Poetry
Why do I write poetry? I love to play with words, paring them down to essential, vivid language. Creativity is soul-enlarging, and making poems is one of the main ways I create. It also gives me a way to flag the gateways, curves, bridges and milestones on my journey.
Painting by Rod McIver
“Have You Made Friends with Words?”
Have you made friends with words
and found –on certain days, in special ways-
words will sing and fly and play with you?
Do you know words may call to you –like companionable birds-
wild, but fluttering round your inner garden,
chirping out melodic and enticing runes?
O come with me and try their lettered tunes!
Click here to read the whole poem
Samples of several poems:
HAIKU
In recent years I have cultivated a haiku habit! I love shaping many forms of poetry, but I discovered that when I am biking or walking, and can’t write down the words, my brain can manage to remember the 17 syllables involved in a haiku. So I compose haiku more often than other forms of poetry . . . This ancient Japanese literary form has many other “addicts”, although, as John Cooper Clark [born 1950] says,
To convey one’s mood
in seventeen syllables
is very diffic
Check out www.haikucanada.org
Also Doctoral Dissertations in Haiku!
Below is an assortment of my own haiku, paired with my own collages or nature photographs.
Grey Spirals Collage
HAIKU FOR TURBULENT TIMES
Kneel at the altar of now;
breathe. Again, deeply.
Rest in this moment.
SPRING IN OHIO
black branched redbud bursts
forth in fingers of blossom,
points at bluest sky!
Snow labyrinths require you to envision the “lines” you walk between.
SNOW LABYRINTHS
Labyrinth walker,
turn, release, receive, return;
trust Way does open.
IN FOGBOUND WOODS
Pale beech leaves cling still,
Lighten black-striped woodland space:
End of winter ghosts.
MAY IN NORTHERN ONTARIO
No daffodils –
oosier dogwood just flags spring
with its scarlet stems
EARLY MAY IN ONTARIO
[AND QUEBEC!]
live snowflakes of spring
drift, bow, dance across brown
woodland floor: trilliums!
Life and Death Dancers Collage
CREATIVITY
Creativity:
intense work periods
spliced with glory moments!