Featuring cherita!


March 30, 2017

Poetry Friday--TLD Challenge: Odes

I'm sure you're all aware of Michelle Barnes' Today's Little Ditty challenges. This month the challenge was provided by Helen Frost.
Choose an object (a seashell, a hairbrush, a bird nest, a rolling pin). It should not be anything symbolic (such as a doll, a wedding ring, or a flag). Write five lines about the object, using a different sense in each line (sight, sound, touch, taste, smell). Then ask the object a question, listen for its answer, and write the question, the answer, or both.

Participants post their poems to a Padlet. Michelle features some of the entries throughout the month (she featured mine on March 23), and then does a wrap-up at the end of the month, which just so happens to be today!

Since I force hyacinth bulbs every winter, and I hadn't posted a new hyacinth poem yet in 2017 (I posted a poem in November in anticipation of forcing bulbs, click here), I decided to write an ode to a hyacinth glass. Once I had it written, I added it to the March Padlet and then I illustrated it to use today. I'm not sure I directly used all the senses, but there are enough hints throughout. The question is unasked, but the answer is obvious!


© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Text:

Ode to a Hyacinth Glass

Once crystalline now coated
with the grime of rotted sheaths
and root hairs shed, your new bulb's
nascent roots tickle the water
silently absorbing all it needs
to flower. Jewel tones and heady
fragrance, winter consolation.

I have a second ode, which is more of an advertisement for citrus growers than a poem!


Text:

Ode to a Clementine

Oh, my darlin' thin-skinned citrus!
You fit nicely in anyone's hand.
The rip of your skin, clean. A fragrant
promise of tangy sweetness within each
netted segment, released in a touch.
One is hardly enough, so bring them on!
Love that vitamin C & natural sugar energy.

Amy at The Poem Farm is playing Round-Up host this week, so be sure to stop by!

April is practically upon us, and that means it'll be National Poetry Month. This year I'm going to continue the series of NPM poems I call "Ekphrastic Mondays." Each year during the month of April, I have an ekphrastic (art inspired by art) poem. This is the fifth year. If you're interested in what I've done in the past, click on the label on the right. Last year I featured Childe Hassam's work, and this year I'll be writing poems about Nicolas Tarkhoff's paintings. Tarkhoff and Hassam worked at approximately the same time, and both were impressionist painters. Come back on April 3 for the first Ekphrastic Monday.

March 28, 2017

March 24, 2017

Poetry Friday--Irish Horses

My writer friend, Janet, moved to Ireland several years ago. She shares photos of her adopted home on Facebook, many of which have horses as their subject. I have, with her permission, made several into haiga for Happy Haiga Day! posts.

The first three are different interpretations of the same photo.


Text:

curiousity
of horses used to living
amongst fairyfolk


Text:

bats overhead...
the realization you've
missed dinner


Text:

distant thunder
more than enough time
to say goodbye


Text:

Cooloorta fields...
we take each other's measure
nose to nose


Text:

Gortlecka crossroads...
this morning redolent
with rascality

The last one is a favorite of mine. The photo tickles me every time I see it!

Visit Catherine at Reading to the Core for this week's Round-Up.



March 21, 2017

March 19, 2017

Happy Haiga Day!


© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved. Image courtesy USDA National Agricultural Library.

Text:

winter garden...
he works diligently
to relax


March 16, 2017

Poetry Friday--Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I'm wearin' the green, are you?

© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Text:

the fog lifts...
yet figments and fancies
linger

Have a great St. Patrick's Day and include a visit to Life on the Deckle Edge, where Robyn is holding today's Round-Up.

March 14, 2017

Haiku Sticky #400

This is the 400th haiku sticky! Holy cows!


© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

March 12, 2017

Happy Haiga Day!

Friday was an interesting day weather-wise. We had snow, but the sun made a mighty effort to poke its way through.


© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Text:

March squall...
intimations of spring
cannot be eclipsed

March 10, 2017

Poetry Friday--Woodcut Project

This week I've been working on some woodcut project poems. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. Here are two. The first is not quite successful visually, but I like the poem.


© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Text:

her schedule filled
she always manages
a daydream


This next one actually depresses the hell out of me. In the background I have forest facts from Save America's Forests. But all aspects of the environment are in danger. Enough said.


© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Text:

when greed
has overcome need
how to survive
if our only pathway
ends in annihilation


Look for a brighter batch of poems at the Poetry Friday Round-Up being held at Today's Little Ditty.

March 7, 2017

Haiku Sticky #399

I completely forgot last week's Haiku Sticky! For today I have a tanka instead of a haiku--a few extra words to make up for last week's deficit.


© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

March 5, 2017

Happy Haiga Day!

Playing with image and text and effects--it's always a process of discovery!


© Diane Mayr, all rights reserved.

Text:

late winter walk
the amity of their dogs
infectious

March 3, 2017

Poetry Friday--Someone's Having a Birthday Soon!

A photo of Billy Collins and Rita Dove that I took back in October 2010 at the Dodge Festival. I was too far away to get a clearer shot.

Later this month, on the 22nd, poet Billy Collins will be celebrating his 76th birthday. Bloggers are celebrating a little early by posting poems by Bill Collins, today. The one I'm sharing is a recent discovery that I love for its whimsy and for the unasked question with which it leaves the reader.
The Flying Notebook

With its spiraling metal body
and white pages for wings,
my notebook flies over my bed while I sleep--

a bird full of quotations and tiny images
who loves the night’s dark rooms,
glad now to be free of my scrutiny and my pen point.

Tomorrow, it will go with me
into the streets where I may stop to look
at my reflection in a store window,

and later I may break a piece of bread
at a corner table in a restaurant
then scribble something down.

But tonight it flies around me in circles
sailing through a column of moonlight,
then beating its paper wings even more,

once swooping so low
as to ripple the surface of a lake
in a dream in which I happen to be drowning.

From The Trouble With Poetry and Other Poems, (Random House, 2005).
Heidi at My Juicy Little Universe is hosting the Poetry Friday Round-Up. I can guarantee there will be more Billy Collins poems!