Today’s poem is a haiku. A three line Japanese poem with a syllable pattern of 5-7-5.
Grandchildren are gifts
Family is a blessing
Today was pure love
Easter Blessings
Poetry
Unexpected Kindness
During the month of April, I have challenged myself to write a poem each day as a way to participate in National Poetry Month. Today’s poem is a TANKA. Tanka poetry refers to a Japanese 31-syllable poem, traditionally written as a single, unbroken line. The word “tanka” translates to “short song.” Here is my version.
Kind acts are alive
Shopping at the Dollar Store
Someone held the door
Conversations in aisles
A car stopped to let me cross.
Some days gettting around is not as easy as others, and those small acts of kindness really mean a lot. Not only did a young woman hold the door for me, she was was like a perky store greeter asking me how I was. A couple of people in the store struck up short conversations about items they were looking at. Even with masks and social distancing, and people searching for last minute items, there was kindness. It was a cane day for me, so heading back to my car I stood on the sidewalk waiting for a good time to cross over to my parking spot when a driver in an SUV stopped and let me cross and didn’t creep up as I was crossing. I felt unhurried, and that was another kind act that made a difference in my day. It was certainly a reminder to be kind: it isn’t that hard and could change a person’s day.
Where is Home?
A house is made with walls and beams; a home is made with love and dreams.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Where is home?
Home is where you are, my love.
Where our kids and grandkids gather
To laugh and play and eat
Where we worry and
make decisions – easy and hard
Where you listen to how my day was
and I listen to yours.
Where we lift each other up
and support each other’s dreams
Where we compare our aches and pains
and fall asleep watching TV
Home is where I long to be
whenever I am away from you
To celebrate National Poetry Month, I have challenged myself to write a poem each day for the month of April. My plan is to write using the theme “small moments,” but I will honor wherever my writing takes me. The writing is really in the driver’s sear.
Baseball Memories
Today is one of my favorite days of the year – Opening Day! I learned the game of baseball by watching my dad coach my brothers’ Little League teams during a time when girls were not permitted to play organized sports. After the games, there would be talk about the games, and I listened. I was proud to know the rules of the game, the positions, and the plays. Those baseball memories started a love affair with baseball that continues today.
The crack
of the bat
brings me back
to the flagstone patio,
where we listened
to Phillies’ home games
on the transistor radio
broadcasted from
Connie Mack Stadium.
Richie Ashburn,
Byron Saam,
Harry Kalas,
their voices
were the voices
of a simpler time.
So many of my fondest memories are wrapped up in the sights and sounds of baseball. BASEBALL = LOVE
PLAY BALL!
Elegy for the World, Opus 19
Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife.
Kahlil Gibran
Our world has come to an awkward cadence.
Poco a poco an invisible virtuoso has taken hold.
We are sheltering a-cappella – one or two or a family
without our daily accompaniments.
We long for a melody in this new atonal reality
with its ostinato of rising cases and death tolls.
The daily recitative of politicians and medical professionals
has become an eerie refrain to a mournful dirge.
We lament in unison for those whose requiems are postponed
and hope for an accelerando in recoveries of the stricken.
This poem was inspired by a prompt by Stacey L. Joy on ethicalela.com. They are posting a prompt each day for the month of April in celebration of National Poetry Month. The challenge was to use musical terms in a poem.
Not Opening Today
Day 26/31
Baseball was, is, and always will be to me the best game in the world.
Babe Ruth
It usually one of my favorite days of the year, but today I am lamenting the postponement of Opening Day of Major League Baseball. My slice is an homage to “Casey at the Bat” with one little “borrowed” line.
The outlook isn’t brilliant for the Phllies nine today.
The players had to all stay home; no baseball could they play.
First basketball, then hockey stopped, now baseball’s done the same.
A sickly silence fell upon the lovers of the game.
No Joe Girardi, Bryce, or Rhys, no “Jetpack” Kingery
No cracking bats, no slapping gloves, no baseball game to see.
Citizen’s Bank Park is shuttered and now a testing site
For the nasty coronavirus that’s changing everything in its sight.
Opening Day will have to wait till later on this year.
A few more weeks or maybe months before we get to cheer.
But oh the cheers will be so loud on that terrific day
Cause that’s the day that we will know corona’s gone away.
So missing baseball is just a minor inconvenience in the scope of what is going on in the US and around the world right now, but it is definitely one of my favorite outlets. It always reminds me of when I was young and the Phillies home games were not televised (yes I know I am old). We would listen to the play-by-play on the radio and cheer as if we were at Connie Mack Stadium or early on at Veterans’ Stadium. Those were idyllic days.
I long for those days even more as we make our way through these uncharted waters, but I am hopeful that it won’ be long before I am hearing those two simple words – “Play ball.”
Stay well.
Perenial Hope
Day 21/31
Where flowers bloom so does hope.
Lady Bird Johnson
Today I worked from my second purchase of the week, How to Draw Almost Everything by Chika Miyata. I choose to try my hand at drawing some flowers. Some turned out looking like the examples in the book – some not so much.
I choose to start with flowers in honor of Spring. Seeing people post pictures of the flowers popping up in their gardens was my inspiration. Spring is a time of new life; the trees budding and flowers blooming bring splashes of color to the brown canvas of winter. My sketches inspired this poem.
Perenial Hope
Flowers push their way up
from under the once hard winter ground
stretching towards the sun.
No matter how cruel the winter weather,
even if some snow remains,
flowers make their appearance.
Signs of new life cyclically bloom
to remind us to reach up
and search for the light.
When life casts shade on your plans
look to the flourishing flowers
as a guide to enduring hope.
I wish you enduring hope. Stay well.
Headache
Day 16/31
Today’s post is inspired by the five day poetry writing challenge on ethicalela.com. It is based on the the poem, “A Palestine Might Say” by Naomi Shihab Nye. (If you haven’t read it, you should.)
A Headache Might Say
What?
You know I like to arrive
just before a rainstorm,
so you know to bring
your umbrella.
What?
I am the not so gentle reminder
that you really shouldn’t clench
your teeth so much.
What?
You know if you just turn off
the continuous newscasts,
I may just go away for awhile.
What?
Can’t you get the hint?
When you worry, you scrunch up
your forehead. That’s your fault,
Not mine!
Yes.
You know what I like –
A cup of tea,
A warm compress,
A tip back in the recliner.
If you treat yourself right,
I may just disappear.
New Year Reflection
“Write it on your heart
that every day is the best day in the year.
He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day
who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.
Finish every day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in.
Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day;
begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit
to be cumbered with your old nonsense.
This new day is too dear,
with its hopes and invitations,
to waste a moment on the yesterdays.”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
On New Year’s Day I joined a group #100daysofnotebooking. It is a group of writers who have agreed to take on the challenge set forth by Middle School teacher, Michelle Haseltine (@Mhaseltine – michellehaseltine.com) – to write in our notebooks for 100 days straight. It is a daunting task, but I am giving it a try. The poem below grew out of my first day of “notebooking.” Then today the quote by Emerson appeared in my Facebook feed, so I decided it was a sign I need to share my poem in progress.
New Year’s Day
Today, I make no resolution,
No intention, no pledge no plan.
When looking back what I have learned is
I can only do the best I can.
No “one little word” will define me;
Petty games I choose not to play.
Can’t promise that I will eat better,
or vow to exercise every day.
When I need to rest I will do so.
I won’t be afraid to say, “No.”
People who know me will understand.
People who don’t – well they can go.
I will listen to my body more –
from head to heart down to my soul.
No expectations will shackle me
Being my best self my only goal.
I have found that I cannot be resolute for an entire year. In the past, making resolutions has only served to set me up for failure. I would choose my “one little word” and realize that I needed to change it periodically through the year. I may not be able to be resolute for an entire year, but I can be resolute for a day. Hopefully, one day will become two, then three, then a week, then a month. I can only do the best I can, and that is enough!
Kindness
I am participating in the November: 5/5-Day Monthly Writing Challenge. The challenge is to write a poem every day for five days. This is my first poem on the what is the last day, but never too late to write! The poem below is a Nonet. It has nine lines. The first line has nine syllables with each subsequent line decreasing by one syllable. How will were you kind today? What about tomorrow?
World Kindness Day should be ev’ryday,
not something we have to be told.
We are made of the same flesh
whether we’re young or old.
A small gesture can
go a long way.
Costs nothing
to be
kind.
Rita DiCarne 