Category: Poetry
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For International Haiku Day, what else?
Our new-to-us garden faces west, so that the sun rising in the east illumines the space beyond the shade of the two extension peaks. I’m sure that there must be a quiet haiku to develop, as a kind of textual representation of the early morning scene before me. Oddly enough, I was writing haiku earnestly…
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Wisps of sphagnum moss . . .
As age creeps up on us, it can get harder to deal with rejections, failures, lack of success, whatever you might feel despondent over, but on the other hand perhaps one’s skin gets tougher too. Strategies for coping might have been developed, and these in turn can contribute to continued productivity. When we took our…
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Of three graces, joy . . .
We saw the delightful sculpture by Canova, the second one he’d created of the Three Graces, by commission, at the Victoria and Albert Museum some decades ago. In researching for this blog (yes, a reasonable amount of study goes into these entries!) I came upon one of the earliest known examples of the graces, as…
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The epiphany
sunlight and shadow two deer bounce through the marsh spiked gorse in yellow dress seed pods brown and empty moss-laden branches, beardy wisps rusty tin can hazel strands droop by the dyke willow herb curlicues broken crockery bits vibrant green rose leaves empty whisky bottle white village on a sunlit hill water mirror dazzle clouds…
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Sleeping on it . . .
It’s a commonplace, isn’t it, to sleep on a problem, hoping to awaken with a solution. As we went to bed last night, I was wrestling, somewhere in my subconscious, with a poetic problem that I thought I’d resolved. My dreaming mind thought otherwise. A better resolution than I’d even considered woke up with me…
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Notes on a marshland walk
For my joy this morning, I can’t do better than to relay some contemporaneous notes of our afternoon walk yesterday. Who knows, one day these notes may find their way into another poetic effort, perhaps less formal than the sonnet of my previous joy. But for now I’ll go with the joy I have in…
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Peril in the joy . . .
Yesterday’s blog entry felt like an opening opportunity to investigate the depths of these springtime joys. And since I’ve challenged myself to see what poetic inspirations I can find on the general theme of ‘spring,’ I thought I’d have a quick go in the sonnet form. I’m a fan of the classic Shakespearean (sometimes called…
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Signs of spring, if you look
We ambled along the dyke path, through the Ken-Dee marshland, on a reasonably clement afternoon. I’d brought the big camera along so I could get close enough to the various trees lining the circuit, to try to spot some buds of incipient spring. The white fluffy willow buds looked ready to burst, and the oak…
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On a ‘fire of joy’ . . .
A crescendo of musket fire in the celebration of French Alliance Day by the National Parks Service, USA. A few days ago I mentioned Clive James’ collection of poetry that he had treasured throughout his life, The Fire of Joy. Definitely one for my wish-list, that. Anyway, I was reminded again of this joyful fire…
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A joy of wonder . . .
In one of my writing groups, the monthly task has been to do a piece on the deep significance of something very small. The writing should embody the meaning, rather than telling us. I decided to write something about my discovery of an iconic piece of LEGO. I was pleased (I confess that I am…
Roads to Joy 