I started out with a long rambling poem of half formed questions but the Oracle had other ideas. She was obviously thinking about my recent nights visiting with the moon.
how is the moon here
in the secret sky above
my dark wanderings
October Night
poetry
translational
listen to the sound of air–
filling the distance,
tiny continuous hums–
whispers weaving nets,
forming a loose cocoon un
seen, awash, present–
between silences singing–
distilled reflection
Brendan at earthweal this week asks us to “describe an enchanted moment”. Neither words nor images seem adequate for the sound of air, but I attempted it anyway. It doesn’t happen all the time, but sometimes when I meditate everything else fades away and I can hear the air. Most often it sounds like the image above.
But sometimes it has more clarity.
And in rare moments, it takes colors into the layers of movement.
The images were created by taking some of the art from one of my Kick-About responses to a film about light and applying Photoshop filters. I’ll get around to posting the originals at some point.
Souvenir
I could not
look at it from be
fore or aft
er, only
the angle of gone, dissolved,
empty, vanishing–
not just the
material thing
that had been
dispossessed,
but what it represented–
a piece of myself,
never to
be recovered–and
here I am
left watching,
clinging to impermanence
like water and wind
“The Kick-About prompt of souvenir seemed perfect: my daughter had given me a small sketchbook, and every day I sat on my beach chair with my feet in the waves doing a drawing, and then writing a haiku to accompany it. The sketchbook would be my souvenir.
On the last day of my beach vacation the ocean was quite rough, due to Hurricane Henri passing by, so I sat far up on the sand, where only a small piece of a dying wave occasionally brushed my toes. Holding my sketchbook up to let the watercolor pencil drawing dry I was suddenly totally upended by a rogue wave that covered me completely. I stood up, soaked, clutching my pencils in one hand, but watching my sketchbook being pulled under and out to sea.
I will replay that image in my mind for a long time, maybe forever.
When I got home, I channeled my emotional turmoil into neocolors, drawing from memory the ocean that was now fixed in my mind. The sketchbook drawings were so much more beautiful though. At least that’s how I’ll always remember them.”
For dVerse, where Ingrid asks us to attempt “writing your way out of a place of pain“. I drew it first, then I wrote.
October
The Oracle is feeling the chill in the air. This morning is grey and cooler than recent days.
The collage is another piece of art I found while cleaning. Painted and ripped rice paper–I guess I didn’t like the original watercolors. I don’t remember it at all.
wind rustles secrets through trees–
how my roots long for
a blanket with leaves seeded
by a moon garden
every season asks us why
we follow the same
path of lonely wandering
instead of singing
Confluence
1
The music of birds gathers
in the minglings of sky and trees.
2
Voices weave separate paths that cross
each other and echo into themselves.
3
Who arranges the sequences
into song, the patterns into stories?
4
Who maps the contingent journey
of roots and branches?
5
Who casts the landscape into wings
that lift spirit into light?
I’ve been wanting to try a cadralor, and Bjorn at dVerse gave me a push by suggesting the form in his prompt. I’ve also been worrying a poem for earthweal, where Sherry asked us to look for “moments of collateral beauty“. Having a specific form to work with helped me to organize my thoughts.
I know: birds again. Yes.
The stitching was inspired by the art of Joan Mitchell, as was all the art I did for NaPoWriMo 18. It seems a lifetime ago now.
of feather and stone
rock high against
the firmament
stone smooth
against the palm–
what wishes are veined
inside each heart?
which dreams skim
the surface in currents
riding wings that touch
both earth and sky?
who can draw the line
between what is
and what might be?
Jane’s recent poems mentioning kestrels reminded me of this strange collage I made awhile ago from a kestrel painting and a brush drawn portrait, neither of which satisfied me.
It was inspired by Ethiopian healing scrolls, which contain both words and talismanic images, although except for the square face in the center, it doesn’t resemble any of the images in the scrolls. I still don’t know what to make of the collage, but now I, too, have attached words to it.
A quadrille for dVerse, where De has provided us with the word stone.
Poetry Postcard Fest 2021: Pantoum and Moon
I want to spiral with stars,
I want to breathe deeply
of the galaxies–
fly into vast silences
thrown towards the essence
of the galaxies,
the echo of silence–
I want to spiral with stars
For the Poetry Postcard Fest this year, I decided to do all moon postcards from my own photos as I had already done a series of them for one of the Kick-About prompts so I had the beginnings started. Last year I did shadormas for the poems using part of the last line of the previous poem as the first line for the next one.
But this year I decided to do a pantoum, giving me two lines for my next poem. These are the first and the last cards, the beginning and the end of the poem. I enjoyed it, but I don’t think it was as successful poetically, as I kind of got bogged down in the middle by the repetition. Too much of a good thing–41 stanzas is a lot.
Since I made 41 postcards I sent them all–to the 32 people on my list, and the rest I sent to friends. In return I got 25 from people in my Fest group, plus 2 from friends. You can see the ones I received at the top. Last year one postcard arrived in December, so more may show up. Once again I enjoyed the variety in both the postcards and the poems I received. Not to mention finding real mail in the mailbox–that’s always a treat.
I intended to post all the postcards and poems I sent last year for PoPo 2020, but I didn’t get very far. I did do 3 posts with the first 6 cards–you can see them here:
https://kblog.blog/2020/10/02/popo-2020/
https://kblog.blog/2020/10/18/popo-2020-part-2/
https://kblog.blog/2021/06/14/popo-2020-part-3/
They may still get posted at some point…and also more of this year’s moon cards. You can never have too much of either the moon or pantoums.
You can read about the Poetry Postcard Fest, and register for 2022, here.
Also linking to dVerse Open Link Night, where Lisa (who also participated in the Postcard Fest and made and sent me one of her beautiful postcards) is hosting.
the inside out
The Oracle was a bit enigmatic today. I’ve matched her words with a collage box oracle message–another piece of art recently rediscovered in my cleaning.
almost the fool’s eye
the voice of our unreason
less dazzle more magic
dancing clouds surround eternity
stars remember breath flying
this wild ocean of sky
why not yet
at bay
shadows edge flush along the side
of day, post sentries that abide
within the holes where secrets hide
when sun falls sudden into night
colors retreat to black and white,
orbiting like a satellite,
a rippled undulating tide
unlike a dream which speaks in signs,
eidola plot their own decline–
they vanish in between the lines,
a hushed wake of penumbral glide
Grace at dVerse introduced us to a new poetry form: Zéjel. In my recent cleaning mode, I discovered the strange embroidery pictured above, and decided to compose a verse to accompany it.
I stitched this piece as an assignment for a class I took about 15 years ago–we were trying out new stitches. I can’t remember what inspired this design, nor can I figure out now how I produced some of these stitches. I may have kept notes about it, but I haven’t discovered them yet. But I have many boxes still to go through…
I found this poetic form to be a challenge, and I’m not sure I’m done tweaking what I wrote. But I do think its strangeness is a good match for the art.
