Category Archives: meditative poem

Daybreak (2)

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Yes, this is the second time you’ve seen this picture in my blog. It was posted with a poem, Daybreak, in late August and now it reappears to accompany a second poem it also inspired, Daybreak II. A single picture on paper, on the screen or in the memory has a powerful, persuasive control of our imagination. This beautiful photo by my friend and photographer, Yolanda Litton, has done just that.

 

Early Morning at Bagnegrole (Photograph by Yolanda Litton)

Early Morning at Bagnegrole (Photograph by Yolanda Litton)

I’ve included an audio clip of me reading the poem. Click on the link below and wait a few seconds.

 

 

Daybreak  (2)

 

Waking up in at daybreak in the south of France
Is as if I were stepping into someone else’s life.

So far from my own home, this wistful morning fog
Rises slowly to reveal a house of soft honeyed stone.

The slope of a sharply pitched roof holds a tall chimney
Where the swifts are now resting after a long evening hunt.

Somewhere a rooster crows with the energy that only
The young can bring to a new day. Out of nowhere,

A soft gray cat tip-toes by, looks up at me and blinks
Its eyes in that inscrutable feline way and disappears.

I stand here leaning on the windowsill, wondering
What my life would be like had I been born here.

The smell of freshly brewed coffee wafts up from
The kitchen below. One lone church bell rings

Calling its faithful to prayer. But nature’s beauty
Is my religion, my serenity, my salvation, my Eden.

 

 

 

An Autumn Long Gone ~ a Reverie

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An Autumn Long Gone ~ a Reverie  (prose poem)

 

An audio of me reading this prose poem can be heard by clicking the link below. It will take a few seconds for the sound to begin.

 

 

It was the year we lived in London, some 25 years ago, when autumn began like any other autumn. The fall, the changing, the color shifting, the soft breezes, the sporadic thick fog and the leaves dancing, even floating upward at times. What I hadn’t anticipated, being so far north for the first time, was how short the days grew. How dark it became earlier and earlier all during that autumn. The days were ‘closing in.’ That’s what they called it, and I loved that phrase. It brought a certain comfort of pulling heavy curtains closed and shutting out the darkness. It was a time for wearing coats and warm sweaters, and I dressed my son in practical English clothing and soft grey mittens while he ran ahead enjoying what was left of the day. He was only three, but he knew the delight in using what was left of the day’s sunlight. I learned to enjoy the simple pleasures around me that came with this quiet season. Victoria plums were my new delight. They appeared at the Greengrocer’s shop just as autumn set in, later replaced by apples—Bramley and Cox’s Orange Pippins, names that twirled on the tongue and tasted as good. Burning leaves were an unexpected, half-loved sensory pleasure. The smoke was pungent, but it brought back memories of childhood. I loved even the rasp of raking, bamboo or metal combs gathering leaves in sacred piles waiting their turn to be sacrificed in an autumnal pyre. In the English light, I found the colors were softer, quieter than the brilliance of New England woodlands. Each morning I left my son at school and then walked through Hampstead Heath. I found my own favorite route through woods and meadows up to the large ponds. Purchasing a single cup of tea that warmed my hands, I made my way to that empty bench that faced the pond. I thought about all the people it had held before. And every day without fail a lone Scottish piper played his bagpipes as if on cue. Each day I sat and listened. A world so far from my own. From where he stood near the peak of Parliament Hill, the mournful songs became a wordless chanting, charging the air with a lamentation to this closing season, every day briefer, softer than the day before.

Lost in Reverie (c) 2014 by Isotel, The Obvious and Hidden blog on WordPress (with her permission)

Lost in Reverie (c) 2014 by Iosatel, The Obvious and Hidden blog on WordPress (with his permission)

Four Autumn Haiku

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Today is the first day of autumn, and for my writing practice in the next few weeks I’ll begin a series of autumn or fall poems. This is my favorite season, my soul season. I’ve done a few different types of haiku ranging from traditional 17 syllables to a poem in a single line. Do you have a favorite?

1.

biting into a Victoria plum, such guilty pleasure

253871

2.

spent blossoms–
the last swallowtail
sips alone

best swallowtail pic

3.

soup 1

the season’s first soup
almost ritually cooked
stirs our senses

4.

sweet windfall apples…
bruised memories
autumn of long ago

fallen apples

Modern English language haiku are not always seventeen syllables. A haiku can be many things, but always it is a brief poem with a strong image that evokes a season and a moment of time captured simply in lyrical language. Scroll to the bottom of today’s blog to find a list of essential qualities of haiku.

The following list from the wonderful journal, Heron’s Nest, lists important qualities that make a haiku.

 Here are some qualities we find essential to haiku:

  • Present moment magnified (immediacy of emotion)
  • Interpenetrating the source of inspiration (no space between observer and observed)
  • Simple, uncomplicated images
  • Common language
  • Finding the extraordinary in “ordinary” things
  • Implication through objective presentation, not explanation: appeal to intuition, not intellect
  • Human presence is fine if presented as an archetypical, harmonious part of nature (human nature should blend in with the rest of nature rather than dominate the forefront)
  • Humor is fine, if in keeping with “karumi” (lightness) – nothing overly clever, cynical, comic, or raucous
  • Musical sensitivity to language (effective use of rhythm and lyricism)
  • Feeling of a particular place within the cycle of seasons

The First Coyote

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The First Coyote

Shadowed by trees, it was alert,
Watching those on the porch.
Tall, thin, a knife sharp gaze,
This coyote knew its way around.

The startled man cradled the cat
And called the nervous dogs back
Inside the house, far away from
This lurker in the evening woods.

Was it waiting for a squirrel or
Rabbit? You couldn’t tell this far
Away, yet clearly it was patient
And after tonight’s dinner.

How else could it survive
If not for foraging here and
There, waiting for a quick
Capture, meat for a day or two.

This was the first coyote seen
In the neighborhood, and now
I open the window late at night
To listen to it sing to the moon.

 

Daybreak (1)

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I have included an audio clip of me reading the poem, Daybreak. To hear it, simply click on the link below and wait a few seconds for it to begin.

 

 

Early Morning at Bagnegrole (Photograph by Yolanda Litton)

Early Morning at Bagnegrole (Photograph by Yolanda Litton)

Daybreak

The garden at daybreak.
Before the sun dares
to unveil the dawn.

Clouds and birds.
Dew glimmering
on grass.

Stillness.

Blurred trail of bats
filing into the attic
for rest.

Clouds bloom.
Birds now singing.
Morning shadows lead the way.

 

cropped-img_44401.jpg

 

My thanks to friend and photographer, Yolanda Litton, for her beautiful photograph from the south of France. Seeing it inspired this poem after bringing back memories of my own travel to Provence.

Willow Branches

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Boston Public Garden

Boston Public Garden

The weeping willow is perhaps one of the loveliest trees of all. It certainly plays an important part of many myths and legends in different cultures, and it has stories linking it with full moons, protection and inspiration. I have always loved willows. One of my fondest memories is of living in Cambridge and walking through the Boston Public Gardens when the willows were out in full. On a hot day, you could sit under one and feel ten degrees cooler. The were also among the earliest trees to leaf in spring.

Old Tombstone with Weeping Willow

Old Tombstone with Weeping Willow

In the old, old cemetaries of Boston and Cambridge, willows adorned gravestones and iron work going back to Colonial times.

Lovely Iron Gate with Willow

Lovely Iron Gate with Willow

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the beautiful North Carolina community in which I live there was once a beautiful lotus pond with a magnificent willow overlooking it. One night the tree came crashing down. Later the pond dried up and the lotuses were no more. This poem began quite some time ago, but it, too, lay dormant until I pulled out a forgotten draft of the first three stanzas. Strange how that can be–sometimes returning to a poem that was left unfinished so long ago is suddenly the very thing you need.

~ ~

Click on the link below if you’d like to listen to me reading this poem. It will take a few seconds before the clip begins so please be patient.

 

Weeping Willow Tree

Weeping Willow Tree

 

Willow Branches

 

They said it was the drought that did it.
Too many summers the pond dried up,
Even the lotus pods soon went dormant.

Rainstorms came that June: day after
Day the rain flooded the nearby creek
And filled the small pond you graced.

It was just too much and all too fast.
In the night you fell, your shallow roots
Rudely ripped out of the raw wet earth.

The old gardener pulls up in his truck,
Walks over with chain saw in hand,
Ready to dismember branches and trunk.

I ask if I might take a few willow wands.
He waits patiently and watches as I
Cut three long sticks of fallen green.

I thank him and walk away. He nods,
and smiles wryly after me, at the whimsy
Of a stranger who was passing by.

The chain saw shrieks as it starts
On its ruthless task as I continue
By on my walk, recalling a story I love.

Carrying sticks of willow for protection,
Orpheus, singer of sweet songs and poems,
Wandered in dark and silent Hades.

We know the ending, how Eurydice
Was soon lost forever. But the willow gifted
Orpheus with music, songs so beautiful

Even the wild and rowdy winds stopped
Blowing to listen to his broken heart. With
Orpheus’ death, the lyre lay silenced.

Over the chain saw’s tuneless humming,
I picture the willow’s nocturnal passing,
And I weep for all who are lost too soon.