The orange sun setting
Somewhere ahead
Beyond our sight
Through dense wood
Still are slanting
Glimmers of light
Below a carpet
Of red gold leaves
Crunching beneath
We’ll stop soon
Beside this path
And rest well tonight.
Category: Poetry Page 2 of 3
One day
alien archeologists
will dig our bones
out of dirt
and wonder
One day
another species
will hold dominion
over Earth
and they will plunder
One day
all that lives
will be gone
turned to dust
or buried under
But that day
is not today.
Yeah, so I’m a little tired of using Canva. The poetry challenge is still going well, but instead of regaling you with all the poems (good, bad, and mediocre) I’ll stick to the one that was most personal.
Something people often don’t realise is that ancient China also used a solar calendar. They were farmers, after all: they needed to keep track of the seasons. Clear and Bright Festival, sometimes known as Qing Ming or Tomb Sweeping Festival, is a festival that takes places on that solar calendar, around the 4th or 5th of April each year. Here in Australia, my family celebrates it on Good Friday, so we can easily get the day off. We go to the cemetery, burn incense, display food, and burn paper money, gold, and cloth (the idea being that the smoke rises to heaven and, I guess, brings the gold and money and cloth with it). For global pandemic reasons, we didn’t actually celebrate this year, so I wrote this poem instead:
So I’ve been participating in this year’s Poetry Challenge from Writers Digest, only following the prompts a day behind because my time zone means I’m too early to get the actual day’s prompt, apparently. I’ve also done some experimentation with Canva to make them look pretty. Let me know what you think!
Empty tables stand
under glowing orange globes.
Wine glasses glisten.
Doors open, letting
cold air blow in, shivering
people order, then
leave when food is done.
Kitchen returns to quiet,
prepping for the rush
that may never come.
Waiters waiting wistfully,
seats remain empty,
the whole building waiting to
be filled with diners to fill.
This is a Rimas Dissolutas — a poem where the rhymes are not in the stanzas, but across the stanza (i.e. line 1 of the first stanza rhymes with line 1 of the second, and so on). This one kind of got away from me. I started with the image of flying and did not expect to be writing about regrets. But that was the way the words fit together. I guess that’s the fun of poetry. Anyway, here goes:
This is something I wrote in the quest to become more of a morning person. I’m not one, at all, but I’ve found that if I’m not at least a little productive in the morning the day tends to be less productive overall. Apparently snoozing is bad, but my bed is too comfortable for not snoozing to be easy. So this is something I’ve stuck next to my bed. The idea is that when my alarm rings, I recite this poem and then get out of bed immediately after the last line:
This poem is an attempt to use the same structure/rhyming scheme as Robert Frost’s Fire and Ice.
Can we place trust in distant stars
When it is night?
When past regrets deal out their scars
When times of darkness come to pass
Will blackness truly blind our sight?
Or will hope, fearless, pierce the dark
And shine through tiny points of light?
Could just one spark
Light up the night?
This poem is a product of the fact that I couldn’t get past the similarity of the words ‘sonnet’ and ‘sonata’ out of my head (and they do have similar roots). I’m not sure what to take from this, other than that puns may not always be the best basis for poetry.
Begin as always with a tonic theme
Expositing a stately melody
Then answer dominant enters the scene
A contrast in the mood and harmony
Develop, then, the themes that went before
In exploration of some modulations
Where fragmentary tunes repeat once more
In sequences that lead to revelation
Present again theme one and then theme two
Now recapitulating, coming home
But both now in the tonic key ensue
No more in modulations will they roam
And thus by following the forms of art
We, on a journey, take the human heart
Cold night
Deep lake
Stars bright
Moon white
Still water
Mirrors sky
Stone splashes
Breaking images
Rippling shimmering
Moonlight glimmering
Starlight flickering
Widening waves
Slowly settle
Still again
Cold lake
Deep night