Holding Still

haiku (bridges)

Tonight when I checked my email, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but new pictures of the boys! Two of our agency's people traveled to Ethiopia to escort two other children, and were able to spend time with all of the kids. One of the women sent us some pics of our boys.

I've also included a haiku below prompted at one deep breath poetry. The theme was "bridges." It's inspired from our ability to see the boys' photos.

One click of the mouse
and I can see the boys smile.
A virtual bridge.

haiku (breath, breathing)

The theme this week is breath or breathing. More haiku along these lines can be found here.

My take on it was to recount the drama of my getting our visas from the Ethiopian Consulate in NYC earlier this week. I was feeling pretty pathetic that day, a victim of the whims of New York, pms, grisly cold weather and inborn wimpiness.

Elevator doors
open into quiet. Breathe.
Consulate comforts.

Slow post office line.
Excruciatinly slow.
I think I may cry.

New line, longer wait.
What the hell is wrong with me?
Changing lines backfires.

Back to consulate.
At a remove from chaos,
her gaze helps me breathe.

Hunger and sadness
are wearing me down to tears.
I don't expect this.

Glorious bus seat
cocoons me into relief.
My breath slows, I sleep.

haiku -- spicy fibs

This week's haiku prompt is pretty cool, and one I've never seen before. It's based on the Fibonacci series. The syllables must be 1/1/2/3/5/8. Go and see some other haiku fibs over here.

White
dove
centered
on my quilt.
What would Picasso
say about my attempts to fly?

Cold
nose,
fuzzy
boy we love.
Stares up in suspense
at your head -- JUMPS! Hat in dog's mouth.

Door
slides
open.
I smell spring.
February's end
feels more like April's beginning.

Friday poem

Talking to Grief

Ah, Grief, I should not treat you
like a homeless dog
who comes to the back door
for a crust, for a meatless bone.
I should trust you.

I should coax you
into the house and give you
your own corner,
a worn mat to lie on,
your own water dish.

You think I don't know you've been living
under my porch.
You long for your real place to be readied
before winter comes. You need
your name,
your collar and tag. You need
the right to warn off intruders,
to consider
my house your own
and me your person
and yourself
my own dog.

Denise Levertov

Luck

.

Luck
Langston Hughes

Sometimes a crumb falls
From the tables of joy,
Sometimes a bone
Is flung.
To some people
Love is given,
To others
Only heaven.

I hadn't read any Langston Hughes in a while, until I found this poem in a college address given by Billy Collins. Collins said he wished he had written it.

I had written a longer post including a random memory about Langston Hughes' poetry, but then I lost it due to some computer and human (me) malfunctioning. Suffice it to say that I caught the flu and am in the slow-witted recovery phase where I have to do things at least twice in order to accomplish the simplest tasks.

Right now Beckmann is at the laundromat, braving the bitter cold so that we can wear clean underwear again. He is a great, great husband.

* the image above is by Romare Bearden, from 1969. It's called The Woodshed and is a collage made from cut and pasted paper, cloth and pencil on Masonite. It measures @40x50" and lives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

haiku -- dusk/twilight

Below are a few haiku inspired by this week's prompt at One Breath Poetry -- dusk/twilight. Sadly, my button for the site doesn't link, it just looks pretty.

Bright winter sky light
darkens to a steely pink.
Then my stomach growls.

Joy will change to dread.
The sun dips below the trees.
Such a sad haiku!

Once, I denied change.
Now when the day has to end
I am more patient.

Horace Pippin, Interior, 1944
National Gallery of Art

haiku (subtle change)

Warm days surprise us

In January. But look --

I can see my breath.

affection, cont'd

I really love Billy Collins' poetry.  I had to decide on one for today, which was and wasn't difficult.  Difficult because there are so many good ones, easy because this one has been in my mind lately.

I don't know if it's because I'm a visual person, but I fall in love with objects and randomness throughout the day, on a regular basis.  On my desk at work I have built tiny little shrines of objects I've found at which I can gaze.  Some days I don't even notice them.  But other days I really drink them in, hold them carefully in my hands, marvel at them.  Like the small horseshoe crab shell I found this fall.  It's still leaking sand from itself, which I find very endearing.  Except when the sand finds its way onto my keyboard.  But that's my own fault.

There's a green pencil I've been attached to recently.  I found an eraser to put on its worn end the color of ripe mango (no, really, that's what color it is), which I've never seen anywhere else.  I found the eraser alone amongst a cluster of pink erasers clinging to their wooden yellow hosts.  Geez, I hope I don't lose it.

When I get home, I'm going to pick up a gallon of milk from a farmer friend of ours, and I know that I'll be won over by the goose who stands guard, or the sight of my brown car anxiously awaiting my return, the radio buzzing from within. 

How about you?  Any love of random things throughout your days?

affection

Aimless Love
Billy Collins

This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table


In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor's window
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.


This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.


The love of a chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.


No lust, no slam of the door-
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florida,


No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor-
just a twinge every now and then


for the wren who had built her nest
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dressed in its light brown suit.


But my heart is always propped up
in a field on its tripod,
ready for the next arrow.


After I carried the mouse by the tail
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing down affectionately at the soap,


so patient and soluble,
so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again
as I felt its turning in my wet hands
and caught the scent of lavender and stone.

haiku (the new year)

belly button

It's been there for years.

How many different ways

can I look at it?