cinquain

Seventeen

Nothing
remains, except
this quickened memory–
how brief and wondrous it was, that
first love

A cinquain for Colleen’s Tanka Tuesday, with the photo prompt above by Terri Webster Schrandt.

Frank @ Beach Walk Reflections posted this week about love. His meditations always make me think of music and I considered all the love songs I knew, and how difficult it was to capture the essence of love in words. This morning I put on Donovan’s Fairy Tale album and the first song, “Colours”, struck all the right chords, as it had when I first heard it 50 years ago, conjuring that time and space in my life when the complexities of the future did not yet exist. Ephemeral, but nonetheless still very real, even now, from this far away country where I presently reside.

31 xian (Seeking Union)

To open,
join opposites.
Receive what is given.
Let the unexpected pathway
unfold.

This poem was first posted in 2018, inspired by Sue Vincent’s photo prompt, above, and I Ching 31, which appeared in the envelope collage I did based on a linear print by Joan Mitchell.

I read many interpretations of this hexagram, and tried to distill what I thought was its essential message.

Shelter encloses, but it opens, too.

For earthweal, open link weekend.

Riddles

riddles s

What grows
 invisible
and fills every corner–
what erases and then measures
the time?

What comes
 gushing out of
open veins, cascading–
what removes and then replaces
the cut?

What is
 hidden until
it has always been there–
what rearranges memory
as light?

Three American cinquains for Colleen’s #tankaTuesday words, plan and spend.

riddles close up s