Like so many other people, the year and a half pandemic has thrown my sense of time way off. I’m so far behind in posting newly published poems on this blog that I find myself now playing catch up. I am both honored and happy to have had such fine journals select some of my work to publish in 2021.
both of us relieved
we made it to this side
of the pandemic –
falling back in love
with spring’s soft greening
Published in Ribbons, Tanka Café, Spring 2021
Three poems (two haiku and one tanka) were published in the winter issue of Kokako, 2021. I have a real fondness for this journal because I love all things Kiwi. New Zealand is a beautiful country with such great people. They have a very active poetry community, and Kokako is a beautiful journal to be part of.
1.
snow drifts ~
the wild wind’s
last brief fling
2.
woodland colours
now grow pale
winter light
3.
arranging zinnias
in an old milk jug,
this pandemic silence
urges me to notice
the simplest things
Note: Photo of Zinnias (c) 2021 by Park Seeds
Redlights, Volume 17, No. 1, January 2021
Photography by Autumn Mott Rodeheaver
whirlwinds of scarlet
and ochre leaves
flit across the square –
days of self-isolation spent
learning to slow down
Presence Issue 68, November 2020
winter nights—
dreaming of blackbirds
on snow
My thanks to the editors at Presence for publishing this haiku.
.
the chiming clock
begins to wind down . . .
five months of quarantine
yet still the roses bloom
and red birds sing
.
This tanka was published in October, but obviously was written in early summer. We are now nine months into this pandemic. Writing is a wonderful relief as we isolate ourselves. Like so many poets, I find my writing has been changed by the pandemic.
cattails:
The Official Journal of the United Haiku and Tanka Society, October 2020 issue
Here is the third of my three tanka published in the latest issue of Gusts no. 32, Fall/Winter 2020:
even the crows
are quiet now . . .
the sudden silence
that morning snow
brings
Here’s the second tanka published in
Gusts no. 32, Fall/Winter 2020
pale pink petals
scattered on the desk
one by one the days
of isolation pass,
each fading to nothing
Three tanka published in the winter edition of Gusts, Contemporary Tanka, the journal of Tanka Canada. It’s always a huge thrill to be included in this special journal of tanka. I’ll offer them one at a time.
Gusts no. 32, Fall/Winter 2020
lapis lazuli, delft blue
and French ultramarine . . .
the blueness of blue
in these tired veins
just won’t let go
Moonbathing 22, Spring 2020
a faint train whistle
passing by at 3 a.m.
. . . the only normal thing
in these pandemic nights
that makes any sense
Milkweed by James DeMers (pixabay.com)
These tanka were written during the quarantine of Covid-19. My thanks to editor/poet, Marilyn Hazelton, for persuading me to combine some tanka into a tanka sequence. A really good editor is priceless. It’s always an honor to have poems included in Redlights. Click on the link below if you care to hear me read it.
Half-light
August morning
just before the katydids
begin to sing . . .
the lake finally calm
with no ripples
milkweed seeds
scatter straight from
the cottony pod ~
such freedom to go
anywhere, everywhere
a spoon slowly stirs
cream into coffee
those quiet moments
when we lose
all sense of now
arm in arm
we walk together –
forty years & more miles
than either of us
can count
half-light—
walking in fog
where nothing is seen
but somehow we trust
it’s still all there
Red Lights, Summer Issue 2020
A Poet in Time 