THE WHOLE SPECTRUM, PLEASE
tulip petal
monarch wing
forsythia's shock
first leaves in spring
prairie sky
shadows on snow
thunderhead's tower
dogwood, crow
©Mary Lee Hahn, 2015
Carol, at Carol's Corner, will join me again this year as often as possible.
Kimberley, at iWrite in Maine, is joining me this month.
Kay, at A Journey Through the Pages, is joining, too!
Steve, at inside the dog, is sharing his poems
in the comments at Poetrepository.
Heidi, at my juicy little universe, will join us when she can.
Linda, at TeacherDance, will join as often as she can.
Check the comments at A Year of Reading or Poetrepository for her poems.
Kevin (Kevin's Meandering Mind) is back this year,
leaving poetry trax in the comments.
Jone, at DeoWriter, is doing a "double L" challenge.
She and I are cross-poLLinating our challenges whenever possible.
Warm and cool. Dark and light. Me, too, Mary Lee! The rhyme moved this so nicely along. And I loved the way you ended with crow. Love the corvids, but also the darkness. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteI wasn't thinking warm/cool, dark/light...but I love that you found them because now I can see them, too! (I was going for ROYGBIV, plus white and black!)
DeleteInteresting! I missed the ROYGBIV, but caught a "light" stanza and a darker one. I saw green in the above stanza, but with lots of yellow in their first leaf greeniness.
DeleteHere's mine for desire. A tanka (again, not strict except for the hinge idea.)
ReplyDeleteunder the half-moon,
a frog’s yearning song raises
dark silver ripples --
when dawn taps the window,
a breath still on my shoulder
I've been thinking about that frog all day. And the breath...
Delete'when dawn taps the window" ...wow.
DeleteAnd one more.
ReplyDeleteI've been playing around with Jane Hirschfield's "assay" idea: "the term, she says, is used as it is "in the mining industry, where a substance is disassembled and analysed to determine the strengths and quality of its various parts; only in this case the examination is done with the imaginative mind rather than the chemical one." - See more at: http://www.poetryarchive.org/poet/jane-hirshfield#sthash.dikN9h2V.dpuf
And in my case, I'm trying to layer some images that explore an idea. Thought I'd share the one I wrote for desire. Still trying to figure out ways to better tie the images together...or not!
Desire: An Assay
Where I gazed the distant land
emerged as through a
spyglass from the crow’s nest.
As the frog sang
inside the fervent darkness,
he heard
the night sky open a hole
for the pale half-moon.
Spider waits on her web, a master poised to play her harp.
If you were here, I might be whole, he said.
If you were whole, I might be there, she replied.
And into the night they drove,
arriving together
from opposite directions.
First of all...wow. Love this!
DeleteSince you're still working on it, I'll say that the first stanza is the only one that (for me) doesn't fit as well as the others. The others share night, nature, and these two people (are they they same one driving together a few poems ago?).
Thanks for the thinking, Mary Lee. It is great to hear what your ears heard.
DeleteI'm not sure what to do with this kind of poem. It's sort of a meditation on desire in lots of different forms. I was searching for an image for the longed-for-land early in the poem, and found an arrival at the end. And in the middle? Various minerals (to keep the assay metaphor) that comprise "desire" -- the desire for attachment, the merging of souls (and the way that merging can be not so good for the self, too?), the opening of hoped-for possibilities, that sort of stuff.
I think that your thoughts about mediation from the previous day helped bring this one forth.