seven paper boats
a single candle in each
flotilla of grief
©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!
Kay ponders the place of giggles in the midst of sadness.
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.
Her poem is "Why I Keep a Diary."
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.
The roundup of 2015 Poetry Month projects throughout the Kidlitosphere can be found at
Ah, yes: "A flotilla of grief." This line offers that twist that I so love about haiku. Well done.
ReplyDelete"All sadness is is a way of sensitizing you to what really matters, what’s really meaningful."
http://explore.noodle.com/post/114860504143/i-had-delved-down-into-a-space-where-i-perceived
Here's a poem about the expansiveness that sadness can sometimes bring.
Paper Flowers
If you were there
with me in the high desert
near Caspana, you
would have felt
the wind on your face,
thin and persistent;
heard it rustle the paper
flowers mourners stuck
in the fence on the day
their dead were borne
from the church;
seen them, too, their color
drained under
a relentless sun:
red to tattered pink,
pink to shredded white.
So wide this sky.
And so simple this wind
that erodes lives
like paper flowers
stuck in a fence, that
scatters pieces across
the high desert. If you
were there with me
near Caspana, you
might have felt the grit
in the wind, and the
roughness of your own skin
under the arid sun,
and, like me, offered
wine and coca leaves to
their scattered souls.
Thanks for noticing the twist. I'm trying really hard to move my haiku from 5-7-5 to something more true to the emotional truth of the form.
DeleteMary Lee, that is beautiful and wrenching and also peaceful. Wonderful. And Steve, you are right about that surprising expansiveness that comes of sadness, where you'd think it would bring intense focus in one small empty space.
ReplyDeleteI had a serendipitous thing happen this morning I was saving a cleridoubledactylhew that I'm working on for the DMC Challenge in my Poetry Stretches folder when a doc called "Sadness made me keep a diary" caught my eye. I'd totally forgotten about writing such a poem. It needed more work, but here it is.
Why I keep a diary
She was withering,
I was blooming. I visited,
sat in a familiar wing chair
in an unfamiliar room,
looked through a box of her papers:
calendars, church bulletins, a little locked
five-year diary marked 1943.
"July 14:
Fell down the basement stairs
carrying a bushel of peaches ($2.15).
Broke my ankle.
Tried not to cry in front of the children.”
“September 9:
Collected rents today (sunny, 79*).
Made black-and-white cookies
for the Ladies’Aid meeting.
Charlie & Lila growing awfully fast.
“November 21:
Find myself talking to Arthur’s
picture too much.
Took it off the piano today
and put it away.”
All my gramma’s sadness—recorded
in brisk, cheerful lines, hidden
under a bushel, now unlocked.
At home I began my own little
five-year diary, so that someday
my children might understand
why sadness is hard for me.
HM 2015
all rights reserved
Oh, Heidi. This is such a wonderful poem. Your gramma sounds like she could have come from my family, the stoicism combined with the almost poetic noticing of some of the smallest details ($2.15 for a bushel of peaches, for instance.)
DeleteSome favs of mine were about pairings:
Withering and blooming
familiar/unfamiliar
And also
hidden under a bushel.
Wow. This was really powerful stuff.
Oh these are all so beautiful, so sad. The honesty and simplicity in the lines, the small scenes we want to cup our hands around even through our tears... Thank you, friends, for these. Poetry makes us whole somehow, even in our grief. x
ReplyDelete