This week has been a doozy. I’m chiming in with a little poem in praise of Autumn, and with thanks to Georgia Heard‘s October prompt calendar for inspiration.
Autumn
If I chose words
to hang
upon an autumn tree
I’d write
dazzle
tremble
release and
flutterfall
and be thankful
for them all
©Molly Hogan
This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Linda Baie at her blog, Teacher Dance.
This month Margaret posed our Inklings challenge. She matched us up with partners and instructed us to send images to each other and write a poem sparked by the image we received. Catherine Flynn was my partner and she sent me three photos to choose between. I struggled to chose which picture to use, but kept coming back to this one:
Hope
is a cluster of eggs
nestled together.
Exquisite promise
cradled
in the terrifying fragility
of three thin shells.
©Molly Hogan
If you’d like to see what others in the group did with their photo prompts, click on the links below:
Linda @A Word Edgewise
Catherine @Reading to the Core
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Heidi @my juicy little universe
This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Matt Forrest Esenwine at his blog, Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme.
These days, as our country mutates into something foul and ignoble, I turn to Nature again and again to find solace. Sometimes I feel almost desperate in my search for a peaceful distraction. It reminds me of the fledglings I see at our feeders in the spring, fluttering their wings insistently in a drumbeat of demand. “Feed me! Feed me!” they insist, over and over again, as the adult birds patiently tend to them. Somedays, I feel like I owe Mother Nature a big apology for my ongoing neediness. She definitely has my gratitude.
These days, I’ve also been rereading Wendell Berry’s well-known “The Peace of Wild Things.” It’s a poem I’ve turned to again and again over the years. It begins
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things…
I’m so grateful to live in a place where I’m surrounded by beauty. I’m so grateful to be a part of supportive communities.
This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Rose Cappelli at her blog, Imagine the Possibilities. This community is another place where you can find solace.
This month it was my turn to set the Inklings challenge. I suggested that we “write a love note to something or someone or some place.” I shared José A. Alcántara’s Love Note to Silence as a possible mentor, or alternatively, I suggested riffing off of one of Georgia Heard’s June Small Letters calendar prompts.
I recently encountered Alcántara’s poem in an on-line class. The first two stanzas establish the relationship between the poet and silence. Here are the last two stanzas:
But listening to you is like the shore listening to the ocean.
I’m swept clean of my detritus, my rotting organic matter,
everything tossed there by the rude and the ugly.
Here, let me grab my pen and notebook, my binoculars. Let me slip
on my coat and shoes. The sandhill cranes are passing overhead.
Let’s go to the fields at the edge of town and make some noise.
You can read the whole poem ( here).*
Inspired by Alcántara, I considered writing love notes to all sorts of things: paper, grief (really!), the great blue heron, the marsh, hummingbirds, the clock, etc. But I kept coming back to… of all things…chipmunks! They just make me happy. So I went with that.
Love note to a chipmunk
Oh, chipmunk, you harbinger of spring!
You’re the racing car of rodents,
sleek and striped,
you scamper and scurry
all rush and hurry as you zip
and zoom across and through
the tangled garden green
or dash into cracks and crevices
or scurry up a tree.
You pop up here and
there
and then appear
in yet another spot.
Always go, go, going!
Until you’re not.
Then you sit in one space
with your nuts or fruit or seeds
and your clever hands proceed
to stuff your face bit by bit by bit
until your cheeks are full–
stretched beyond belief.
You adorable greedy rascal!
You’re my dependable comic relief!
How can I not love you?
Your acrobatic antics never cease
to amuse.
Such sassy spunk and acts
of derring-do.
Ah, chipmunk,
you have a gift for lightness
amidst your serious pursuits.
An intrepid explorer,
you’re bold and brave,
finding sustenance and sweetness
in every day.
Now that summer’s fading fast away,
you’ll soon depart
to hibernate beneath the snow,
all snug in some cozy cave or den,
idling your engine
until you can brave
the first chilly days of spring.
Then once again, you’ll fling yourself
into life with impressive gusto.
Oh, sweet chipmunk,
I’ll be waiting for you.
©Molly Hogan, draft
And now here’s a little cuteness overload for you from around my home:
As a bonus, I have to include a couple of photos from David Bird, an amazing photographer who has photographed wildlife, including chipmunks, with his own created “Becorns”.
If you’re interested in seeing what the other Inklings did with this prompt, please check on the links below:
Linda @A Word Edgewise
Catherine @Reading to the Core
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Heidi @my juicy little universe
Mary Lee is busy gallivanting around the globe this week.
This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Margaret Simon at her blog, Reflections on the Teche, where she shares her own love note.
*Please note that there’s a typo in that on line version, but I can’t find it anywhere else. It should read “sandhill cranes” in the fourth stanza, NOT “handheld cranes”!
We always look forward to the hummingbirds’ arrival in the spring. Some years they arrive, and then are scarcely seen as summer commences and flowers bloom, offering plenty of food in the wild. This year they have been present all summer, feeding from our feeder and garden blossoms. I usually have at least two or three of them whizzing about the garden, chittering and darting. Sometimes they show off their undulating “U” dance, which is always a delight. They also frequently perch in our birch tree, on our weather stick, or amidst the wisteria vines. I never tire of watching them and am always fascinated by how their colors change depending on the light. They are truly a gift of the season.
hummingbird
with her needle beak
and darting flight
summer seamstress
stitches together
all the sweetness
of the season
©Molly Hogan
This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Heidi Mordhorst at her blog, My Juicy Little Universe. Be sure to stop by and sip up some poetry!
Welcome! I’m delighted to be hosting the Poetry Friday Roundup this week!
After a few years of exciting travel and busy summers, and a hectic start to this one, I’m now enjoying a slow-flowing summer. I’m embracing and embodying words like putter, meander, wander, roam. I’ve done more than my fair share of digressing and side-tracking. And then there’s that delightful French verb, flâner, which means, essentially, to wander about with an engaged and inquisitive eye, but no destination in mind. I like to think of it as being open to everything, but with no agenda. Now, that’s a summer plan!
One of my favorite things to do this summer has been to follow the pollinators around my gardens and take pictures. It’s made for a lovely pace.
As the calendar flipped to August this week, I started thinking even more about pace. I confess, I have a propensity to hurry and rush. Too often I let the pace rev up to frantic, especially once the school year starts. I’m not sure how to stop this from happening (yet!). As I’ve been thinking about all the impending rush and scurry, this poem has been in my mind.
Hurry
by Marie Howe
We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store
and the gas station and the green market and
Hurry up honey, I say, hurry,
as she runs along two or three steps behind me
her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down.
Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave?
To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown?
(To read the the remainder of the poem, click here.)
Those first two lines of the second stanza are playing on repeat in my mind: “Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave?/ To mine?”
So, I’m deliberately pushing pause while I can. Avoiding making too many plans. Cancelling or reorganizing them when I realize I have done so. I’ve taken more and longer naps this summer than I have in my entire life, and I’ll try to tuck in a few more. (The hammock and I have become good friends.) These days, when I think of running errands, I’m pausing to ask myself, “Do I want to do this right now? Do I need to do this right now?” More often than not, the answer to both of those question is: I don’t. It can wait.
Today as I lay in the hammock, I hear the bees buzzing about the hosta blossoms. I hear their sound ebb and flow, muffled by petals as they enter each soft chamber. My eyes trace the undulating path of a swallowtail butterfly. A pileated woodpecker swoops directly overhead to land momentarily on an adjacent tree. I watch it move up and down, hear it’s beak thunk into the trunk of wood, see it’s wings unfold as it flies away and listen to its ululating cry. I watch the shadows shape shift in the leafy canopy. I close my eyes and try to imprint the moment.
Summer is ending… but it has not yet ended.
Summer Mantra
May I be present in moment’s glow,
resist directing its ebb and flow,
relax into the day’s embrace,
let buzzing bees decide my pace.
May my eyes drift with monarch’s flight
and revel in day’s changing light.
May I gauge time by shadow’s reach
or tidal rhythms at the beach.
While clocks and phones sit idly by,
may I unwind with heartfelt sigh,
and coalesce with present space.
The gift of now can’t be replaced.
©Molly Hogan
And now I find myself humming this song…
“Let the morningtime drop all its petals on me….” Ahhhhhh…
Wishing you a wonderful late summer and sweet, smooth, flowing days. Please add your link below to join this week’s Roundup.
You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!Click here to enter
This month Catherine set the challenge for our group. Inspired by Irene Latham’s recent post, she asked us to try a triptych. I did a little research to make sure I fully understood the form. Apparently, there’s room for some interpretation 🙂 According to AI, “A triptych poem is a poetic form consisting of three distinct, yet related, sections or stanzas. It’s inspired by the visual art form of a triptych, which is a painting or sculpture made up of three panels, often hinged together. In poetry, the three parts of a triptych can explore different facets of a theme, tell a story in three stages, or offer contrasting perspectives on a subject.”
Another site I found offered additional, more complex, options, stating:
“There are two types of Triptych poetry forms:
A poem consisting of three poems of equal length displayed side-by-side, like the panels of a triptych painting. Not only do the poems work together thematically, like the painting, they actually form a fourth poem. The fourth poem is read horizontally across the three poems. This fourth poem completes the theme of the Triptych.
A poem of three stanzas. The first stanza comments on the past, the second comments on the present, and the third comments on the future. The second stanza is twice as long as the first and third.”
I fooled around with all of these, lingering with the side-by-side format for a long time, enjoying the appeal of a visual triptych and the lure of a fourth poem to complete the trio. Eventually, I put that aside to work on again at another time. It was tough! The deadline was looming and I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do! But once again, I’m grateful for the birds. After looking out my window yesterday morning, I put everything aside and wrote this:
I
the birch tree stands
dappled in sun and shade
one graceful branch arcs low
a living artifact
of the weight
of winter snow
II
blue jays gather and perch
a cluster of fledglings
all flutter and clatter
and gawking beaks
a constant, raucous clamor
of bold and boisterous demand
III
sudden lift and exclamation
jays erupt skyward
in an exhalation of blue
and silence descends
as softly as a falling feather
alighting on the curve
of the empty branch
©Molly Hogan
If you’d like to see what the other Inklings did with this challenge, click on the links below:
Linda @A Word Edgewise
Catherine @Reading to the Core
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Heidi @my juicy little universe
This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Jane Whittingham at her blog, raincitylibrarian. If the summer heat has you down, click the link and spend some time chilling with some poetry!
I thought my summer hadn’t fallen into any sort of rhythm yet. Then, I realized that it’s actually been an unexpected rhythm, mostly consisting of a sedentary pattern of sleeping, eating and drinking, reading, napping. Rinse. Repeat. Other than the reading, I’m apparently emulating a newborn!
As the days of July are now more than half over, I’m considering how I want to shape the rest of my summer. Adding a bit more writing and creating to my days is high on the list. I haven’t participated in Poetry Friday in quite some time, and have really missed the community. Today, I’m chiming in with a late-to-the-party nonet.
Visiting my in-laws in Nashville
wondering where the years have gone
days spiced with laughter and tears
time passes so quickly
inevitably
departure looms
cherish each
fleeting
now
©Molly Hogan
This week the marvelous Jan Annino is hosting the Poetry Friday Round Up at her blog, Bookseedstudio.
Once again I want to send a huge thank you to Mary Lee for stepping in with little notice when I had to withdraw from my PF hostess duties two weeks ago. It sounds like word got around, and everyone managed to find their way to the correct site. Poets are so smart! 🙂
Unfortunately, I do have a good excuse for my unexpected absence, as I was unexpectedly sidelined by an emergency eye surgery. (I wrote a little bit about it in this week’s Slice of Life.) This meant, in addition to missing more than a week of work, I missed the opportunity to participate in the Inklings challenge from Linda Mitchell on that date as well. Now that I’m on a path to recovery (and able to read again!), I’m sharing my response.
First, a little context: Linda invited us to explore Whitney Hanson’s poetry. Hanson shares her work on TikTok and is known for sharing poems that “begin with, “in poetry we say…” In these poems, Hanson takes a common phrase we know in English and translates it poetically.” Linda went on to say, “I see an invitation to write in a few ways:
I chose door number two. As someone who is perpetually title-challenged, I’ll admit the fact that the structure of the poem essentially provides its own title is a huge plus to me. Unfortunately, now I’m not sure how to write a dedication line when there is no title. There’s definitely some irony there! Anyway, here’s my better-late-than-never response, written for my husband.
In English we say
you were there
In poetry we say
when all seems dark
it’s you I seek
your voice like a lifeline
at the other end of the phone
your hand an anchor
in the swirling storm
©Molly Hogan
If you’re interested in reading what the other Inklings did with this challenge, click below!
Mary Lee Hahn @ Another Year of Reading
Heidi @my juicy little universe
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Linda @A Word Edgewise
Catherine @Reading to the Core
This week Ramona has the PF Roundup at her blog.
I went off script with a double dactyl prompt today and veered into politics. Sadly, it’s never far from mind. Happily, double dactyls are a fun challenge. (If you’re interested in learning about the parameters of the form, you can click here.)
Vomitous gromitous
President Donald Trump
thrives on autocracy,
bombast and lies.
Resist, Americans!
He is the ultimate
anticoagulant–
bleeding us dry!
©Molly Hogan
This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Heidi Mordhorst at her blog, My Juicy Little Universe. In addition to hosting, she’ll be adding her line to this year’s Progressive Poem.
Nix the comfort zone 