Welcome to all poets and lovers of poetry! In honor of Celtic Brighid’s Day, here is a haiku, a time-honored Japanese poetic form that uses 17 syllables in a rhythm of 5, 7, 5.
unmasking winter
holding bright clouds in her bowl
swelling maiden moon
I wrote and lettered this in 2000 for Imbolc. The moon last night was a little more full than that year’s crescent, but the waxing crescent resting on her side still seems like a bowl to me.
If haiku is an example of compressed language, here is another which is much longer, but harks back to the tradition of sung poetry. The poet, Drew Dellinger, speaks his poem so beautifully; I am glad to find a video of his performance. I first saw and heard this poem on a DVD of a concert, Praises for the World, which was a gathering of poetry, song, dance and love for the earth arranged by Jennifer Berezan and performed in Oakland in 2003. I still weep every time I watch this concert. Here is Drew sharing his poem, Hymn to the Sacred Body of the Universe. The partial text of this poem, and many others, is on his website.
Feel free to post your own poems in my comments section if you like. Other poems can be found by following some of the links at right; also try here. Be sure and check out the comments sections, which have more links. This is how we weave the web.
Oh, nice poems, Katy, thank you for posting them!
Hi Cari,Beautiful Haiku….and that video? WOW! will have to watch it a few times, would love to do the words as a special piece for myself.I’ve added my poems at http://www.the-creative-spirit.blogspot.comWith love and brightest blessings for the Imbolc season,from a very snowy but beautiful North yorkshire xxx
Praise What Comes
surprising as unplanned kisses,
all you haven’t deserved
of days and solitude.
Your body’s immoderate good health
that lets you work in many kinds of weather. Praise
talk with just about anyone. And quiet intervals, books
that are your food and your hunger, nightfall and walk
before sleep. Praising these for practice, perhaps
you will come at last to praise grief and the wrongs
you never intended. At the end there may be no answers
and only a few very simple questions:
did I love, finish my task in the world? Learn at least one
of the many names of God? At the intersections,
the boundaries where one life began and another
ended, the jumping-off places between fear and
possibility, at the ragged edges of pain,
did I catch the smallest glimpse of the holy?
-Jeanne LohmannCodicil
That man,who accepted the stolen TV with a wink,
will run into a burning mobile home next spring
to rescue an old woman.The woman in the Volvo,
weaving in traffic
while furtively talking on her cell phone,
peels 20 pounds of potatoes each Friday evening
to take home fries to the shelter
every Saturday morning.And even I,
who was so rude to the clerk this morning,
have been known
to bring flowers
to the bereaved.
-Ellen Skagerberg