We queried the forecasters and state water watchers: “Are we out of drought yet? Are we out of drought yet?” We sounded like little kids, feverishly wishing for the end of a journey. Well, we got there – not that it’s changed things for the aquifers. But, it’s still unbelievable that we got here.
While it is my hope that everyone gets to enjoy the wildflowers this year, I really hope people also are protecting fragile ecosystems; our enthusiasm, often fueled by things that looked gorgeous on Instagram, have once again damaged the very things we try to love, which is possibly the most human thing of all…
My cousin, Mary Lee, wrote a whole series of poems on the climate emergency last year (I think?) and I have to admit that some of them were depressing – because she needed to be real. People have been falsely optimistic for a long time, hoping good wishes would do the trick. It won’t. But, action will. My action has been to plant a garden – a tiny, hopeful, oxygenating thing to do. I’m trying to be an optimist – because I’m an Eeyore at heart. Here’s to thinking of what else we can do.
*waves to anyone here from the Books of Wonder author chat this afternoon*
I’ve got gardens on the brain – and so obviously the next subject for poetry is the WEEDS that are larger than the SEEDLINGS coming up…! *sigh*
Our yard is full of three-and-four inch seedlings. It’s… hard to imagine midsummer from this moment… but here’s to the potential that’s there. (CLICK to ENLARGE poem)
Last Sunday was the first in the seventies with sunshine since… who knows when. We have had weekday afternoons when it gets into the low seventies just before the wind picks up and the temperature drops back into the sixties, so a whole day during this unusually cool, windy spring after our unusually wet winter was so, so welcome. The whole neighborhood was outside for our day of sunshine, and with the doors and windows open, we could hear the joy in the air.
Poetry Friday today is hosted at Jone’s place.
I’m being cussed out on the daily right now, because I go into the backyard and annoy Mr. Mockingbird and Mr. House Wren while they’re on nest-sitting duty. I think we have two mockingbird couples, and a jay keeps wandering around, and there’s all kinds of fuss in the neighborhood… (CLICK to enlarge poem)
Ah, the microclimates of California, how I love you…
That gifted mathematician of classical times, Euclid, called the tetractys a true mystical symbol. A tetractys was a Pythagorean arrangement of 10 points in the form of a triangle with 1 point in the first row, two in the second, three in the third, and four in the fourth. Over time, that these numbers add up to a perfect ten came to be not just a mathematical thing, but many believed it to be quasi-spiritual and religious somehow. 1980’s English poet Ray Stebbings based his new poetic form on this triangular point pattern, substituting syllables for points in a pattern he called Britain’s “answer” to the haiku. True or not, this form has a triangular form (although I tweak that frequently by left or right justifying it), twenty syllables, and with its five lines it also falls under the categorization of cinquain.
Because the final line is ten syllables, rather wordier than a single syllable Crapsley cinquain, the syllabic difference can feel garrulous at first, and the ending kind of overdone. It’s a work in progress! I switched topics to the natural world, to give myself more space to play with this one:
And now on day ten of National Poetry Month we’re a third of the way through our Cinquains… and I think I’m going to attempt to change forms. While I’m not going to try to hold onto a topic/story for the first wee while – I think that might needlessly complicate things until I get the hang of it – I look forward to the challenge! So, onward to Lanternes, Tetractys, and Didactics…