bleakness –
the lingering taste
of a bad dream
Blithe Spirit, 31.1 2021
Category Archives: darkness poetry
burning anger
Moonbathing, Issue 23, Fall/Winter 2020
hot roasted nuts
heaped into a paper cone –
all that burning anger
you hold onto
so tightly
Photograph by Monika Topolko
As an aside, I am realizing my age is showing. Do young people today even know about folks roasting chestnuts (or other nuts) and buying a brown paper cone full of piping hot nuts to eat on the street? I first came across this in Istanbul when I was young. The scent, heat, taste on a chilly autumn afternoon was one of those moments that has stayed with me all my life. Europeans had this custom, but does anyone still do this? The fragrance was so tempting.
Chekov’s birch trees (haiku)
These pandemic nights (a tanka)
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
We turn away…(tanka)
This tanka was published in Hedgerow, a journal of small poems ~ #130, Winter 2020
we turn away
from all we just can’t face—
the glistening red
of a vulture’s head
emerges from a carcass
Poet’s note:
Out of decay comes art and beauty. Look what artist Georgia O’Keefe created from a skull found where she lived in New Mexico. All is part of nature and is nature.
Deer’s Skull with Pedernal by Georgia O’Keefe (c) 1936
Where I live in central North Carolina, we have plenty of black vultures and turkey vultures. They circle and gather in the sky when there is carrion to be had. I chose this topic for the tanka because it’s a scene I’ve seen more than once. Yes, it’s not a pretty sight. Vultures, especially when eating a dead animal or gathering in a group in a tree or abandoned house do give you shivers. Something in us seems to respond with at least a momentary revulsion. However, I’m a bird lover and I try to see how a specific species fits into the scheme of things. Vultures and crows do eat carrion, the flesh of dead animals, often of roadkill along our roads and streets. They perform a good service by eating their meal and cleaning the mess up. Imagine all those dead animals left to rot. So these birds help us as they go about their business (albeit unpleasant business to us). They are birds we should appreciate for their useful role in nature. They also offer us a wonderful metaphor.
My thanks to editor, Caroline Skanne for being the one editor who chose to publish this poem.
innocence . ..
This tanka is dedicated it to all who have dealt with the trauma
of childhood sexual abuse.
he believed
himself omnipotent…
the innocence
of so many children
dissolved in a moment
Photograph by Circe Denyer
Eucalypt: A Tanka Journal,
Issue 25, 2018
It’s a great honor to have had this tanka published in Eucalypt. My thanks to editor, Julie Anne Thorndyke for selecting this particular poem.
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A Poet in Time 