Canada goose glides,
scattering magic thoughts
soaring into spring
Copyright 2014 Brenda Davis Harsham
Monthly Archives: April 2014
Full Bloom Tanka
crocus embracing,
offering nectar to bees
tickling, tiny feet
petals dancing with laughter
honey blossoms with flavor
Copyright 2014 Brenda Davis Harsham
Note: Tanka is defined in Oak Leak Tanka. Please feel free to add your haiku or tanka here, if you are moved to join in. 🙂 In the past, Japanese poets would alternative haiku (3 lines, 5/7/5 syllables) with two 7/7 lines, playing off each other’s work. It’s fun, if you want to try.
To Accept Awards or Not To Accept, That is the Question
People ask, what are blog awards and should I accept or not? Blog awards are acknowledgements given blogger to blogger, and all you have to do to accept is drag the award icon into your own post and respond with appreciation to the nominator. That’s a minimum bar, anyway, you can google to get more specific on “rules.”
But should you accept? I have seen reasonable arguments on both sides. The abstainers tend to consider blog awards a distraction from writing, too time consuming or believe them to be a fiction designed for search engine optimization (SEO).
Butterfly Moment Haibun
A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.
— Franz Kafka
One of the hardest realizations after college was how ordinary my days had become. The same routine, seeing the same places, meeting the same people, day after day. Occasionally, would come a butterfly moment, when ordinary transformed into extraordinary, and my inner spark could shine.
root-bound foliage
spider plant babies waterfall
glow with health
write joyfully
creating thought collage
redolent with youth
Years later, I am locked into a similar repeating pattern, day after day, mostly domestic: cooking, cleaning, overseeing homework, laundry, ad infinitum. Writing keeps me sane, and permits the daily grind to be grist for a deeper calling. Because I must write, I find 15 minutes here and there to create. Continue reading
Spirit Roams Haiku
nature fights fences
water breaks stone, mountains fall
free spirits roam
Copyright 2014 Brenda Davis Harsham
Inspired by the Carpe Diem Haiku Kai #441, ghost-written by Managua Gunn,
in honor of International Romany Day, April 8, a holiday of which I was previously unaware.
Follow the link if you want to hear more about the Roma or the holiday.
A Walk to the Lake Haibun
Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.
– Thích Nhất Hạnh
I walked today, despite my recent recovery from norovirus and a week of not eating properly. I started off slowly, stretching sluggish muscles. My feet curved into the familiar rhythm, welcoming the soft, spongy aqueduct pathways. I headed for the lake side, wanting sunlight glinting strongly into my eyes after a winter of weak, gray light. I passed many gardens, my eyes yearning for color, a contrast to brown and gray.
seed pods straining, listening for the song of the wind
The wind did not disappoint, but sang of ocean waves. Seabirds called distantly, crows nearer. Robins quarreled over grasses. A cardinal flashed by, a scarlet blur. The air warmed to the sixties and finally snow seems truly gone. Was it icy only a few weeks ago? The sunlight made me feel alive, inside and out, and I turned upward, smile opening wide. Neither did the gardens disappoint, providing color in miniature.
saffron crocus
sunlight reincarnated
honey sweet scent
The yellow crocuses stopped me cold, so startled to see gold strewn on the ground, riches to my starved eyes. Most plants were still dormant, buds still tightly furled. Only the crocuses had thrown open the treasure box, spilling nature’s jewels. Words seem pitiful in comparison.
tiny crocus trio
blossoms dancing on breezes
music to my soul
Copyright 2014 Brenda Davis Harsham
Dovetailed deliciously with the Ligo Haibun Challenge, Quote Week.
Also includes a new form of poem, a monoku, that I cannot tell apart from the American Sentence Haiku.
Life Amongst the Fairies – a children’s story poem
Here is a magical poem about fairies and humans from Pooky’s Poems. Hope you have a great week ahead! Warmly, Brenda
Long ago and far away,
There lived a girl who loved to play,
With fairy folk and pixies too,
There wasn’t a lot else to do.
She had no mum and dad you see,
They’d gone away when she was three,
And left her with the fairy folk,
And as they left the High Queen spoke:
Treat this child as our own,
She ordered from her queenly throne.
Dress her, wash her, see she’s fed.
And gather leaves and make a bed.
She must be loved and tended to,
Her parents put their trust in you.
View original post 386 more words
Fae Flash Fiction: Banga
Banga was looking for a place to hide. The Boggle, Fandang, had surprised him and his baby sister splashing in Trickle Brook. His sister, Ruby, had hid in the lee of a granite boulder. Banga darted below the waves in his fish shape, drawing the Boggle away from his sister, and the much bigger Boggle almost caught him in his fingers, which were like a tangled net.
Banga flipped up onto shore, and then changed in a flash to his elven shape. He ran as fast as he could toward the trees. The Boggle’s hairy feet thumped behind him, accompanied by the bing bang whack of his thick Boggle stick. A nearby sycamore looked young, but maybe old enough to be a bit hollow. Fandang was close behind him, and Banga could smell his hot, sour breath. The sycamore’s camouflage bark might confuse Fandang’s bad Boggle eyesight. Banga swarmed up it.
Sure enough, Banga found a hollow, in the crook of the thickest branch. No leaves had broken from their buds yet to provide cover. He hid in the dark nook, holding his breath. He heard Fandang stomping around in last fall’s leaves. Boggles like to catch Dolphinis, but Banga was practiced at getting away. Dolphinis were the smallest of the Merfolk and the only ones to live in freshwater. Like their larger cousins, the Sea Merfolk, they could grant wished. Boggles always had plenty of wishes, many of which would cause Dophinis no end of trouble granting.
He held his sweet breath, afraid the scent would lead the Boggle straight to him, until Fandang’s last bing bang whack of his Boggle stick faded into the distance. Then Banga zipped back to his baby sister, Ruby, the youngest Dolphini of Trickle Brook, where she was pretending to be a tigerfish, leaping out of the water and eating mosquitoes. They would both be safe another day.
Copyright 2014 Brenda Davis Harsham
References: http://www.nycgovparks.org/news/daily-plant?id=19242
Butterfly Beatitudes #10
Pat gives us a taste of summer in our cold, New England spring, with her Butterfly song. Hope you have a moment to visit her, if you don’t know Source of Inspiration. Thanks, Pat, for all you do to bring beauty into our lives. I’m dreaming summer breezes tonight. Warmly, Brenda
Dreaming in Cherry Blossoms
Rain patters on the roof,
While the cardinal calls:
“Birdie, birdie, birdie, birdie.”
My eyes drift closed, heavy
With disappointment at the cold,
Wet spring and the absent sun.
Azaleas flame in raspberry bursts.
The weeping cherry cries amber tears
Of swollen pollen from pale pink blossoms,
Sunshine heats the wet sidewalk,
And it breathes steamy sighs.
A mist curls up toward the blossoms.
In my dream, my two arms multiply,
Turning to wings, to feathers, to thin limbs:
To an infant, a new weeping cherry.
My long arms tremble in air currents.
The cardinal lands on my highest shoulder
Calling “Birdie, birdie,” red crest proud.
I hear again the sound of the rain,
My dry roots yearn toward the nectar
Shared by clouds, whispering of oceans.
I awake stretching my legs,
Moving freely, but stiff and cold;
Blossoms, an afterimage, on my closed eyes.
Copyright 2014 Brenda Davis Harsham
Note: Inspired by Michelle Marie, who was longing to see cherry blossoms.
These photographs are from last spring.
Fairy Tale Clerihew
The first of Three Little Pigs
distained using twigs
and built from straw.
Big Bad Wolf laughed when he saw.
Copyright 2014 Brenda Davis Harsham
Inspired by Paint the World with Words weekly poetry prompt, a Clerihew, which is a 4-line rhyming poem, aabb, generally about a famous person introduced in the first line. Here are two famous Clerihew by the originator of the form, Edmund Clerihew Bentley:
Said Sir Christopher Wren
I`m having lunch with some men,
If anyone calls,
Say I`m designing St Paul`s.
The digestion of Milton
Was unequal to Stilton.
He was only feeling so-so,
When he wrote Il Penseroso.
References:
http://www.poetrysoup.com/poems/clerihew
http://www.wattpad.com/31546636-the-who’s-who-of-clerihew-85-porky-pig
Still Life with Lichen
lost pinecone beds down on pine needles, ignored by lichen and moss
Copyright 2014 Brenda Davis Harsham
Note: This is an American Sentence Haiku.
To see my others, they are: Silent Bathhouse and Trumpets Sounding.
Friendly Fairy Tales 