a heart melts
Early January, a mix of cold and snow, rain and clouds, muffled grey days with moments of piercing sun rays, glimpses of blue sky, frosted windows, feathery ice patterns, coffee and scotch, heated blankets and movies, family games of Dominoes and Sorry, hitting snooze, dealing with damp laundry, and more.
Icy, wintry roads have meant less cycling for me, which in turn has meant having less access to that creative space I slip into when I get on a bike, an action that keeps my body busy and allows my mind to just wander, observe, and make connections.
To make up for this, I’ve been focusing on finding images that capture my attention, writing them down, and then playing with them to see if I can’t somehow shake a poem out of them, or at times hammer them into the shape of a poem—a frosted window with fingerprints left on it, the frost in the corner of it wiped away so that someone could see outside, a young woman carrying a broken umbrella, ragged palm trees, their fronds bent down and looking out of place with a coating of snow on them, etc.
It's felt like a challenging week of writing for me, but here we are on Monday again, and it’s time to share what I’ve produced.
the palm trees look
covered in snow
holds all the broken pieces
together
on a frosted windowpane
a heart melts
shaken to the ground, the stars
remain the same
if only you were a broom
and I were a witch
it slaps and bites
but smells so good
bouncing around the room—ahh …
this is how cats feel
Great poem! Monday already for you, I've got a few hours of Sunday left. I liked the broom and the witch! That was good. And how cats feel at the end, really cool!
How are things bouncing back from the quake?
!BBH
@boxcarblue! Your Content Is Awesome so I just sent 1 $BBH (Bitcoin Backed Hive) to your account on behalf of @thebighigg. (1/50)
Hearing some pretty sad stories on the news about issues that come up when people have to live in evacuation centers: stories of sexual assault, stories of people with babies and young children who feel pressured to leave because they can’t control the crying of their children and then can’t get their operations of rationed food and supplies after they have left, etc.
It’s got to be very hard on the people living in the heavily affected areas.
Beautiful 🔥
Beautiful 💥
Beautiful ❤️
Oh... did I mention that this is Beautiful, BTW?
The words. As always. But that bicycle photo? That too!
Funny, I didn’t think anyone would like the bicycle photo, but I did, do uploaded it anyway. 🤣
:) I happen to love bicycles!
Best way to travel, really
...so you could fly over this endless horizon
Very impressive vastness in the last photo!!
Yes, fly up and out of the rain to a point where the horizon opens like in that photo. I got to work thirty minutes early that day and didn’t know what to do when suddenly I remembered that the building across the street had a great observation deck that I hadn’t been to in a year or more. So I had a coffee up there and got that picture.
Ooh that's a great place to have a morning coffee indeed! Especially in the morning, it's nice to just see a lot of sky and far away, I find. Kind of opens the thoughts or creativity for the day:)
...so you could fly over this endless horizon
Very impressive vastness in the last photo!!
I've heard that some people don't look forward to winter with excitement and I understand better now. Hehe. It's warm in my country and we sometimes wish for it to be cold! I'm glad you've found another way to tap into your creativity.
Lovely haikus! I sense a melancholy touch from the first one and gradually the mood lifts and ends on a delightful note, capturing a playful scene between sunlight and cats. Beautifully written. !LUV 🙂
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Actually, winter is my favorite season. I love the cold and the snow, and even it’s melancholy, but not having the cycling time has made writing challenging. People often say that creativity is fostered by having a routine dedicated to taking the time to create. I didn’t think I had a routine, but now I see that riding to and from work had become my creative routine. Somehow, it created the perfect conditions for me to slip into a creative space.
The good thing about simplicity is that it can tell us a lot with few words, a good example would be number three, where there can be a long story where you can appreciate a drama. In general I think it is a good job. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for commenting. I’m really happy with number 3; not just because I like the poem, but because of the process it took me to get from the idea and the inspiration of that poem to the final product.
I think #4 is my favorite here, though I also particularly like #3 and #7 too.
In #4, the juxtaposition of dualities (ground/sky, temporal/eternal) is the most distinct of the 7 haiku here. The way you bring the two spatial points together in the middle line (the ground, the sky), heightens or emphasizes the contrast, or makes it really stark. At the same time, breaking the tradition of 'cutting' at the end of the line in haiku and instead placing the division inside the line, bringing the two together, shows that the two are One. Very Zen. ... I like how the word 'near' adds near/far to the dualities lined up on either side of the comma in the poem. It functions to tells us where the speaker is in relation to the fallen home, but you could also have just said 'at' (doesn't sound as good, that's also true), and contrasts with the distant stars. ... The word 'shaken' is another great choice, I think, because it eludes to the awe-struck feeling a mortal can have in the face of eternity. ... I'm not sure about the word 'fallen', because it brings the idea of falling stars, and if you read the middle line as a standalone unit of meaning, it says the stars were shaken to the ground. Which suggests to me that my interpretation is way off and there might be something deeper going on here. Or perhaps you meant the cutting word to be 'stars', the division between temporal/eternal to really be at the end of the line.
In #3, I like the literal/figurative double meaning in the last line. I can also personally relate to it, since I have a window that has gone unwashed since this summer because a loved one left a fingerprint heart and lip prints on it. :)
And in #7, it is amazing how much the utterance 'ahh' conveys! It is both an epiphany and an expression of contentment and relaxation; it tells us exactly what the speaker is doing, lounging in the sun. So fascinating that this information is only shared in those three letters.
Good stuff!
You commented on the three poems here that I struggled the most to compose. With all three, I found myself captivated by either an image I had seen or a feeling that I had felt, but was unable to plainly squeeze into a poem as is, so I had to create partially fictional scenes to work with.
I hadn’t given the word fallen in poem 3 much thought, but after reading your comment I see that I could have used ruined, broken, or collapsed. I think I still like the word fallen, though. A fallen home could be one that fell down, or a family that has fallen from grace, both of which have interesting connections to the word star.
Typically, I try to avoid using punctuation in these short poems, but with poems 3 and 7 I couldn’t find anyway to write them without it.
I thought cutting the second line of poem 3 with a comma like that created an interesting effect. It was kind of a happy accident.
The poem was inspired by the recent earthquake in Japan, and the experiences I had in Sendai in 2011, during that quake and all of its destruction. Even during times of crisis, you can stand outside at night, look at the stars, and be struck by their beauty, clarity, indifference, etc. And often, because big disasters create blackouts, they appear nearer than usual.
But imagining the stars on the ground next to you, or yourself walking in a field of stars, just like spending time with celebrity stars, they’re still the same, and the last line sort of refers to the stars, but it also playfully acts as a reminder to continue being who you are, no matter the crisis or the company.
Hello! Here we are melting, but with heat. As always, your poems are of a great quality. I am left with the reflection about the weight of things. There is great depth in just three lines. I was left thinking about them for a long time. Greetings!
!PIMP
You must be killin' it out here!
@agreste just slapped you with 1.000 PIMP, @boxcarblue.
You earned 1.000 PIMP for the strong hand.
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I’m glad to hear that they’ve made an impact on you. Thank you for commenting!
We had a cold spell here too for a day or three. Thankfully that is receding and we are getting back to our mid-50sF days and 30F nights.
I just spoke to my mom in Florida and she said they are getting frost warnings at night. I imagine that could mean cold weather for Virginia too. Where I am, it’s up and down and up and down, but never much colder than 30 degrees temperature-wise. The wind and damp is another story, though.