Welcome to Poetry Friday!
Poetry Peeps! You’re invited to our challenge for the month of January! Here’s the scoop: we’re composing tan-ku, conversations between a haiku and a tanka, as created by Mariko Kitakubo & Deborah P. Kolodji. (This is a short-but-sweet challenge, given that we don’t have a full month to ponder it.) Are you in? Good! You have …two weeks to craft your creation and share it on January 31st in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We hope you’ll join the fun!
One of my modest goals for 2025 is to share my poems a bit more often. Since I’ve been writing with the Poetry Sisters since 2007, I have amassed a ton of poems, some of which I even feel okay about, but they tend to languish in folders and never see the light of day. Rather than continue to emulate the Belle of Amehurst and have someone find all of this on my hard drive when I’m dead, I’m going to start sharing… they may be good, bad, or indifferent, but the point is that I did like them once, so… here goes.
The following poem is less of a real answer to a poem, and more of an illustration, if not quite a parable. I think religious writings of any faith practice contain a lot of stories, because that’s the way to break concepts down into digestible bits for the average person… belief is a MASSIVE topic. We all believe something …sometimes. That old saw about atheists and foxholes come to mind – even if our belief is ephemeral and unthinking, sometimes it exists, and I think it’s part of life that deserves examination like the rest…
Poetry Friday is hosted by Tricia’s Smith Corona at The Miss Rumphius Effect. Thanks, Tricia.
Happy Weekend, friends.
Oh, this entire poem packs a powerful wallop. Beautiful, surprising, not-surprising, and hopeful. Shedding particular systems can bring freedom and blooming — in the final lines, I’m reminded of a phoenix rising from the ashes.
A much-needed parable — we can burn without being consumed. I’ll take that with me into the rest of the next four years.
I love the downfall in hollow, jaded, trapped, burned, and then the contrast at the end
“But in the heat, my desert bloomed
In burning, I was not consumed.”
Lots of lovely metaphor in your poem–so visual, and touching graphics which if I may be so bold to say may have gone quite the other way, Thanks for your poem Tanita. Hope you are well and stay warm, and far away from the fires.
Tanita, hollowed jaded pressure stand out in response to the question you posed. I think many people in your age group may have felt the pangs like you. Your heart spoke.and desert bloomed. Your inner thoughts popped in a beautiful way. Your collage background makes me want to collage a heartnote. Thanks for sharing your poems I look forward to seeing them.
The collage background to your poem is lovely…there are such pretty layers. Hooray for more sharing of poems. I’m delighted to hear that. Your words, “in burning, I was not consumed” are a wonderful and mysterious line to land on.
Hooray for more poems! Those last two lines! So powerful.
Well, I’m glad that you’ve chosen to post more, Tanita, & the many layers of your poem inspired me to read it numerous times, finding new paths to how I felt about it. So many keep feelings of self inside, but you’ve shown that introspection I hope others have. Perhaps they just don’t write poems about it! You’ve made me ponder Burns: “‘O, wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as others see us!”
I especially love the turn in your poem, Tanita. May your desert continue to bloom.
Tanita, I love your metaphor-story-parable answer to faith. I like the difference in the first and second stanzas, and that the second stanza finishes it. “my desert bloomed” is beautiful.