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| cravingSunday poets topic last week was 'crave.' i wrote two pieces, but i think they really say the same thing. first one is traditional Petrarchan sonnet in iambic pentameter. not my fave. second is short free verse that says what i want it to short and sweet. well, maybe not so sweet.  as i often say, i write poetry because i have a short attention span.
Less is More
Surrounded by the “finer things” of life
like choicest wines and tasty banquet fare,
sleek cars to drive and tailored clothes to wear,
a woman fair of face to be his wife,
a man might think himself aloof from strife;
might think his walls protection from earth’s care
and all unknowing breathe that poisoned air
of hunger bred by satiety, a knife
whose cutting edge can carve away the soul,
can hollow out what’s left of heart and mind,
and leave the man a brittle, shining shell.
For life’s best treasures and its purest gold
in fires of honest toil are refined
and luxury’s lap’s an anteroom of hell.
Becky Haigler
September 2008
Craving
Satiety breeds its own kind of hunger –
a keen-edged knife of desire
that can never be satisfied
because there is nothing left to want.
Becky Haigler
September 2008
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| noctilucentthis was actually the Sunday poets' topic for last week, but i didn't get anything written for it until this weekend. the word means 'shining in the night.' i started off trying to write something about lake water lapping at a pier or the side of a boat in the moonlight, but instead i came back to a West Texas scene. i just got a haiku. Wikipedia on haiku (see especially section five on modern English-language haiku.)
noctilucent circle
cattle tank echoes
prairie moon
Becky Haigler
September 2008
before i read, i asked how many people knew what a 'cattle tank' was. several of the poets, my generation, recognized what i was talking about after hearing the description, but they didn't really have a name for those things because they don't need them around here where there are lakes and rivers and bayous and such that cows can drink out of. for other readers who don't live in dry plains areas, ranchers place windmills to pump water from way underground into galvanized metal tanks for cattle to drink from. nowadays, some are kind of oval, but most are/were round. | | |
| sic transit gloria mundinot that it matters, but this is a true story from this past week. no idea what made the bird fall like a rock out of the sky. the Latin phrase is a classic one that means 'thus passes the glory of the world,' or 'beauty is fleeting.'
sic transit gloria mundi
Yesterday a blue jay fell
onto the window slanted
over our breakfast table.
He hobbled under the feeder,
crest retired, bullied by doves.
This morning I saw him
trying to remember
the meaning of spilled grain.
Then he was dead, angled
in the grass – blue pinstripes,
snow-white underbody still
beautiful, beautiful – waiting
for the ants to close his eyes.
Becky Haigler
September 2008
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| online journala new journal has selected a couple of my 'ditties' for the online version of their mag, Abandoned Towers. click on the 'poetry' link. some of the other writers in the family should check out their writers' guidelines page. | | |
| woodland revuejust got home this evening from a week on the road to South Carolina to see some of David's family. spent two nights at Poinsett State Park in SC. see Grampa David's post on that subject at HaigLaw. i got a poem about the cool mushrooms growing around the campsite. it's been pretty damp in Shreveport the last couple of weeks and i'd been noticing lots of different, cool mushroom shapes and colors i'd never seen before. there were more new ones at the state park, which is named for South Carolinian Joel Poinsett, an amateur botanist and U.S. ambassador to Mexico, who was responsible for bringing the plant we now know as the poinsettia to this country. enjoy.
p.s. that's what i get for posting before i get feedback from my critique group. this is a second version of the original poem, incorporating several good suggestions by a fellow poet.
Woodland Revue
One by one mushrooms rise
from carpets of rotting leaves,
heads of insistent fungi
white, butter yellow, soft red;
shapes varied as flowers
peeking shyly or thrusting bold,
to dance without moving,
offering the perfect performance
of their secret lives
for an audience of One.
Becky Haigler
August 2008
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