The Art Lesson

Posted on by
Reply 
The canvas panel lays before me, blank and pristine.
Or almost pristine. Scuff marked and yellow tinged;  
it's been sitting around for a while.

A horizontal penciled line, not quite centered.
Top portion is the sky. 
Paint it blue, I’m told.

But skies aren’t out-of-the-tube blue on flat canvas.
They’re deep, dappled with clouds sometimes,
softened by invisible breezes at other times.
Troubled by storms, 
subdued by dawn’s tentative tendrils. 
That all comes later, I’m told.

I dab at the blue mound on waxed paper.
Oil or acrylic, I don’t recall.

Mom sits nearby, chatting with her friend
who is -- ostensibly -- here to teach me art.
They gossip – well, the friend does.
Mom listens, jokes, commiserates. Passes judgment.

A large book lies open on the table,
showing step-by-step how to recreate the painting:
an old barn on a rutted dirt road alongside a 
generic, leafless tree. 

Sketch the outlines as illustrated, I'm told.
I don’t want to. 
This is someone else's painting, not mine. 
I don’t know what the barn has seen,
what the tree has felt.

Who traversed the road to carve the ruts,
Where were they headed? 
What did they find upon arrival? 

I put lines on the canvas with a #2 pencil. 
That’s enough for tonight, I’m told.
My mom and her friend barely glance at my work,
make vague plans for a return visit. 
The friend leaves.

The half-blue, scuffed canvas sits on the floor 
in a dark corner of my bedroom closet.
For years. 

When I am forty, I paint skunk cabbage.


It’s National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo)!

Day Two prompt from NaPoWriMo.net: “write [a] poem in which you recount a childhood memory. Try to incorporate a sense of how that experience indicated to you, even then, something about the person you’d grow up to be.”

Beauty in the Eye of the Eyesore

Posted on by
10

“Your yard gets a lot of attention from my visitors!” my neighbor calls from the edge of her manicured lawn. I survey my property, a burgeoning habitat for native plants and the native critters that feed upon them. 

“Yeah,” I reply. “Someone recently asked me if I was letting the yard go wild to reduce my property taxes.” 

My neighbor laughs, and then admits the nature of the “attention” to which she had alluded.

“My visitors ask, ‘Does she mean for her yard to look that way?’ ‘She’s planting all that brush intentionally?’” 

bear grass and buckbrush,
coyote bush and deer fern…
and skunk cabbage? Please!

I wonder if those are the thoughts of visitors or of my neighbor, or maybe of all who see my native landscaping. So be it. I settle into the rocking chair on my back porch and watch bees – legs plump with pollen – buzz through the California poppies. Ladybugs dine on aphids among the large-leaved lupines, and a pair of mourning doves peck for seeds beneath  a clump of prairie june grass. 

summer solstice nears
farewell-to-spring’s pink petals
blossoming on cue

dVerse Haibun Monday: Summer or Winter

Fleeting Blossoms

Posted on by
7

While walking through the park, my dog Chules and I pause at an apple tree. I am drawn to the white-pink blossoms and the bees that float among them. Chules is more intrigued by the base of the trunk, and the invisible messages left there by other dogs. He lifts his leg and adds his own note to the trunk. 

cherry blossoms wane

pink petals carpet the ground 

apple tree looks on

Day 29 of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo). In response to dVerse prompt: Haibun Monday: late cherry blossoms.

Read the Signs

Posted on by
Reply

Day 26 of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) .

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt is to write a sonnet. The strict rules of sonnets:

  • 14 lines
  • 10 syllables per line
  • Those syllables are divided into five iambic feet. (An iamb is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable).
  • Rhyme schemes vary, but the Shakespearian sonnet is abab cdcd efef gg (three quatrains followed by a concluding couplet).
  • Sonnets are often thought of as not just little songs, but little essays, with the first six-to-eight or so lines building up a problem, the next four-to-six discussing it, and the last two-to-four coming to a conclusion.

The “rules” are somewhat bendable, but I tried stay relatively true to the strict format. Herewith:

Sales Pitch (Read the Signs)

The sign says No Solicitors. You knock.
Beware the Dog that lunges at my door. 
“The rats and piss ants this year run amok.”
You’ll slay them all. They’ll bother me no more.

A spider egg sac hangs upon the wall.
“A hundred spiderlings your home will fill.”
More likely to my garden they will crawl
to feast upon the bugs you wish to kill. 

No rodents, bugs or crawlies bother me.
The poison’s “safe for pets,” you persevere. 
My Wildlife Habitat sign plain to see;
No chemicals have touched my yard in years.

Your sales pitch failed, now please just go away.
My “pests” will live to see another day.

Bird Speak

Posted on by
5

Day 23 of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) 

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt is to write a poem that focuses on birdsong. I wrote about birds, but not songbirds. Oh, well. Here ’tis:

Bird Speak

Scrub-jay squawks accusingly at me
from atop my backyard fence.
What offence I may have committed, 
I do not know, but he’s got that
“you know what you did” tone.
“I shouldn’t have to tell you.” 

Always a tricky situation. Do you
try to guess, and risk confessing to something
they didn’t even know you'd done? Do you 
ask forgiveness, even though you don’t know for what? 
Am I overthinking the meaning of this jay’s
strident vocalizations? 

My dog Chules joins me on the deck, and the scrub jay
aims his admonishments at the pup. 
Now I know he’s just making stuff up. 
Chules is a good boy, and – while he’s been known to
chase some wildlife now and again – 
he always gives them a good head start
lest he actually catch something. 

Rather abruptly, scrub jay zips his beak, and
flits up into the canopy of the black walnut tree. 
A large black crow swoops over my rooftop
and lands on the fence, inches from where the 
jay had been holding court moments ago. 
With one loud caw, he announces: there’s
a new corvid in town. I don’t see a badge, 
but I won’t argue.

Chules and I are forgiven our sins, so long as 
we don’t try to pull any of that crap on the crow. 
Mind you, crow has no better idea of 
our transgressions than Chules and I do. 
We agree to his terms nonetheless. 

Chules is tempted to run at the crow and scare him off the fence,
but thinks better of it when he remembers being previously 
dive-bombed by said bird for just such behavior. 
I go back to pulling weeds, and the scrub jay… well, 
we likely won’t hear much from him for a while.

Freedom for All… Well, Some… a Few… Maybe

Posted on by
2

Day 21 of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) 

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt:

write a poem in which something that normally unfolds in a set and well understood way  — like a baseball game or dance recital – goes haywire, but is described as if it is all very normal.

Something gone haywire? I give you:

The Constitution

There are three branches of government.
No, wait… two. No… just one now. Well, that’s hardly a branch.
We’ll just call it a stump. 

There’s a president who executes the will of the people.
No… they're a dictator. No… merely a puppet.
We’ll just call them a toad. On the stump.

There are regular free elections.
No, not free. Stolen. No… sold. To the highest bidder,
who becomes the puppeteer of the toad on the stump.

There are governmental agencies meant to help the citizens.
No, they’re for collecting data on the citizens, to be monetized
by the puppies of the puppeteer who controls the toad on the stump.

There are citizens who are free and can pursue happiness.
No, wait… freedom depends on the whims of the dictator, and happiness
is crushed – like the spines of those who once served the people. 

The people have a voice that cannot be silenced by the puppeteer or the oligarchs or the dictator or the slime that surrounds
the toad on the stump. 

Let’s use that voice to call back our liberty and freedom.
Let’s remember we have “unalienable rights endowed by the Creator.”
Let’s uproot the stump and cooperate to build back our nation.

As citizens of this country, it's our duty.

Thoughts

Posted on by
2

Day 20 of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) 

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt is to:

write a poem informed by musical phrasing or melody, that employs some form of soundplay (rhyme, meter, assonance, alliteration). One way to approach this is to think of a song you know and then basically write new lyrics that fit the original song’s rhythm/phrasing.

Roughly, based on the rhythm of Cat Stevens’ Wild World…

Thoughts

When I think about the things I do
think, and I want to think of something new,
I can’t help it but to think about you.

Think. How did I get here? 

When the river runs deep, wide and slow,
as if it’s got nowhere else to go,
you know it’s teeming with life below.

Oh, maybe, maybe it’s the tide’s 
turn, I’m feeling shallow inside
and maybe if I tried, turn,
I wouldn’t have to run and hide.

So many times my eyes I’ve just kept closed.
So many serpentine and dead ends chose,
So many wrong-turned roads.

Think. How did I get here?

When I think about the things I do
think, I wish I’d thought of something new.
I wonder, do you feel the same way, too?

Special Delivery

Posted on by
2

Day 15 of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) 

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt is to write a six-line poem that has these qualities: informed by repetition, simple language, and expressing enthusiasm. And so…

Special Delivery

It’s coming! It’s coming! It’s coming! 
I heard it in my sleep! Two streets down.
Do you hear it now? Come outside!
I can’t see it, but I’ll bark my head off anyway, and 
jump and paw at the fence, because it's coming: the day I
finally break outta here and catch that mail truck!

Pilgrim Ridge

Posted on by
3

Day 14 of National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) 

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt:

try writing a poem that describes a place, particularly in terms of the animals, plants or other natural phenomena there. Sink into the sound of your location, and use a conversational tone. Incorporate slant rhymes (near or off-rhymes, like “angle” and “flamenco”) into your poem. And for an extra challenge – don’t reference birds or birdsong!

Here we go:

Pilgrim Ridge

Atop Pilgrim Ridge, miles from nowhere – 
no, that’s not an apt description;
Nowhere is quite near, in fact it’s right here –
crisp, pure silence defies definition
until one acclimates to the endless sky,
the light savory air,
the rocky ground stubbled in dry
remains of early summer wildflowers.

Leaning into the silence, one begins to hear
the percussive opening of a breeze-soft symphony;
gentle crackling of seed pods, split as the sun bears
down, the shaker of seed shot falling to ground,
a brush-on-cymbal swish of grasses swaying together,
the guiro scrabble of chipmunks skittering up
skinny pines to hide in long-needled shelter.
And then the music ratchets up.

The chipmunks begin their cuíca scoldings.
Wind chimes low tones in the clustered trees,
now weaving. Grasses are folding in the
hot air. A steady push now; no longer a breeze.
Clouds scuttle in and the thunder drum shakes,
first slow and lumbering, then brash, a 
crescendoing rumble
that ends with a lightning-bright quake,
and the diminuendo of tambourine rain.

Cuíca Sounds