I’ve been wondering how to share my recent poetry without my former community on DeviantArt, and it occurred to me tonight that I’ve been neglecting this blog completely! This is where I used to share everything! So here I am again.
To get started, I’ll share some poems I was thinking about today. I wrote them two years ago, but it was at this same time of year. I had been reading a book of art and poetry by Albert L. Bross Jr — The Four Seasons: A Selection of Lithographs, Sketches, and Haiku Poetry — which inspired me to write some seasonal haikus of my own. It was especially good timing for me because I wanted to write but didn’t have any ideas. When that happens with art, I just draw something I see or find a photograph to paint. This was the same idea. I paid attention to what was happening around me, and I wrote about the things that stood out.
Now I think of those little verses whenever late summer rolls around. Haikus are good at that…encapsulating a single moment and preserving it as a crisp, evocative picture in memory.
I’ll post a selection of them below.
Lawn chair bars creaking,
The girl shifts, head over notebook,
Haloed in streetlight
First crackles of rain;
The parched soil opening wide,
A begging mouth
Insistent cricket
Pining for his absent love
Hides in the weeds
August cicadas,
washed-out rose horizon:
evening on the porch
Burnt sienna leaves
skitter from the horse chestnut
retiring early
Welcome, evening chill
on bare arms, twilight purples,
calming crickets
Steady close chirping—
trapped between the footbridge bars
a lonely cricket
Sky streaked with pink fire,
Train whistles in the distance,
Bellefonte summer eve
Chorus of crickets
bass and tenor, fast and slow
this summer concert
Beautiful and evocative
Thank you!