The Poetry Sisters’ Challenge for this month was to write ekphrastic poems from photos we shared with each other. This happens to be one of the photos I shared, and while it is a glorious and whimsical sky, my poem took me in other, more mournful directions. Such is the nature of ekphrastic poems. Whatever the image prompts is where the poem goes.
Here’s Tricia’s poem, and Tanita’s poem, and Liz’s poem.
Susan has this week’s end-of-August Poetry Friday roundup at Chicken Spaghetti.
A(nother) Year of Reading 
What a challenging and wonderful poem for the sky! I love the reference to the constellations “ablaze” and the line about clouds stories. This is a brilliantly played poem. True to the ghazal, each couplet could be its own poem.
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Sadly a timeless poem, and beautiful. I love thinking about “the sky” as our companion, and your couplet,
”Cloud stories are written in shapes and in storms / that dance and drift and amaze across sky.”
—A pillowous wonder waiting to happen, thanks Mary Lee!
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Mary Lee, I like how your poem starts out with mourning, but leads us to a challenge to look up and appreciate the amazement of the clouds and the way it is our ever-present life-giver. Thank you, and the photo is beautiful.
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These lines amaze me, “breathing lost lives from our hazed-over sky” and, “cloud stories are written in shapes and storms.” This is such a punch of a poem for sky I don’t even consider the form–it just flows beautifully. Well done.
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This poem moves from sadness (at least for me) to hope. The couplets offer such varied ways of knowing the sky. You may have just inspired me to think about this form for next month!
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WOW, of course you jumped back in with a ghazel!! It’s such an appealing form, but I always feel like it slips out of my fingers… but you’ve kept a solid grasp ’til the end. LOVE IT.
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Favorite lines
“cloud stories are written in shapes and in storms
that dance and drift and amaze across the sky”
I love the way shapes and amaze sound together.
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I love that you wrote this for the sky. I really loved “breathing lost lives from our hazed-over sky.”
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Well, I am always looking ‘up’! We have had more of “grays in the sky,” this summer, most affected was my son-in-law who is asthmatic and I don’t see as many stars, just as you wrote, too much city! I love the ‘life-giving’ part of the ending, Mary Lee. It may not always be healthy but it is there for us, “constant companion”.
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I like thinking of clouds as our “constant companions.” Maybe it is that constancy that makes people (other than poets) take them for granted.
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Now I want to hear the sky’s reply 🙂
(btw…I think the sky understands)
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You’ve achieved something so remarkable here, Mary Lee — it’s ‘formal’ and finely crafted and, also, reads like rather dreamy stream-of-consciousness.
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You’re achieved something so remarkable here, Mary Lee — a ‘formal’ and finely crafted poem that reads like stream of consciousness. So wonderful.
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Mournful and beautiful. This:
breathing lost lives from our hazed-over sky.
made me catch my breath.
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