Category: Poetry

Heidi’s challenge for the Inklings this month was to “write a short postcard poem with choice details of your vacation/holiday/getaway/escape location and activities. Conclude with “Wish you were here” or some variation!”

This past week, I spent two unplanned days in NYC. The actual plan was to go to an in-person workshop at Tatter on Saturday and then come right home that evening. But mid-afternoon on Saturday, my flight was cancelled. No problem, except that the two known-to-me hotels were booked up for the night. My third choice, the Hotel Beacon, was A-Mazing, so that made up for it all and I looked forward to a fun bonus museum day on Sunday before returning home that night…which was not to be, though, because my flight was cancelled AGAIN. After a trip out to The Mayhem Known as JFK in the Midst of Numerous Flight Cancellations (see photo taken from the AirTrain), I wound up back at one of my known-to-me hotels with a flight booked for Monday afternoon. I was just about over making lemonade, but I (metaphorically) sucked it up and spent a delightful couple of semi-cool morning hours walking in Central Park before spending the rest of the afternoon and evening in airports and airplanes.

My response to Heidi’s prompt is not a short postcard poem. It long, like my trip became.

Here’s what the other Inklings did with this month’s challenge:

Linda @A Word Edgewise
Catherine @Reading to the Core
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Heidi @my juicy little universe

Jan has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Bookseedstudio.

The Poetry Sisters challenge this month was Wabi-Sabi. I just re-read the prompt and realized that Wabi-Sabi was supposed to be the title of the poem. Oh, well. I’ll claim the third truth of Wabi-Sabi — nothing is perfect!

In his book Wabi-Sabi Simple, Richard Powell described wabi-sabi as a philosophy that acknowledges a lifestyle that appreciates and accepts three simple truths: “Nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.” I embrace this philosophy whole-heartedly in my gardening.

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Lawn
dappled
with clover.
Exuberant
mish-mash flower beds.
One raised bed all fennel —
buffet for black swallowtails.
Three kinds of milkweed for monarchs.
Landscaping by Wabi-Sabi, Inc.

© Mary Lee Hahn, 2024

Here’s how the rest of the Poetry Sisters Wabi’d their Sabi:

Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}
Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas
Sara @ Read Write Believe

and Tricia has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup @ The Miss Rumphius Effect

Next month, we’re writing haiku that give away something. Haiku that could be found on your local Buy Nothing FaceBook page, or at the curb during your community’s Free-cycle event.

Molly gave the Inklings our June challenge — a quote from a talk by Pádraig Ó Tuama. Molly reported that essentially he said, “Write something narrative and by narrative I mean something that has story and observation to it…write about the first time you saw somebody who’s become a you to you…a you that you love to say…detail what else could be seen”… and let those other things convey what it all meant to you.

After listing all the YOUs in my life and writing about a bajillion drafts, I decided that my YOU for this poem would be the process of figuring out what to write about. My YOU is inspiration itself.

I’m scheduling this post on Tuesday because on Wednesday I leave for a week spent with family. I won’t be able to comment until it’s almost time for another Poetry Friday, but I still can’t wait to see what the other Inklings do with this challenge.

Linda @A Word Edgewise
Catherine @Reading to the Core
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Heidi @my juicy little universe

Tracey has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Tangles & Tales.

Image via Unsplash.

The Poetry Sisters’ challenge this month was to write in the style of Lucille Clifton’s homage to my hips, and choose our own body parts to pay homage to. 

Listen and watch as she reads her poem. That grin (almost a smirk) tricks you into thinking she’s poking fun at herself, but nothing could be further from the truth. She writes against ageism and sexism and racism. Her phrase “I like to celebrate the wonderfulness that I am” became my battle cry. I am who I am who I was who I will be, but I AM HERE! Against all odds, I have come this far, and I’m going to carry on singing at the top of my voice…well, insofar as an introvert can manage, at least.

Here’s what body parts the rest of the Poetry Sisters are celebrating:

Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}
Tricia @ The Miss Rumphius Effect
Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas

Janice has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Salt City Verse.

Image via Unsplash.

Linda gave us our May challenge. After spinning the wheel of chance that paired us up with another Inkling, we sent off a poem and received a poem. Then, we were tasked to “Fiddle with, play with, tinker, tear-apart, be inspired or stumped by the poem.”

Here’s what Heidi sent me:

Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, 
that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light.
~Mary Oliver

Golden Haystack

It’s not common, it’s not every 
day 
I come across words in which I 
see 
sparks or 
hear 
a sounding something
that 
opens the locked box of a poem. This one more 
or 
less demands that I pry at buried boxes, more or less 
kills 
me. 
This year delight will not stay with 
me.  I can see it, hear it, feel the gauze of delight 
that 
surrounds me; I try to hold it but it leaves 
me 
like a pin dropping, like a coin rolling, like 
a 
sharp momentary needle 
in 
my arm. I am vaccinated against joy. I search the 
haystack 
daily for shine, ordinary evening stealing the keys of 
light. 

Heidi Mordhorst 2021

Is that not the most perfect encapsulation of what The COVID Year was like? How our creativity was muffled and elusive?

I chose to respond to Heidi’s Haystack with some hay bales (a bit like last week’s pebbles), created from handfuls of straw, first from her poem, and then from the Mary Oliver quote.

Golden Hay Bales

There will always be this –
even in a year
devoid of delight,
when hope will
hide its face behind a mask, not
letting me remember to cup my hand around its flame – I can stay 
as malleable as the candle with 
wax dripping, flowing, creating a new me.

.

a loaded paintbrush, a sharpened pencil, a
threaded needle –
all poised in
the hand of the
maker – her thoughts a loosely massed haystack
of
hope, an undulation of light.

.

Stymied by introspective search,
brushing off the
chaff from life’s haystack 
of daily
human indignities, I head for
the garden and its abundance of hopeful shine.

.

Like a crowd bearing purple-flamed torches, every
iris in the bed is poised to bloom. Any day
now I 
will wake to see
the torches flaring open like firework explosions or
a hopeful chorus of purple joy I can and yet cannot hear.

©Mary Lee Hahn, 2024

.

It wasn’t until I had finished writing that I saw how light and hope are the twine that holds my bales together.

What a fun challenge! Thank you, Linda. Thank you, Heidi.

Here’s how the rest of the Inklings met Linda’s challenge:

Linda @A Word Edgewise
Catherine @Reading to the Core
Heidi @my juicy little universe
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche

Buffy Silverman has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup. And because I had a small brain lapse when I put out the call for roundup hosts last December, leaving off June, here is the call for roundup hosts June – December 2024.

The hay bale image is from Wikimedia Commons. (Do you know how hard it is to find pictures of old-school rectangular hay bales? They’re all round now!)

* * *

Edited on Thursday evening to add…a bunch of the torches have flared open. I wish this photo had smell-o-vision!