Shades of autumn

A young woman takes a seat besides me on the train going home.   Her left arm is heavily inked, while she gingerly looks over the right arm, cased in sheet, covering a new tattoo. Across me, a group of young teens in their uniforms chat animatedly while sipping a cool drink.   They remind me of spring season, fresh as tulips.  Passengers pour in at every train stop; it is a never ending tide of faces. Yet I am at ease with changing current as I am always taking the same route going home.  Outside the blur of maple trees are turning orange rust and deep brown.  Autumn is a shade of color in my eyes.

by the drooping vine,
butterfly cocoon sways
its empty tendrils

Macro Photography of Butterfly Wings by Linden Gledhill

Posted for D'verse Poets Pub - Changes hosted by Kanzen Sakura ~
Thanks for the visit ~

Unsettled artist visions of death

Photography by Ray Collins

Into the black waves, I would ride
In a single white boat 
My hands paddling the wooden oars
To the farthest point I see

Early morning is my time 
to submit to nature's will
My heart's a broken wheel
So faint, I am flat leaf

The sun is tugging a rope   
Pressing the weight of death
So deep onto my chest
I am a fragment

Knotted, undistinguished 
As shell bone or  sponge
Water rushes into my ears
I embrace brine & foam 

This sea & darkening sky
becomes a forest bed, I am
Giant kelp, floating mat
Letting the fish, sharks & lobsters 

Carry me forth, cell after cell
Weed upon weed, I say
To all living creatures
Take every part of me as food

And multiply in ignorance*


*Line and verses inspired by Unsettled Motorcyclist Visions of His Death by Thom Dunn

Posted for Imaginary Garden with Real Toads - Inspired by poems of Thom Dunn
and Poets United - Thanks for the visit ~

Hushed conversations

Grace @ Everyday Amazing

These days, there is a frequent visitor in father's house.   

Every time he knocks on the door, the old man's fragile heart beats rapidly like he is running a race. Yet his father could hardly carry a conversation as his breathing is labored. And his memories are faltering too, repeating:

"I can feel that my feet are on fire!".   His wife answers, "It is just your nerves as you are very anxious."  

But father would insist, "I cannot breathe and sleep at night.  There is something burning in my stomach." He prays fervently, clasping the blessed rosary. He grows thinner, relying on his family to care for him.  He has seen many doctors and priests over the years.   The room smells of candles & devotions.  His children avoid saying anything about hospital bills nor property arrangements.  

They say the visitor's name by now.  Not with a question mark but a period.  

Death.   

crab apples fall on ground

bruised, speckled by birds-  
autumn arrives with black veil  



Posted for D'verse Poets Pub - Writing Dialogue - Hosted by Victoria Slotto ~

What I forgot

By: Haejin Lee

I forgot the words of my mother tongue
I forgot my tongue 
              letting my fingers click-tap black letters
              on keyboard 
I forgot hands and feet  
              sitting on my chair, reading world news
              so far away

I forgot language when I look at the sun
              coppery & lush in morning light
I forgot mornings with no sun 
              mornings with no light
              not coppery and lush, no

I forgot time
             was ticking bomb
             when things were not so good  
             when meals were the same canned goods
             when even the price of plastic bag was expensive 
I forgot how difficult it was to start over 
             I forgot difficult 
             and starting over    

I forgot weight 
             of missing shoes
             of a single luggage filled with all my worldly goods 
I forgot sizes
             how tiny a baby's foot is 
             how small I am against tree's giant palm
             how pitiful my worries are against child's
             hapless face

I forgot that darkness can grow as
             carnivorous plant
             preying with pitfall traps 
I forgot how a single sunflower & fist of golden rod
            can yellow the dreary woodland path
            with light so innocently pure
            
I forget words of my mother tongue



Posted for D'verse Poets Pub - Inspired by powerful performance of Loyce Gayo's How We Forget - Please join us as I host Poetics starting at 3pm EST.

Process Note:   I used, I forgot, to start my list poem to make it more personal to me.  

Thanks for the visit ~

Borders of the city

Grace@Everyday Amazing

My ticket at subway points east towards downtown Toronto City.   But my mind meanders elsewhere, fluffy as cotton seed.  I tuck in carefully my shoulders and knees along the rim of red hard seat. Across my aisle, a young woman veiled in black, head to foot, takes out her earbuds & plunges to her music. She is only a few feet away, but a sea of sands separates us. I think of boats docking our blue shores as more passengers pour in with each station stop.  Our skin is a canvas of colors, psychedelic as overhead posters of the Pan-Am Games. Except for young couple standing in their own circle, hands intimately mapping each other, the rest of us are engrossed in our own stories, games and puzzles. There are borders that can be eased down like a window, catching the morning sun. And there are invisible borders that never come down.

yellow asters bloom

on rain-soaked field, a wildfire

trampling the steel fences

Posted for D'verse Poets Pub - Haibun Monday

Thanks for the visit ~

Wanted men over Athabasca River

Where tar sands explode as fire
Where oil spills are black tears
Into my river stretching far
It matters much to me

Where the forest birds tarry slow
Where bison graze & die
There's my boreal forest, my sky
It matters much to me

This land beats with grandfathers' blood
Water for brewing food
Thick oil for our birch canoes
Animals for kinship

My lantern's light is fading low
I raise my voice to wind
Is it too late, too late, I cry?
Death is noisy machine

Sucking each velvet stone to dust
Laying pipelines & belts
Contaminating air with sulfur
Trampling down aged trees

Twilight comes with heavy yoke
Choking every wildlife 
With poison, we drink our stench
Money is new sun 

Browning our pelts & copper pots
Minting palms with gold grit
Where are the watchmen? 
Where are they?

 Photo by  JEFF MCINTOSH/THE CANADIAN PRESS  

The Athabasca river, highway construction and suburbs seen from a helicopter in Fort McMurray, Alta., in July 2012.

I have been reading the Atkinson Series:  Shifting Sands, Examining the Costs of Oil Sands Bargain.   The Athabasca River originates from a glacier in Jasper National Park, located in the Rocky Mountains. It is the longest river in Alberta, and runs past the oil sands. Organizations like the Pembina Institute have long been asking for strict rules for oil sands developers and processors to protect the river.

For additional reading and to hear TED Talk video about Alberta Tar Sands Project, click here.

Posted for D'verse Poets Pub - Poetics:  What does the Watchman See?  

Thanks for the visit ~

Self-Portrait

                                                                        Artist in his Studio by Rembrandt


In the light, your face is half moon
Etched on canvas, unfurling
Shadows of restless sea, I see

Jagged lines, brittle as sand dunes
Browning hues, lush as autumn's swirling  
In the light, your face is half moon

Silver-lidded, a mirage of June's perfect skies 
But August's unflinchingly death stares
Bestow shadows of restless sea, I see

Your singular passion, your wounds
Glint of secret core, raw as unrefined salt
No light nor half moon can dim, a face

Inked in velvet-red strokes, a darkening to swoon
A master boldly unrepentant as eagle swooping its prey
There are shadows,  restless as sea, I see  

Deep despair from love's lost
Grieving hands from burying a child
In the light, your face is half moon

Celebrated by many, your signature is known
But you breathe on cliff's edge, a yearning 
to live amidst shadows, restless as the sea, I 

Look for your bones under church's tombstone
Marked for men, broken and poor     
In the dying light, your face pivots a full moon
throwing shadows to restless sea, I see.....         me


Posted for Imaginary Garden with Real Toads - Ekphrasis - Hosted by Bjorn Rudberg
and Poets United - This started as a villanelle but I added more lines & didn't follow the rhyming scheme.    Thanks for your visits ~

Northern Lights

The sky is sea-nymph

drumming the night with star dust

The clouds are flare-hatchers

rolling, roaring, ricocheting

whiplash colors fleeting madly  

bleeding in dramatic reverberation

A curtain wildly unfolding & sweeping 

broad brushstrokes

lavish pigments of universe's womb

a glimpse of mystery totally

magnetic, thrilling every pore of our skin

Then you are gone quickly- 

ballerina's fluid air-leap, grand jete 

Aurora over South South Saskatchewan River, Canada, August 18, 2015

by Dale Boan

Video by vimeo is here

Posted for D'verse Poets Pub - Hosted by Bjorn Rudberg

The body's clock

Photo - Douglas Salisbury

"Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars  of light"

In Blackwater Woods - Mary Oliver

his body knew not
seasons nor time's tempest 
but only its own heartbeat
slower than low tide 
on long summer's day

outside the sun beckons
orange pink light,
a mirror of new day    
but his bones are heavy
silted with mysterious roots   
curling stiff as purple-red autumn leaf 
he sinks into sleep
steeped with clouds
ever wandering with wind




Posted for Imaginary Garden with Real Toads- Play It Again, Inspired by Kerry's William Carlos Williams, and Susie's Bits of Inspiration, The Photography of Douglas Salisbury
and Poets United.   This is based on meeting someone who has irregular & mysterious sleep patterns. Thanks for the visit ~

Echoes

late summer-

your face is a candle, fading

in echoes of raindrops 

Narcissus & Echo - by John William Waterhouse

Upon pool of water, I gaze 

Daze

Your face, a perfect moon

Swoon

Swaddled of brightest starlight 

Light

Enchanted, I say, Hello?

           Woe

I swear to your beauty, delicate as snow

           No

I will bestow  

           No

All my strength and devotion

           Delusion 

Why do you shun my presence?

           Vengeance

Are not my smiles charming?

           Boring

Are not my words persuasive?

           Repulsive 

Please let me stay here

           Where?

At your feet, where my devotion lies 

           Lies 

You are my muse, your name echoes

           Gallows

Within me, dulcet

           Horseshit

Until I know that you love

           Rust 

Me, I will deeply grieve    

           Freeze

Do you believe me?

           Leave me

You are breaking me, I will die.  

           Bye.

Posted for D'verse Poets Pub - OpenLinkNight Hosted by Bjorn
& Late entry for Echo Verse hosted by Mary