I see twilight be
coming dawn–clear, unjingo
istic, open, free
I usually do a red white and blue grid for July, but this year it doesn’t feel right, just like our national anthem has never felt right to me. Not even considering the character of Francis Scott Key, I never wanted to celebrate bombs bursting in air. I don’t think God is on “our” side. There is nothing that makes me any more deserving of anything than any other living being of any other nationality, race, or religion.
Everything that happens everywhere affects everyone and every place on Earth. Unless we learn to act on that truth, there is little hope for humanity’s survival.
Who will
carry the end
back to the beginning?
who will remember the lost, re
locate
the disappeared? Who will fill life
with futures, release those
fragile wings to
the skies?
I decided to do my May grid and a butterfly cinquain for both the NaPoWriMo Day 30 prompt, “something that returns”, and Colleen’s #Tanka Tuesday prompt theme, chosen by Elizabeth from Tea and Paper, “the day after”.
When Nina and I first started blogging at memadtwo, one of my recurring themes was endangered species. I posted twice (here and here) about the Monarch Butterfly, and wrote in one post:
Most people know that monarchs migrate from the United States and Canada to central Mexico to hibernate in winter. This can mean a trip of nearly 3,000 miles!
Between 2012 and 2013 the amount of butterflies who wintered in the Mexican forest decreased by 40%. The forest habitat itself is disappearing as a result of illegal logging. But the extreme weather conditions of the last few years, due to climate change, have also caused lower hatching rates. Another factor is the loss of milkweed plants, the primary food source for monarchs, killed by agricultural herbicides.
Perhaps the coronavirus will provide these beautiful creatures with some respite from human destruction.
When looking for music about migration I remembered Steve Earle’s song. Monarchs remind us that borders are only the lines that we ourselves choose to draw.
Thanks to Maureen Thorson and all the participants in NaPoWriMo 2020 for helping me to travel all over the world and creating bridges that reached far beyond the walls and borders of our politics and our forced isolation.
For my grid this month I decided to try something different–I consulted the collage box oracle for the haiku and incorporated the words into the grid. I tried both photographing and scanning it, but neither exactly captured the colors–they had a strange red cast. I had a little better luck adjusting them in Photoshop with the scanned image, above.
who you are connects the transit of where you are
to the shape of next
we begin as vessels, empty,
all this space
waiting to find the right oceans—ancient echoes wandering–
all-that-is transformed into an
azure song,
composed from
whispers of traces—spirals
mirroring the sea
A shadorma duo for Colleen’s #TankaTuesday poet’s choice of words. The art inspiration is via Mish at dVerse, who introduced us to artist Beverly Dyer, and asked for an ekphrastic response to one of her paintings. I chose her grid, “Blue Story”, above, and did my own grid to match with pieces of ocean and sky.
Is it the sky I seize when my hand reaches out to touch the storm of rain? Or do the heavens remain behind the veil, rainbowed and unclouded, waiting for the thunderings of the gods to echo into quietude as they follow the flashes of light to the edge of the horizon?
Everything around me is covered with drops of liquid light.
Gaia, drunk with the season’s retreat, builds an improvised framework out of the movements of the moon.
I look for the line
between now and again, where
flower becomes seed–
All is stillness, dense, restless–
leaves shiver, rattled by wind.
A haibun for my August grid, using the prompt words clear and nature from Colleen’s #TankaTuesday. Last night’s thunderstorm seemed to be straddling seasons. Two of Jane Dougherty’s recent poems, “Damp Morning” and “Stories” are similar in feeling.
The grid and poem started out in the same general area but were revised in different directions I think. Well, my drawing teachers always emphasized the importance of contrast in art–what isn’t there being as necessary as what is. It’s up to the reader/watcher to fill in the blanks with what they need.
