free verse

Fallow

/ Fran Haley / 5 Comments

Halfway between work and home
I noticed the field.
How could I not, such vibrant green
popping against the panorama
of brown grass and tired trees
giving way to winter.

I needed this shot
of unexpected freshness
after these first days back
to full-time work
with my husband at home
in the middle of a slow recovery
from spinal surgery.

The waning afternoon light
slants gold across the green
and there, there,
clear as day, two deer
graze, gilt-edged
and peaceful
and perfect

as if it isn’t hunting season
as if carcasses of their kindred
aren’t lying mangled by the roadside
within their view
as if the long in-betweenness of
hours and days and seasons
and breaths
is no consequence

as if all that matters
is this field left fallow

for their sustenance

and now
mine.

NS-01036 – Whitetail Deer. archer10 (Dennis) CC BY-SA 2.0

Whitetail Deer.TexasEagle. CC BY-NC 2.0

Poetry: keeping the channel open

/ Fran Haley / 2 Comments

For VerseLove on Ethical ELA this week, host Margaret Simon shared this quote from dancer Martha Graham (on The Marginalian):

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware of the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.”

Margaret invited poet-participants to free-write for ten minutes and “just flow.” She shared a poem she composed in her Notes app while walking, along with this encouragement to keep going: “Mary Oliver says ‘You do not have to be good’ in her poem ‘Wild Geese’…accept what comes and be open to it. We all have an energy inside us waiting to be released in some creative way… Forget the rules today and flow, flow, flow.”

In keeping the channel open…here is where my mind went first.

Gifts from the Limbic Sea

Before it is quite morning
the otherworld of dreams
begins to recede
the hippocampus
swimming in its own sea
of memory
is unable to hold onto
the waving grasses
ever how beautiful
or important these
may be 

Try, I tell my twin seahorses
before I am quite awake
I would tighten
the ethereal reins
but I know I am
only dreaming

my hands cannot grasp
anything solid
images dissolve into foam
all I can feel
is a gentle current
ebbing away

or maybe 
that strange and bright
otherworld remains
and I am what transitions
from there to here
borne away on 
mystical tides 
back to reality

and so I rise 
in the darkness
before it is quite morning
to find my journal

and write
before the hippocampus
shakes off 
the remaining residue

it’s not much
this grasping
but I do it
because
these last particles
of dream-dust
preserved on the page
mean something

and they 
are mine

Hippocampus coronal sections. Danielsabinasz. CC BY-SA 4.0

‘Hippocampus’ by The Black Apple. Halogen Gallery. CC BY-SA 2.0

Vagabond

/ Fran Haley / 26 Comments

a memoir poem

Driving along 
a deserted road
in a deluge
in the dark
my hands gripping 
the steering wheel
for dear life

I see him
in the headlights
there, ahead
on the right

standing, bent,
in the sheeting rain
thumb held out

—how can I
not stop?

Rain beats
the car roof
like a drum
as he flings open
the door and
slides into the
passenger seat.

“Thanks,” he says.

He’s wearing 
layers of clothes

a sodden cap
over straw-like hair

sporting
a scraggly beard.

“Sure,” I say.
“Where are you going?”

He looks at me
for a peculiar moment:
“The better question is
where are YOU going?”

His eyes
(maybe it’s just my 
overactive imagination)
are silvery
in the darkness.

“H-h-home,” I stammer.

“Then I’ll ride as far
as you’re able to
take me,”
says the stranger.
“How old are you,
anyway?”

What does it matter?
“Eighteen,” I say.

“You mean
that you have lived
to be eighteen
and no one
has told you
not to pick up
strangers?”

I blink.

“It’s raining…it’s
such a bad night…”
I start

but as I speak
I can hear
Grandma’s voice
reading a favorite 
book to me
when I was small
(Never Talk to Strangers!)
and what 
she always says
at our parting:
Take care of your
precious self…

he finishes:
“It could be
an even worse night.
You don’t know
what some people
might do.
There are a lot
mean people
in the world.
It isn’t safe
for you to
stop alone
like this.
If you let me off at
the next intersection,
it will be enough.”

I blink.

I drive on
to the next 
intersection,
a well-lit place
where he opens
the door:

“Thanks for
the ride.
But don’t 
pick up 
any more
strangers,”
he admonishes.

The lights change
a horn blares
I’m only dimly aware
for watching
open-mouthed
as the vagabond
absconds
into the
rain-cloaked
night.

I blink.

Now I see him
now I don’t

as I take
the last turn
for home.

Lonely Highway. Colby Stopa.  CC BY 2.0.

*******

with thanks to Katrina Morrison for the invitation to write a “Seeing the stranger” poem on Day Four of the Ethical ELA OpenWrite

and to Two Writing Teachers for the monthlong Slice of Life Story Challenge

and to the vagabond hitchhiker
whose advice I have heeded
ever since

The givers

/ Fran Haley / Leave a comment


Remembering people
across the years
with a mixture
of awe, gratitude,
and humility
for often those who
gave me the most
had the least
to give

materially,
at least

I don’t recall
every gift now
only the bright joy
on the faces
of the givers

there is
no calculating
the vast riches
in their hearts
or the price
of their generosity

only that it lives on
long after them

I still hold
their greatest gold:

sacrificial love

Widow’s Mite – Ancient Roman Bronze Coins. IronRodArt – Royce Bair (‘Star Shooter’). CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Something about September

/ Fran Haley / Leave a comment

Sunlight
still bright
takes on an amber tinge
the sky
day by day
almost imperceptibly
deepens its blue
still hot
in Carolina
but now she’s rolling up
her blanket of humidity
to put it away at last
there’s the first
tiny delicious trace
of coolness in the breeze
cicada choruses fade
day by day
a vintage time of year
I think to myself
remembering
how September stands
as a paradise paradox
regal in earth’s greatest finery
stitched with threads
of her greatest losses

September morning. rkramer62. CC BY 2.0.ran

Today years old poem

/ Fran Haley / Leave a comment

On the final day of the August Open Write at Ethical ELA, Scott McCloskey extends this intriguing invitation:

“Have you heard of the saying, ‘I was today years old when I found out about…’?  It’s what we say when we find out something surprising, something new that we’ve just learned…Think of the most recent (most interesting /startling) thing that you’ve learned…You could examine the fact.  Interrogate it.  Expand on it.  Or simply just share it with the rest of us.”

I return to the hummingbird.

Inside the Skull

When I was
ten or eleven years old
supermarket tabloids
ran story after story
of UFOs
and alien abductions.
I half-believed 
these ridiculously weird
narratives…
at today years old
I sit at my kitchen table
looking through the window
at a hummingbird
hovering in midair
like an otherworldly thing
looking right back at me.
I wonder what it’s thinking
this tiny iridescent creature
that mesmerizes me
takes over my brain
controls me for hours
compelling me to read
everything I can
about its kind
which is how I learn
a hummingbird’s tongue
is so long
that it coils
around and around
its tiny skull
and rests behind
its ever-bright
and curious eyes
-ridiculously
unbelievably
weird
I say to myself
as I lose all track
of time…

Resharing my photo of my hummingbird with her tongue extruded

Tiny warriors

/ Fran Haley / Leave a comment

Not one but two hummingbirds
visit the new feeder now
as if the first brought a friend
to a cool new place for a drink

This is not the case

It’s a competition
a quarrel, a chase
each determined
to drive the other away
each little but fierce

Methinks I will call them
Helena and Hermia

(no sign of any males;
perhaps they’re in the woods
asleep)

What I’d say to these tiny warriors
if I could make them understand
is that there’s plenty to go around

but humans
(what fools we mortals be)
who should understand
have yet to learn
about living peaceably
about there always being enough
if only…

I sigh as I ponder
the solitary existence
of hummingbirds
and the mad beating
of their wings


“And though she be but little, she is fierce…”