thin red ink and
happen to be reading
Tao 56 as morning
sunshine dawns on
the dark side
of my heart and
Mary paints the
rusty old wheel
barrow red and
paints these words
in white on top
as my heart
opens to the sun.



poem found on page 56, William Carlos Willams, Selected Poems, a Christmas gift from Mary