Instagram Poem

Today at Real Toads is Tuesday Platform. Sanaa is Suggesting instagram sized poems. So here we go for day 24 of Nannumope. This is also posted for Poets United Mid-week Motif – Summer.

the full moon flutters
on the surface of the pond
lone cicada sings

Silent Road

This is posted for Poets United Midweek Motif – Meteor showers.  It is also posted at dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night.  This happened years ago.  It is an extended haibun.

Silent Road
Delta Aquarids –
escape from city lights – the
veiled stars will unveil

Hot night in July –needing to be out of the city, rolling down a smooth country two lane blacktop, soft roar of the tires – tack…..tack…..tack…..Rock in the tire tread – front passenger, I think. Black countryside, no lights showing in the few houses. Folks have to get up early go to work in town, go to work in surrounding tobacco fields. Rolling past rows of tobacco and corn row after row after row, broken only by the dark houses. The blooms on the green plants show up white in the headlights.

Past another small house, dark. Ahead off to the right a dirt road. I pull off and go down it slowly. Dust invisible but I can smell it, thick whiffs of sharp iron and sweeter lime.  In the headlights ahead. Washboard shadows in the hard dirt where constant tires have cleared away the gravel. In the headlight the road is pale pink but in the daylight, it will be red as blood. To the left, a small drive leading to an empty space by the tobacco field. I pull in and park, cut the engine – the cooling motor goes ting ting ting…

insect sounds rise in
the darkness – chackachacka
hypnotic hum..

Except for the insects, dead silence.  A dog barks some distance away then another closer by answers. In front of me as my eyes adjust I see several empty tobacco slides waiting for morning. Time of year to prime the thick leaves, snap by hand the thick stalks, heavy leaves of the plants, to be loaded in layers in the slides, then hitched to the back of a tractor to be taken to be to ancient tobacco barns and tied by hand to tobacco sticks, loaded by hand into the barn to dry for sale in the fall. I can tell by the snapped stalks on the plants, this is the third priming.

fireflies flicker – an
insect meteor shower
among the dark plants

One comes in my car window and settles on the steering wheel, White dark white dark – flashing its signals to an alien being who doesn’t understand the language. Smells of dust, acrid tang of tobacco sap, smell of cows from a field close by. Tipping the seat back  I lean my head against the headrest And look at the stars through my windshield. The firefly continues its signals. Suddenly, several quick bursts in the dark sky and the stars begin to fall – trails of white falling towards the horizon, silent as dust. Some shimmer, some burst, they all burn in the summer night, streak after streak, fast, slow, dark and again they explode and fall.  In the cool grey dawn, the stars have gone to sleep. The firefly has flown away. I drive slowly down the dirt road back to the two lane black top back to the city.   Tack…..tack…..tack…..

July stars burst streak –
trails of fire in the black night
fade and disappear

 

Quadrille Monday – Dance

The Poets Pub opens again at 3:00 PM EST after a break. Grace is the prompter for Quadrille Monday. A Quadrille is a short poem consisting of exactly 44 words, not including the title. The prompt word for our Quadrilles today is “flicker”. Come join us and read these wonderful poems. Today is also the SIXTH ANNIVERSARY of dVerse.  The drinks are on me! https://dversepoets.com/2017/07/17/happy-6th-anniversary-quadrille-36/

Dance
I heard the cicadas for the first time
tonight –sawing scraping –
moonlight dapples the trees with silver –
fireflies in the darkness –
a flickering dance
On off on off
stars in the black sky
flicker in return
on off on off
eternal dance

public domain photo

 

Silent Thunder Moon

For Real toads Tuesday platform: http://withrealtoads.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-tuesday-platform_11.html  NOTE: in North America, the full moons are given various names by the Native American tribes, according to their geography within the US. The “thunder” moon is from the Lakota Sioux.

Silent Thunder Moon
silver night –
the full thunder moon paints
my yard in argent tones.
silent night –
the full thunder moon sits
and watches the world below.
silver night
silent night –
hot steamy air
sweat runs down my skin under my tee shirt.
i take off my glasses
and the world resolves
into night camo shades.
silent – painted with silver
and drenched with dew
I sit.
the thunder moon is
silent – insects sleep deeply –
lone mockingbird sings

summer haiku and tanka

I.
the full moon flutters
on the surface of the pond
dancing in time to
the first song of summer sung
by a lonely cicada

II.
the summer moon bursts
from behind the clouds – startled
an owl takes flight

III.
still summer air weighs
heavy against the trees and
then the rain begins

IV.
small bell sounds like rain
in the summer dawn – birds sing
to the cobalt sky

My Night

This is my first visit to Poetic Bloomings, hosted by WALTER J. WOJTANIK and other grand folk over at Poetic Bloomings, another poetry community. Walt is the newest addition to our staff over at dVerse Poets Pub whose doors are closed for a brief summer hiatus. dVerse will be back in a couple of weeks! At Poetic Bloomings today, we were given the amazing poem “You Begin” by Margaret Atwood to be our inspiration. This is my poem inspired by that. I have left a link to my poem at Poetic Bloomings at: https://poeticbloomings2.wordpress.com/2016/07/05/an-entertaining-summer-day-5-you-begin/

My Night
the fiery sunset fades to grey
and grey becomes indigo and
at last black. In the blue hour birds
sing their last songs of the day.
the summer night begins.
this is my night of the summer
when animals creep about
and bats fly, this is my night
with smells of roses, freshly cut grass.
this is my time of silence
broken only by the sound of insects
and frogs singing the stars awake.
air cools and dew falls
and only I am awake to know
this time. the wild tuxedo cat
ignores me as he makes his way
to the bush where is the pile of food I leave for him
and eats his fill and then moves on.
the fawn has grown to a doe and
she grazes on the clover just out of my reach.
The roses of my neighbor and my gardenia
mingle their perfumes for one brief glorious moment.
a mockingbird splits the silence of my night
and begins his cycle of song.
the still cool sky lightens to grey
to heliotrope and then explodes
into sunrise.
this is the beginning of my summer day.

Open Link Night #174 – Honeysuckle

Today is Open Link Night at dVerse Poets Pub. Drop by and join us in some cool drinks and hot poems! Come find your new favorite poet at: https://dversepoets.com/2016/06/09/openlinknight-174/

Scent of Honeysuckle – Suikazura no kaori
Sitting on my back steps at 2:00 a.m.
Black night, dark of the moon.
The night air is warm as bathwater
and fragrant with the sweet smell of honeysuckle.

Clover blossoms like earthbound stars
glow in the galaxy of grass at my feet.
I close my eyes breathing deeply –
Honeysuckle – rich, irresistible.

The ancient tangled vines lure me
to them and I brush the small trumpet blooms
with delicate fingers.
I take a few sprigs back with to my seat on the steps.
and tuck them into the braid of my hair –
Queen of the honeysuckle fairies…

It is peaceful at 2:00 a.m.
My small kingdom is at rest and
sleeping – honeysuckle perfume lulls.

Honeysuckle breathes
into the summer night – dreams
gentle and long past.

duke.edu.org public domain

dVerse Poets Pub – Haibun – What’s in a Name?

Thursday is Open Link Night at the dVerse Poets Pub. You can submit one original poem of your choice. I am submitting this haibun.  The haiku is the one I wrote for the contest ages ago.  Come join us at dVerse and find your new favorite poet!  http://dversepoets.com/2016/05/26/openlinknight-173/

public domain image

What’s in a Name?
The image:. A beautiful woman with dark curly hair and in her arms a pretty daughter with matching hair. Toni Home Permanent. Which twin has the Toni? Toni doll:. Wash! Comb! Curl! Her magic hair! TV in the 1950’s bombarded you with images of perfection (Just like now). My pregnant mother just knew she would give birth to a daughter and because she had naturally beautiful black hair with curls, and her younger sister and her mother and grandmother, so would her daughter. I was born with a headful of black curls and so she named me Toni. I hated this name. Kids sneered. Nyah nyah! You have a boy’s name. Teachers insisted my name was Antonia or Tonia. No one was called Just Toni. I hated the name Tonia. Tonnnnnyuh. Tonia was the perfect little girl in Sunday School with straight hair the color of ripe wheat. Tonia was not the tangle curly haired snaggle toothed glasses wearing changeling – that was Toni.

In school Tonia was well behaved and used a bookmark under the words as she dutifully read – Toni was halfway through the book and always being set in a corner because she didn’t read the right words when called upon. Toni was hard to spell:. Tony, Toney, Tone, Tonie, Tonee, and the middle name…Carol. Before she could get away with not using not telling it. Vicious kids would twist and slur it…Toneeee Currrrl…hey Toneeee Currrrl. Your mother named you after a boy. Four eyed Toneeee Currrrl….nyah nyah

But Toni – when she was six wrote her first haiku. When she was 12, she won second place in the state haiku society contest for adults. She began reading Eliot, Dickinson, Whitman,. Thoreau. And by then she no longer heard the meanness, but ya know? Now? Those knife cuts from long ago still sting. Sometimes in the night when she can’t sleep, she wonders if she will ever write a first place haiku. Will she ever be good enough?  When she moves slowly and deliberately through the sword forms, she wonders if her movements will ever make music in the air. She looks down at the faded Second Place Winner certificate and opens the tattered sheet of paper and still wonders if she will ever be good enough or will she always be the four eyed changeling – always be boynamed Toneee Currrrl.

summer full moon – no
shadows in silver lit yard –
sword slashes through night

 

public domain image

Meeting the Bar: Golden Shovel

Today at the dVerse Poets Pub, De (WwhimsyGizmo) has given us the poetic form prompt of Golden Shovel. A most interesting form. You take a line or lines from a favorite poem. Each word becomes the last word of a line of the poem. Come visit us to read this distinct reforming of a poem. I have chosen a favorite haiku by Kobayashi Issa. The italicized words at the end of each line are the words of the haiku. I am linking to: http://dversepoets.com/2016/05/05/dverse-meeting-the-bar-the-golden-shovel-form/

Night Stars
The hot dense time of summer
Wraps my garden in slumberous night –
so hot the frogs are silent and even
the cicadas sleep – the
distant black horizon explodes with showers of stars.
alone together, the night and I are
gazing in adoration at the crescent moon – the whispering
footsteps of passing covert deer on their way to
the dreaming creek. A lone mockinbird names each
 in their passing, intimately known to the other.

haiku by Issa written in his own hand

d’Verse Poetics: Meeting the Bar – Poems ala Emily Dickinson

Today at Meeting the Bar, Victoria is back with us after an absence. It is so good to have her back at d’Verse – her personality, her joy – her incredible ideas for poetry prompts. Today she is asking us to use the rhyme and rhythm scheme – Common Measure. Not only part of many Christian hymns, but employed by Emily Dickinson in her incredible poetry. We are to do our best to write poems ala Emily Dickinson. I feel I fall far short. Indeed, she is a long time favorite of mine and I know I could never do justice to her ingenuous, intricate, flowing, unique, far into the future form – well before her time. Come visit us at d’Verse and read the submissions for this very interesting prompt. Please feel free to join usthe in Pub conversations and to read and comment on the submission.  Please submit your own poem as well!  http://dversepoets.com/2015/07/30/emilys-not-so-common-meter

Blue Moon
The Blue moon glowed as Blue moons will
suspended high in a Summer night sky –
I gaped in awe at the June yellow cheese –
So it seemed to me alone on my hill.

Amidst grey clouds the Moon floated gold
And lit the sky with yellow –
The blue Moon glowed as Blue moons of old –
Ringed not with blue but golden Halo.

d’Verse Poetics – Guest Prompter: Healing of Nature – tanka

Today at d’Verse Poetics Pub, CC is our guest “bartender”. She is speaking to us about Nature and the healing of Nature so our poems are being written around that theme. So many of us, I know, find that peace and healing in Nature – no matter how busy the day or how much stress, some time in our gardens, walking in a park, sitting on a porch in the summer night and listening to the night sounds, always seem to soothe us and help heal our hearts. I have included a video from YouTube of a summer night in East Tennessee. it is like the summer night sounds around here. The video is 3 1/2 minutes long, but the first few seconds should give you a good idea if you want to listen. There are no visuals, just darkness and summer sounds.  These sounds remind me of my childhood and sitting out at night.  I still do that – sit on my back steps at night to rest, recycle, reclaim my inner peace, being restful with Nature.

Come join us at d’Verse Poetics today and read about healing Nature and please, feel free to contribute one of your poems along that theme! We are not a bunch of snobs and welcome all to participate in the discussion and to link up your poem and comment.  http://dversepoets.com/2015/07/28/poetics-in-tune-with-nature

cicadas singing
summer night lullaby – warm
darkness surrounds – day’s
distractions all disappear –
soft night’s healing peace

d’Verse Poetics – Trains! tanka 短歌

Today at d’Verse Poetics, Bill is our conductor! He has been bicycling on trails that used to be regular train routes. He is prompting us to write about trains.  The tickets are free.  Come and climb on board and ride the rails with us:  http://dversepoets.com/2015/07/21/poetics-all-aboard

 

Summer night – humid
Air stands still – distant train sounds
Travel and nestle
In my dreams of going somewhere –
to a place of long ago.