Dark autumn morning
chill seeping, coffee steeping
outside, something cries
‘Into the darkness. Mornings are getting dark now, winter is on its way‘ Mr B’s Photography. CC BY 2.0.
Autumn morning haiku
morning
Misty reflection
There’s a scientific explanation
for the mist rising
from the glassy ponds
along my morning commute
then there’s poetry
the perceiving of
elemental transitions
autumnal ghosts rising
from the silver surface
the old heron
is still there by water’s edge
not wading
but watching
in the cool gray
in-betweenness
quite possibly studying me
an unnatural phenomenon
a recurring phantasm
passing through
its world
Memory, like morning (on the day of a friend’s funeral)
with thanks to Denise Krebs who shared the hay(na)ku form on Ethical ELA today.
First draft:
On waking before dawn on the morning of a beloved friend’s funeral
Memory
Like morning
Shimmers with light
Gathering
For Christmas
Across the years
You
Playing Santa
Giver of gifts
Laughter
Colorful, bright
Exquisite as snow
Stories
Like wine
Better over time
Dinners
Savored moments
Ending too soon
Envisioning
Your eyes
Always Christmas-bright
Awe
At love
Given so freely
Embracing
Many others
Ever-widening circle
Gathering
Together today
In your memory
Celebrating
Your life
Colorful, bright, exquisite
Testimony
To faith
In Lord Jesus
Returning
your body
to your homeplace
Earth
Where our
Young selves walked
Gathering
For Christmas
Across the years
Now
In springtime
Oceans of flowers
Bloom
Like promises
Around your grave
Friend
No good-byes
Only more homecomings
Rising
From darkness
In heaven’s embrace
Memory
Like morning
Shimmers with light
First bluebird
Today
when I rose
it was
not dark
Windows backlit
winter-pale, eggshell
embryonic
but light
Still cold
beyond the blankets
when I open
the blinds
To find
a bluebird
resting on
old deck railing
Plump and poised
for one long minute
his feathers painted
with sky and rust of earth
Little harbinger
on weatherworn wood
-while it is yet winter
spring is yawning
I hold my breath
in shell-light, shivering
as the promise
takes wing, and flies
*******
A bit of rough-draft offering for Poetry Friday.
Thanks to Jone Rush McCulloch for hosting.
Photo: Bluebird. Rick from Alabama. CC BY. – because I couldn’t get to my camera in time. The poem is my snapshot.
December dawn
I wake
after having slept
without rest
mind weary
of turning, turning
I throw off
the heavy blanket
of night
of darkness
to stand shivering
on the chilly cusp
there is no sound
just hush
and my heart grasps
before my eyes glimpse
the glimmering
before I know it
I’ve thrown open the door
to stand
barefoot in the frost
still nightgowned
as birds glide high above
round and round
tracing infinity signs
against rose-gold clouds
in silence
in ceremonial welcome
of day
first light, ever bright
parts the pink veils
a sun so, so old
yet so golden-new
peeks through
and I think
of beginnings
not endings
of possibility
not inadequacy
of movement
not stasis
there are no words
only the distant
occasional rustle
of feathered wings
from on high
and in that
I rest
*******
with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the weekly Slice of Life invitation to write
and to all who gather here to encourage one another
on the writerly journey
Divine appointment
Cardinal Singing Along. Don and Janet Beasley. CC BY-SA
Broom in hand, I descend the brick steps where moss has newly sprung. The sidewalk needs sweeping and I’ve only a minute. Must get to school early, to prepare for the day; the minutiae of all that has to be done circles round and round my mind.
But I have to do this first. Oddly. Sweeping the sidewalk is not part of my morning routine.
Hurry. Hurry.
All is still but for the light chatter of a few birds, waking. The sound of early spring. The sound of April. Of a new day. I pause, listening. How cheerful, how happy their bird voices are, even if to them it’s just regular conversation. My spirit eases, just hearing them. I note that the light is unusual. Against random trees and shrubs, the dawn gleams amber in patches. Everything else is a backdrop in half light. There’s an edge to it all, a starkness. The sky is moody. Altocumulus clouds, dark in their middles, gleaming around their rims, are gathered in bands or waves; this is what scientists call a mackerel sky, I think. Strange light.
—Time. Be aware.
Right, I must hurry.
Just as I put broom to concrete, I see it.
Over in the neighbor’s yard, in the shadows under the bushy, unpruned crape myrtle.
The brightest spot of color I’ve ever seen. Red. Rosy, electric red, brighter than any neon light, as vivid as fire, glowing, but not burning. Just being. I blink. How does such a color even exist in nature? It has to be a cardinal but I can’t see the rest of him, just his plump breast. A half-memory from childhood stirs in my mind, of pretending I had a pet cardinal and spraying pine-scented air freshener throughout the house to create his forest, where he could fly freely— but for all my attraction to the male cardinal’s plumage, I’ve never seen it to the intensity and brilliance as right now in this capricious light.
I want to see him better but I dare not move.
I think I’ve quit breathing.
Could I, maybe, get a picture? If I’m stealthy, can I make it into the house and back with my phone?
I have to try. I have to capture this image.
I watch him as I ease toward the house. He moves a little, hopping in the dappled grass.
As soon as I reach the steps, out of his field of vision, I race through the front door to the kitchen, grab my phone, turn, shoot back through the door, take the steps without making a sound, stop, and creep to where I can see the crape myrtle.
—He’s still there! I can’t believe it!
An astounding spot of color, radiating an otherworldly light.
Holy.
I aim my phone and zoom in . . .
On the screen I see the thin myrtle branches up close. The grass, the shadows, the sunlit patches. —Where’s my bird?
I look away from the phone back to the scene, to get my bearings . . . don’t know how I could have missed, I aimed right where he was standing . . . .
—Gone.
He is gone.
In the second between my sighting him and my lifting the phone, he vanished. Without a sound or any perceptible movement. He was and then he was not. Just like that.
Nowhere to be seen at all.
I stand frozen, phone in hands, an inexplicable feeling sweeping through me.
The moment passed and nothing remains of it. Stunning, that spot of fiery color like no other, in the shadows under that tree. One glimpse of glory. He was so beautiful and I never even saw all of him. Even if I do see him again—and I’ll try, at this same time tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after—it will never happen again, not just like this. The clouds will not be the same. The position of the sun will be slightly different. It can never be again exactly as it was.
I so wanted to capture his image, the holiness of it, to keep it forever, and I could not.
But I hold it in my mind. I cling to every breathtaking detail.
I write it before it leaves me, wondering at the tears burning behind my eyes over this one bird, this one moment, why it should be so significant, to make me feel so much.
I was just there, unexpectedly, and so was he.
For one shining moment, we just were.
Suncatcher
Sun angel. Sheila Sund. CC BY
Into each life some rain must fall
But too much is falling in mine
Into each heart some tears must fall
But some day the sun will shine
Some folks can lose the blues in their hearts
But when I think of you another shower starts
Into each life some rain must fall
But too much is falling in mine.
-Allan Roberts
Yesterday morning the sun beckoned from among striated clouds, streaking the sky with silver and gold. Birdsong—it’s a brand-new spring. The scent of fresh-cut grass from the day before lingers, and nothing takes me back to my childhood and my father quicker than that sweet green fragrance.
Even as the sun shone, a soft rain pattered down.
In my heart, in the hearts of my community, too much rain is falling.
Yesterday we buried a young lady who grew up here, was one of us, was an only child and grandchild. She was a college freshman, eighteen, a year younger than my second son, his childhood playmate and lifelong friend. She went to church with us all of her life, sang in the choir, and was beautiful. She caught the light and scattered it like a faceted gemstone quietly scatters tiny, vivid rainbows on objects close by.
Death, when it comes suddenly to someone so young and full of promise, can only be likened to a great ripping apart.
She is ripped away.
The church was full and overflowing an hour before the service. People stood around the walls of the sanctuary, packed the fellowship hall, lined every hallway on both sides throughout; a huge crowd waited outside because there was no more room.
My husband officiated. He was at the hospital the day this child was born. He ended the eulogy with a little twist of Shakespeare: “Good-night, sweet princess; and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”
As the crowd walked to the burial site, the sun shone for all it was worth. The clouds were gone; a warm breeze ruffled dresses, suit jackets, hair.
Even so, the rain will fall within us for days and days to come, yet it doesn’t mean that our little suncatcher won’t keep catching and scattering the light in the quiet way she always did. More light than ever is reflected in the myriad drops of rain, like iridescent droplets of diamonds quivering with celebration that she lived, that she was a gift.
She will always be.
lit bits and pieces 