in honor of the tenth month: an etheree is a poem of ten lines, ascending or descending from one to ten syllables
Soon
the scent
of woodsmoke
will spike the soul
against a backdrop
of iron-gray spattered
with bright orange, yellow, red
but for now, October whispers
sweet green nothings as if we can’t sense
her chill unlacing cloak about to fall
Alphonse Mucha – PagP50 Automne/Autumn, c.1903. Public domain.
a reverso etheree
Hey
it’s me
I’m trying
can’t you see that
you’re my everything
you center my small world
even if I don’t have words
I adore you beyond measure
I know you’re busy but I am here
believing in you and your love for me
believing in you and your love for me
I know you’re busy but I am here
I adore you beyond measure
even if I don’t have words
you center my small world
you’re my everything
can’t you see that
I’m trying
it’s me
Hey
Micah, 8 1/2 months. How you adore your parents.
How your family loves you so.❤ Franna
Inspired by and dedicated to Margaret Simon, who shared the photo and who’s mourning the loss of her father.
Photo: Kim Douillard
Half
remains
afterward
it is enough
tangible beauty
even in mourning throes
to sense the infinite flows
of life undulating beyond
what the eye can see or hand can hold
where the spirit abides whole, unbroken
Awe
descends
like snowflakes
in the silence
finding asylum
in the holy places
where it perches plump and blue
a quiescent electric spark
sent to shock the soul from its stasis
with a sudden gasp of winterclean air
Bluebird in the falling snow this afternoon, perched on the birdhouse my father-in-law made when my boys were small. They still call it “Pa-Pa’s bird church.” Those sparks are reflections of my Christmas tree lights in the window where I stood to capture this picture of awe.
with thanks to Andy Schoenborn for the invitation to write on “what we have taken and what has been taken from us” in today’s #VerseLove on Ethical ELA – a reflective poem using the words take and taken.
A double etheree, on Day Thirteen of National Poetry Month
New
morning
brimming with
yet unwritten
possibility
asking nothing of me
only offering itself
for the things I shall make of it
once the ribbon of light releases
this present day; what shall I take of it?
This present day, what I shall take of it?
Maybe just isolated fragments
to hold in pockets of silence
little treasures worth saving
moments of loving like
the ones yesterday
has not taken
away from
you and
me.
Some things are just meant to be.
Like the coming of my granddaughter into my life a year ago.
Like the exact same age difference between us as that between my grandmother and me.
Like my granddaughter’s birthday being in December…like Grandma’s.
My granddaughter is turning five this week. She loves to read. She takes a flashlight and books with her to bed at night. Her parents and I still read to her at bedtime, though. She chooses the stories.
Naturally books must be part of Christmas and birthday celebrations…when I saw this storybook Advent calendar, I knew it was meant to be. I had to look at each tiny book before giving it to her. One of them is based on her favorite movie, Frozen. I rearranged so that will be the book she finds on her birthday.
Little bits of magic go a long way.
My son says she confessed to a sneak peek. She informed him: “I think I am going to have a special Advent calendar book on my birthday!”
My daughter-in-law says she’s in “tiny reader heaven.”
Such joy for me.
Once upon a time, my grandmother read to me.
Now my granddaughter does.
Old things made new…
an etheree celebrating my granddaughter, reading, and the storybook Advent calendar
Read
for joy
read for love
read for yourself,
dear gift from above
a book a day, how fun
words are magic, every one
tiny reader heaven for you
advent of promise for me, to see
how the world expands, in your little hands
The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. – Matthew 19:14
For Spiritual Journey Thursday. A double etheree.
Now
I wake,
now I rise,
wiping the sleep
from my sleepy eyes.
Time to eat, time to pray.
Thank you, Lord, for this new day
to live, to learn, to love, to play.
In Your kingdom, where I have a place,
remember Your little child saying grace.
Remember all Your children, needing grace
when we’ve forgotten to seek Your face.
Draw us back to that holy place
in a child’s believing heart.
O Lord, in the morning
cast us not away—
help us, we pray—
You are great,
You are
good.
Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation… Psalm 51: 10-12
Give ear to my words, O Lord, consider my meditation. Hearken unto the voice of my cry, my King, and my God: for unto thee will I pray. My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O Lord; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up.
-Psalm 5:1-3
*******
For more Spiritual Journey offerings, visit Reflections on the Teche – with gratitude to Margaret Simon for hosting.
Today I have a literal “found poem.” Meaning not one derived from another’s work but as in finding it while going through folders from previous school years and unearthing poetry I’d modeled for students on writing around an object. I remember taking three objects with special meaning to me so the kids could choose which I’d write about.
They chose the bottle.
Which I found after my grandfather’s death, visiting the farm where he was born. It was the second and last time I walked this piece of land. The first time, my grandfather, grown old and frail, walked with me. Ten acres of fields bordered by trees is all that remains, but he showed me where the house once stood, and the barns, and the henhouse … all gone without a trace now.
Except for some long-buried treasures.
In the old days, farm families had a trash pile. What wasn’t burned away with fire, or washed away by ages of wind and weather, or destroyed by perpetual tractors and harrows, might be swallowed by the earth until the earth is ready to give it back.
I wasn’t expecting such a gift the day I walked alone, mourning my grandfather.
So, I told the students, as I prepared to draft, when you write about an object you might also consider the feeling the object triggers in you. For me, with this bottle, it’s wonder. I want to incorporate a sense of wonder in this poem.
And so I wrote for them, and they enjoyed making artistic suggestions (they wanted it to rhyme):
Granddaddy is gone
And I walk his old farm
How he loved this place
This wide-open space
Nothing now to see
Where barns and house used to be
Just an empty field
After harvest’s yield
Cold breeze blows
Through my heart, it goes
When I spot in a bit of grass
Sunlight glistening on—glass?
I momentarily forget my hurt
As I dig it from the dirt
—a bottle, imagine that
No telling how long it sat
Buried deep in this ground
As the as the years circled round
Whose hand touched it last
In that long ago past?
Clear glass, heavy, yet small
Cracked but unbroken, all in all
What unseen secrets must it hold
This bottle of stories untold
It holds untold stories, all right. I’ve not determined exactly what tincture this old bottle actually held. The faintest embossed image of a root, almost worn away, remains on the front. A health tonic, likely. I know my grandfather had a sister who died of diphtheria at age three, in 1907. I doubt the bottle is that old but I have visions of my great-grandmother nursing her ailing children and tossing that empty bottle onto the trash heap…
Sparking me to attempt a didactic cinquain:
Bottle
Antiquated, weather-worn
Eroding, cracking, enduring
Poured out for healing
Elixir
Or maybe a double reversed etheree:
Empty of that for which you were fashioned
vessel of life-blood for veins long ceased
drawn from roots to nourish my own
cold glass clasped in hands now still
spooned in mouths now silent
elixir fully
poured out, consumed
every drop
gone
cast off
forgotten
swallowed by earth
kept year after year
without ceremony
lying silent, eroding
enduring seasons, weathering
cracking but enduring, determined
to remain clear with your story obscured.
—oh, little bottle.
How I wish you could speak.
When I was a child, I looked forward to seeing the dentist.
His name was Dr. Job. Like Job in the Bible, long o, not as in “teaching is a hard job.” I could not understand this when I saw his name on the office door: Why do we say ‘Jobe?’ It says Job! J-o-b. That’s not right. It should have an ‘e’ on the end. J-o-b-e …
It irritated my father: That’s how his name is pronounced. He knows how to spell it. Now stop.
Dr. Job had white hair and a white coat and to be honest I wasn’t happy to see him.
No.
I wanted his rings.
After each visit—usually for a filling—Dr. Job reached into some magical cabinet and brought out a box. With a big smile, he opened it before me like a hawker on the city streets selling watches out of a car trunk.
The box was full of rings, set in foam rubber, as if on display at a fine jewelry counter.
“Which one would you like, hmmm? You’ve been a good little patient!”
Of course I was good … there were rings for the taking! How they glittered. All different colors, sizes, shapes. It didn’t matter which one I chose as they were adjustable; their metal bands were split to be widened or narrowed to fit.
One day I looked and looked it—had to be the best ring—until Dr. Job finally cleared his throat: “Ahem. You need to pick one, all right?”
I settled on a ring with a pale purple stone cut in facets like a diamond. I put it on the ring finger of my right hand (not my left, that was for getting married someday). Feeling like a princess, I said: “This is alexandrite, right?” (so … as a child I was fascinated by birthstones and pored over them in mail-order catalogs. My own is emerald. To me, at the time, this pale purple was prettier. June’s birthstone. Point to ponder: How many kids today know about birthstones? ).
Dr. Job looked at me and blinked. He closed the case and returned me to my father.
The main reason I remember that ring is because of a scene in a different office. Plagued by allergies, I had to get weekly injections in both arms. Sometimes I had reactions, rashes or big knots that burned. While I sat waiting, waiting, waiting at the doctor’s office, before and after the shots, I read all the children’s books and magazines—I loved Highlights. Then I read the grown-up stuff, like Reader’s Digest. One afternoon I was too tired to read. I sat sideways in the waiting room chair, leaning against the wall in the late-afternoon shadows. I reached up to rub my sore left arm when waning light from the window caught my “alexandrite” ring. A dozen tiny rainbows appeared on the wall beside me. Mesmerized, I move my hand this way and that, watching the rainbow-spots dance, vanish, and reappear. I forgot the time, forgot my swollen arm; I was too busy scattering the light.
This whole story returned to me as I was continuing my containment cleaning and sunlight caught my ring (diamond, on my married finger) just right.
Scattered light. Tiny rainbows. On a day, incidentally, when Highlights became a destiny…
Ethereal moments call for an etheree, don’t you think.
Time
waiting
in shadows
sometimes brings gifts
otherwise not found.
Like seeing little things
that remind us how it was
to be children full of wonder
scattering light everywhere we go,
making bits of rainbow dance on dark walls.
lit bits and pieces 