“Nothing gold can stay.”
Robert Frost

“Ô, Sunlight! The most precious gold to be found on Earth.”
― Roman Payne

For the past couple of months, I’ve been awestruck by the golden tones of autumn. I don’t know if the color is unusual this year or if I’m simply more tuned in or more willing to be swept away. Regardless, over and over, I’ve been stopped in my tracks by varying tones of gold.

Autumn Gold

Gold dazzles in autumn.
It skims the river
and shimmers in luminous fog.
Gold whispers
in the rustle of marsh grasses
and in the quivering heart
of the gilded maple.

Gold can be brassy and bold
or soft and tawny.
It collects in the eye of a blackbird,
creeps along craggy stone walls,
knits patchwork quilts
on the wide boards
of an old pine floor.

Gold bookends the days,
rising in greeting,
then spilling from windows
on dark winter nights
to welcome you home. 

Gold promises.
Gold delivers.
Gold takes my breath away.

©Molly Hogan, 2020 (draft)

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted at Teacher Dance by Linda Baie. Be sure to stop by to check out the bounty of poems and poetry-related posts.

Finally, I’m sending you off with one of my all-time favorite golden songs– Eva Cassidy’s rendition of “Fields of Gold.”

Taking pictures helps me stay balanced. It forces me to slow down, to notice, to appreciate. It gets me out of my house and out of my head. It reminds me that even when things are ugly, there’s so much beauty in the world.

I rarely take photographs of people. I prefer to focus my lens on the wonders of nature. But on a recent walk with my husband and daughter, we stumbled upon a hillside meadow filled with bursting milkweed plants. I struggled to capture the wonder of the glowing milkweed strands in the lowering autumn light.

And then I saw my daughter doing this.

a hopeful breath
one generation seeds the next
thistledown wishes

©Molly Hogan

This week I also found time to respond to another photo, shared as a prompt in Margaret Simon’s weekly “This Photo Wants To Be A Poem”.

November’s steady amber gaze
transfigures feathered grass
autumn alchemy

©Molly Hogan

And then, as it so often does, my drive to work provided me with another moment to savor.

autumn morning
fog rises to greet the sun
day breaks in collage

©Molly Hogan

This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Robyn Hood Black at her blog of all things poetic and artistic, Life on the Deckle Edge. And what a post she has today! She’s highlighting a poem by Margaret Simon (Reflections on the Teche) and shining the light on a bountiful array of new books and possible gift ideas. So many poetic folk have all sorts of other artistic talents! It’s a perfectly timed post for those who have yet to start shopping (or even thinking about shopping) and have some book loving friends and relatives on their list. Be sure to check it out!

I’ve been dabbling in #Poemtober this month. It’s a challenge to use the daily word prompts from “Inktober” to inspire poems. Much to my dismay, many, if not most, of my efforts have been invaded by the political climate and my disgust for our current president. I feel like I need a brain rinse. Sigh…

Day 3: Bulky

Growing weight of worries
a bulky woolen sweater
itching at my skin

©Molly Hogan

Day 6: Rodent

King Rodent
hosts scores of feasting fleas.
Nourished by his dark blood,
they scuttle off
to spread his plague
throughout the land.

©Molly Hogan

Day 7: Fancy

With his fancy resorts
and fancy casinos,
he fancies he can have
whatever he wants,
do whatever he wants,
say whatever he wants.

He’s grounded in greed
mucked deep in the mire
of his own malignancy
with his fancy sycophants
dancing attendance.

I do not fancy him.

©Molly Hogan

Day 9: Throw (inspired by Linda Mitchell’s “Untitled Duplex” and the line, “Poets throw lines to clear the wreck”)

Throw me a line
a perfect image
or refrain
a lifeline of verse
to pull me
from the treacherous waters
of this new reality

©Molly Hogan
(inspired by Linda Mitchell’s “Untitled Duplex” and the line, “Poets throw lines to clear the wreck”)

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Janice Scully at her blog, Salt City Verse. She’s sharing a wonderful quote from Thomas Carlyle, autumnal celebrations, and a heartfelt poem about stopping time and holding on to a lovely moment.

Here’s a recent lovely moment of my own–its own form of brain rinse:

The first time I encountered a duplex was in an Ethical ELA challenge back in May. They linked to a Poetry Foundation post that described the process of writing a duplex as: “Write a ghazal that is also a sonnet that is also a blues poem of 14 lines.” What?! I immediately cried “Uncle.”

Then, this month Margaret Simon suggested that for our monthly challenge we should write duplex poems. I maybe groaned out loud. I was decidedly daunted. But now, I had to at least try.

So, I puzzled out the basics. Seven couplets, each with 9-11 syllables was doable. I could also echo my initial line in my final line. But then there’s an expectation that the meaning or impression shifts from certain lines to others. (If you’re interested in the specifics of that, you can go here.) I’ll admit that that was the part I was still fiddling with when the deadline arrived.

The Tectonics of Grief

Grief–a seismic change, colossal shift
familiar landscape ever altered.

Altered landscape becomes familiar.
Under my feet, fractured terrain settles. 

I settle for this fractured terrain with
slivers of  beauty ‘midst ravaged crevasses.

Ravaged crevasses etched in my reflection–
a puzzle of tracks and foundational cracks. 

I puzzle over cracks and artifacts,
looking for edges, connecting jagged pieces.

Pieces connect unexpectedly. I edge
forward, stumble with aftershocks,

recreating my past, stumbling forward until…
grief–a seismic change, colossal shift.

©Molly Hogan

This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Tabatha Yeatts at her blog, The Opposite of Indifference. She’s sharing a wonderful interview with Carole Boston Weatherford about her new YA novel in verse about Marilyn Monroe, entitled “Beauty Mark.” What an enticing sneak peek!

To see what the other Swaggers did with this duplex challenge, check out their sites:
Heidi Mordhorst at My Juicy Little Universe
Margaret Simon at Reflections on the Teche
Linda Mitchell at A Word Edgewise
Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core

(Note:I’m unable to figure out to how to format the duplex with the new wordpress editor–Please use your imagination and pretend the 2nd, 4th, and 6th stanzas are indented!)

Late in May I read a post from April Halprin Wayland describing a new form of poems she’d been writing. She called them “In One Word” poems. There was a puzzle-y aspect to the form (think Word Scramble) that immediately appealed to me. April’s linked post outlines her step-by-step description of the process, but essentially, to write an “In One Word” poem, you

• choose a word
• list words that you find within that word
• choose words from that list
• write a poem in which each line ends with one of those words

Easy, right?

Not quite. I immediately began fiddling around with the form in my notebook. Initially, I got stuck on step one: Choose a word. It was hard! I wanted to choose the perfect word. But what was that? Did I want a word that annoyed me or one that was personally meaningful or one that held surprising words within it? Then, though I can word scramble with the best of them, constructing a meaningful poem from the resulting words added yet another layer of difficulty. Eventually, I put the form to the side for a while.

When I was faced with writing a Summer Poetry Swap poem in August for the mighty Tabatha Yeatts, I turned to this form again. This time the one word choice was easy: Imperfect

Within Imperfect

If you forever seek perfect,
you may instead discover a recipe
for dissatisfaction–a price
too high to remit.

But within imperfect is a permit
to take risks, light a fire
of creativity, to be bold and fierce.

When you embrace imperfect,
you set yourself free.

©Molly Hogan

Then, this month Catherine Flynn suggested writing an “In One Word” poem for our challenge. Sharing the poem I wrote for Tabatha felt a bit like cheating, so I fiddled a bit more. Ultimately I decided to work with the word “gardens”, as mine have been such a source of comfort for me this summer.

Within my garden

A spider darns,
repairs its web, an intricate snare
for unwitting victims who dare
to cross the sea
of leaves and blossoms, to rend
those delicate threads, drag
them with feet and wings, and end
web-caught amidst the fragrant sage
bordering the garden.

©Molly Hogan

Hmmmm…..Sometimes a poem moves in a different direction than you anticipate. So much for solace in the garden!

To see other “In One Word” poems, check out these blogs:
Linda Mitchell
Catherine Flynn
Margaret Simon
Heidi Mordhorst

This week Carol Varsalona is hosting the Roundup at her blog, Beyond Literacy Link. Carol is a tireless poetry ambassador and nature enthusiast who, among other things, creates fabulous virtual seasonal galleries of photographs and poetry to share. She’s unveiling her Embraceable Summer Gallery with a few sensational highlights in her post and a link to the full gallery. Make sure to stop by and check it out!