Incidental New Year poems

It's a poet's game,
casting out words
and writing in response.


If I could write a sonnet, would it say
full half of what my heart has in it now?
Some special word to brighten up your way,
To weave a web of dreams if you allow
Would make my moment happier by far
And let me start the New Year with a smile.
But how this moment seems askew, ajar,
with business left to do all in a pile.
And so I'll leave good hopes for one and all -
And later will I come with poesy's call.


Clever as a feather
drifting soft on starlight wings,
word to image dancing,
now lost in faery rings,
What word have you to sing tonight
as old year turns to new?
What memories will spin inside,
some happy, some to rue?

Clever as a feather
drifting soft on starlight wings,
the old year is coming home to rest,
the new year gently sings,
of tomorrows we will cherish,
of hopes we long to bring
into the break of morning light
beyond the faery ring.

Odds and ends

Yay! Today I lost all the weight I put on over the three days of Christmas celebration I gave myself. Some of it must have been fluid retention from more salt than usual...to go up that fast and come down that fast.

Been trying to collect some of my poetry.

Managed to mostly recapture a poem I wrote back in the 80s that I always liked. (Not reflective of my current state of mind, or my marriage, or my life now...but was probably pretty true then!)

We all build walls, it seems, she said.

The rose,
the rose he handed her
falls apart,
scattering its petals
like leaves in an autumn breeze
until nothing is left
but a dry leaf
and a thorny stem
and a memory
of something beautiful gone forever.

We all build walls, it seems, she said.

1983/2005

Of course it's not exactly how I wrote it, and I am sure I added some touches from my now style, but I like it as a piece of art.

Sunshine and Snow

Today it was snow falling
under a sky growing blue,
big puffy clouds,
not a snow sky at all.
Yet there they were,
white kernals
scattering over the yard,
a moment that makes you wonder
where
such a contrast could come from.

Too warm to snow, I thought,
so I double checked the thermometer
The chatter of songbirds grew
as I tended to the birdfeeders,
looking up at the sky,
walking there with no coat on,
just a cotton shirt,
watching the snow mix into the birdseed,
the sparrows and chickadees
impatient
where they hid among the wisteria and juniper,
ignoring the weather.

But there it was.
I poured birdseed,
looked up at the blue sky,
and thought about God's sense of humour.

Someone gave me a word for the day -Quiddity

quiddity \KWID-ih-tee\, noun

1. The essence, nature, or distinctive peculiarity of a thing.
2. A hairsplitting distinction; a trifling point; a quibble.
3. An eccentricity; an odd feature.

So, in response, I wrote:

She long suffered the Gulf coast humidity,
Glowing lady-like in summer liquidity,
Moving west, she discovered
What dry skin means, and her cupboard
Is filled with bottles of liquid's wet quiddity!

A poem

Shall we then
meet
when the darkness sweeps us up
like the scattering of leaves
on a long autumn's night
dancing in the wind,
meeting as one year
progresses into the next,
excitement in our hearts,
transition the hope
of new birth?

Shall we wander
along the dark paths,
wander watching the prodigal stars
scatter their dust upon an unknowing landscape,
atom by atom,
with that crystalline call
that makes us yearn to eternity?

Shall we wait, instead,
hovering like snowflakes
on boughs of blue-green spruce,
white purity
twinkling in the winter sun,
Dangling like the last drop
of a crystal icecle,
poised to fall
soon as the weather warms?

Or shall we instead,
walk together this morning,
our words hovering about us
perhaps like a protective halo,
guarding us
from who knows what,
perhaps a soon forgotten moment of innocence
glimmering in our unquenched hopes,
or perhaps, instead,
our words might become the doorway to a truth
we hadn't seen before.

Who would have thought we could
have this time together,
You and I?