Poetry Friday: 2020, The Year of Hindsight (and Foresight, too)

2020 is a great year for poetry. (And for hindsight, too, apparently.)

How do I know? Because any year, any day, is a great time for poetry. And also, of course, because the Poetry Sisters have plans---plans to write all twelve months of this year, with the added twist of looking forward and looking back every so often as we create our poems.  

January kicks it off, gently, with a haiku, on the theme of foresight, or the new year, or both.  

I live on a tidal river, so I always feel aware of time, or at least, of the physical movement that accompanies time. So I know that every year turns into the next by the slow work of the tide. And that work can be seen---every day.  So what then, is "new" about each new year? And what does it mean to see "forward" or to have "foresight" about that year? 

I don't know the answer to those questions---or at least not enough to fill a haiku! 

But I do admire the life that lives in and around the tides of the river.  Perhaps foresight is being in the flow of the world, but not dragged under by it.  Like oysters. Like egrets.  Perhaps. 


oyster shells steady
low tide mud; at high, egrets
guard the fey river.  


My sisters greet the new year here:

Liz
Tanita
Kelly
Rebecca
Laura
Andi
Tricia


Poetry Friday is hosted today by Jone, at DeoWriter.

Poetry Friday: Gratitude

Our challenge this busy season was to write a poem on the theme of gratitude.  I am grateful, every December, for moments of stillness, so I wrote my poem about that.

December

is bustle
and jingle
and jolly.
Decking. 
Beckoning.
Noise pricking
like holly. 

But I am 
Oh, little town!
How still, 
how still.
I crave dark. 
Dreamless.
Wordless 
good will. 

So when
I steal,
in the black 
morning,
barefoot,
to the mute
dawning

Of each
newly-dressed
day, this—
this light
before light,
this breadth

of time 
before time 
must peal 
forth, again—
this moment 
I kneel

to the nothing
we are called
from---
From this 
is all 
the world
to come. 

----Sara Lewis Holmes (all rights reserved)


Links to my fellow poets (as I have them at the moment) are here:

Laura
Tricia

more to come!


Poetry Friday is hosted by our own Tanita Davis.  

Poetry Friday: A Villanelle to Winter's Chill

Tanita threw out this challenge:  A villanelle on a wintry topic, including a pair of words (or homonyms thereof) from the following: bleak, draft, gutter, chill, chime, glitter, gust, harsh, rime, nip, thaw.

Brrrrrr!  A chilling task...and yet...faced with this, I ended up with....

...a love poem. How'd that happen?


How close

How close are we to ice and avalanches?
Far! Far! These are but gusty jabs and powder stings;
for kiss of starling’s tail knocks snow from branches.

Landing there, in tree still quick with green, he stanches
this dusting of winter’s rime, and clears himself a seat.
How close are we to ice and avalanches

if tree, armed in white, shrugs? forgoes stern glances?
offers us, again, shelter for embraces sweet
while kiss of starling’s tail knocks snow from branches?

We laugh, walk on, our linked arms a pair of flanches
circling our summer hearts, which shudder and beat.
How close we are! To ice and avalanches,

we seal our eyes; instead, swear love. If then winter blanches
pale our days, rosy still our shielded heat.
How close we are to ice and avalanches!
Yet kisses knock snow from branches.

---Sara Lewis Holmes (all rights reserved)


My Poetry Sisters' glittering poems can be found here:

Tanita
Tricia
Laura
Liz


Poetry Friday is hosted today by Tabatha Yeats' The Opposite of Indifference.