Category Archives: meditative poetry

Catching up!

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Today I realized I’d forgotten to post a number of poems published this year (2020), so here they are. I hope you enjoy reading them.

 

 

Ribbons 16:2 (spring 2020)

icebergs drift and melt
and furious fires rage
will this earth dissolve
into rivulets
of decisions poorly made?

 

~

 

Frameless Sky, Issue 12, 2020

 

soft ripe plums
sitting on the sideboard ~
wouldn’t it lovely
to know you’re
so desired

 

 

Presence 66

tiny fledglings
with wings outstretched
take that first leap—
how old were we
when doubt began

                             ~

 

wind spilling
from copper rain bells
unbroken drought

 

                        ~

impossible
to count them
fireflies 

 

 

Bitter wind

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I am delighted to have one tanka and two haiku in the latest issue of Presence:

 

Presence, Issue 67, July 2020

 

 

bitter wind
the maple’s heart
still frozen

 

~

 

once so innocent
we had to make up sins
. . . first confession

 

 

~

 

I tried to bury
those memories
for so long…
the raw scent
of freshly plowed earth

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Little frog faces (tanka/kyoka)

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One of two tanka appearing Eucalypt: A Tanka Journal, Issue 28, 2020

 

in the attic I find
your small Wellies                            
with little frog faces—
oh, those happy puddles
when you were only three

 

 

Note: We lived near Hampstead Heath in NW London for a full academic year, 1989-90, with our (then) three year old son, Adam. Oh, how he loved rain puddles and stomping in them in his little green Wellies. Getting exercise each day was never a problem with a child who loved the outdoors no matter what the weather. This poem is for him.

 

 

Half-light (a tanka sequence)

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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