Posted by

Brenda Davis Harsham

Posted on

March 17, 2016

Posted under

Photography, Poetry

Comments

23 Comments

Love Stays

Love never fully goes away;
it lingers, like a vine white with winter,
remembering its heyday.
Its memory can sting like a splinter.

Best to give the vine sunshine;
don’t let it grow stiff and cold.
Green leaves unfold on mine
because new love grows from old.

Note: I’ve joined Twitter, and my what a fun free-for-all party it is: a cocktail party with air kisses, heady drinks and no one pigeon-holing me with long stories. If you’re on Twitter and want to friend me, I’m @BrendaDHarsham. Eventually, I’ll figure out how to put that somewhere useful on my sidebar.

I’m not sure I like how WP publishes to Twitter, though. I wasn’t fond of the way it publishes to FB (no line breaks in text), but that’s better than how it publishes to Twitter. It just publishes the title then a link. None of the text of the post appears, just one photo. No matter how engaging your first line or two, no one on Twitter will see it unless they click the link. Now I understand why so many people put hashtags in post titles — because otherwise, they never show up in your tweet, and won’t pop into anyone’s search on that tag without them.

And you can’t edit a tweet. You have to delete and redo if you post in the middle of the night in a state of advanced exhaustion (and grammar has departed for the day).

All that said, the people on Twitter have been welcoming and lovely. Hugs all around.

Posted by

Brenda Davis Harsham

Posted on

March 16, 2016

Posted under

Humor, Photography, Poetry

Comments

30 Comments

Reindeer Games in #Finland

reindeer_driving_competition_-10

Air snaps at the Finland
Winter Festival.
Carnival fragrances
of coffee and sweet dough
mingle with the muskier
scent of reindeer.
Reindeer racers hail
from Finland without fail,
but also Spain, Germany,
France, Australia and Italy!

reindeer_driving_competition_-14

To Oulu from
far and near,
they race and laugh
with joyful reindeer.

Finland Reindeer rides by Sartenada

Kids of all ages watch and ride.
My inner kid wants to finish
the Finnish challenge
one day, wrapped in my parka
and wearing a rainbow cap.
Maybe I’ll even see the
Northern lights.

Note: Photographs used by permission of Sartenada. If you wonder what it looks like beyond the Arctic Circle in summer, she has another great post with reindeer. I learned many names for reindeer in other languages, rennes (French), renos (Spanish), poro (Finnish), renna (Italian), rentier (German), ren (Romanian) and 驯鹿 (Chinese).

Posted by

Brenda Davis Harsham

Posted on

March 15, 2016

Posted under

Humor, Photography, Poetry

Comments

28 Comments

Gamine Grin

Bark ruffled into a grin

Gray rain, icy day,
can’t take my grin away.

Note: It rained all day, and I have the flu, but I can’t let it get me down. Have a magical week.

Posted by

Brenda Davis Harsham

Posted on

March 13, 2016

Posted under

Humor, Photography, Poetry

Comments

15 Comments

Pee-U, A Clerihew!

The American Frank Lloyd Wright
changed architecture with his love of line and light,
incorporating nature, glass and intersecting planes,
but I wonder what he thought about the drains.

Note: A Clerihew is a humorous 4-line rhyming poem, aabb, about a famous person who’s introduced in the first line. I wrote another here as well as listing some famous ones.

Posted by

Brenda Davis Harsham

Posted on

March 3, 2016

Posted under

By&4Kids, Photography, Poetry

Comments

50 Comments

Spring is Green

Dappled Glade

Leaves grow on the trees –
the leaves are green!
I see green everywhere.
I like the color green.
The sun is glowing.
Children are looking at the sun –
some children lay down in the sunlight.
Sunlight,
sun bright.

by A. Harsham, age 5

Note: This post is by and for my daughter, Happy 7th Birthday! Long may she weave herself into spring like yarn art on monkey bars.

Poetry Friday with kids

Also, help me celebrate my daughter’s special Friday with poetry for kids, courtesy of Poetry Friday. Thanks to Teacher Dance for hosting this week!

Here’s what it will seem like to me:

Birthday cake!
Birthday cake!
Bring it now
or I’ll have a cow!
I need it fast —
I might not last!
Once it’s gone,
I’m woebegone.
Presents are fun
until they’re done.
What comes next?
Now I’m vexed.
A whole ‘nother year?
I can’t wait, I fear.

Posted by

Brenda Davis Harsham

Posted on

March 2, 2016

Posted under

Holiday, Photography, Poetry

Comments

35 Comments

Wet-Toes the Rabbit

Rabbit tracks on blue snow

Wet-Toes the rabbit hops,
scrapes snow from grass,
dodges grumpy crows,
and wriggles his cold nose.
Blue day breaks the dark,
and newcomers arrive.
Lop-Ear, he knows,
but following him is Rose.
Lop-Ear’s sister is peachy pale,
with silky fur and eyes of blue.
The sharp Nor’easter blows,
but does he feel it, old Wet-Toes?
Enchantment is all he knows.
Warmth has the name of Rose.

chaos of rabbit tracks

Note: Do you ever see a story in the snow, hear romance in wind song or imagine characters from thin air?

“If you never did you should.
These things are fun.
And fun is good.”
— Dr. Seuss

Thanks to Dr. Seuss for his whimsy, rhyming, hokey bunkum, soft soap, hullabaloo and malarkey. Most of all, thanks to him for making the world a better place.

Happy Birthday, Theodor Seuss Geisel!!

Posted by

Brenda Davis Harsham

Posted on

March 1, 2016

Posted under

Photography, Poetry

Comments

57 Comments

Last Berry

To the final berry,
trembling and silent,
life is scary.
Unchosen,
unpicked,
half-frozen.
Squirrel-missed,
bird-pecked,
sun-kissed.
Little, red and round,
when the snowdrops bloom,
I’ll plant you underground.

Brenda Davis Harsham

Note: My son was at the ER this weekend. My internal compass has been swinging left to right and back again. Upheaval, danger, chaos, progress, crisis. Spring will bring me back into the garden, and life will resume it’s course: toward magic and joy. I hope you are having a magical week. Warmly, Brenda

Posted by

Brenda Davis Harsham

Posted on

February 26, 2016

Posted under

Photography, Poetry, Tales for Kids of All Ages

Comments

53 Comments

A Grain of Sand

Used by Permission of Artist Sath

Children dig sandcastles,
atop the swimming World Turtle,
until the tide smoothes the canvas.
Worlds change, drift out of time,
afloat currents ever moving
from ancient times, like thoughts,
like words or art, like life itself.
We swim in rainbow-hued oceans with the
World Turtle and sift ideas like sand.
Each sparkling grain holds a child’s song,
a collision of stars, a galaxy of possibility.
The oldest tree was born in prehistory.
Its innermost ring is the world’s oldest writing.
Its roots entwine eternity, holding it fast,
watching us blink in and out like candles.
Although we shed our light briefly,
we are part of the world’s ebb and flow,
and all things that come after
will find our sand, our songs, our stars
still living, infinite and immortal.

Notes: I reference William Blake’s famous quatrain:

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.”
(Auguries of Innocence)

Resa Swork is devoting a month to kids at her site, Graffiti Lux and Murals. Her post, SOM-RIU, inspired this poem. Thanks to urban artist Sath, Aproscom Fundació and the Joan Mesquida Special Education Center, a school for people with intellectual disabilities located in Manacor (Mallorca). They are crowd funding a project to bring Sath from Thailand to teach students how to express themselves in murals and to make their environment a beautiful, living work of art. Elsewhere, Sath’s art frames the streets with vibrant humor and irreverence. The crowd funding project has less than a month remaining and has not quite gotten halfway to its goal of € 5.500.

Update: Sath‘s site is up and running. Apparently server trouble blocked access temporarily. I hope you can visit him.

This post is my contribution to Poetry Friday, hosted thanks to Elizabeth Steinglass, a wonderful poet.

For the grammatically conscious in the crowd (or anal – I happen to be anal about grammar), I chose the verb tense spelling for “smoothes” without thinking it over, but then after reading and rereading so many times, it looked wrong. I looked it up, and apparently there’s quite a controversy. I attached the link to the word if grammar disputes are your cup of tea, but the short answer is that that spelling is in ascendency.

Have a magical weekend! Warmly, Brenda

Posted by

Brenda Davis Harsham

Posted on

February 23, 2016

Posted under

Photography, Poetry

Comments

31 Comments

Heaven in a Wild Flower

This cold, blustery day, I dream
into being another spring day.
This one is mountain-flavored,
nearer to heaven than the sea,
far away from here, far from me.
A mountain meadow blooms
as far as my eye can see:
pink heads nod their approval,
as if they like what they see.
I’m atilt, upright on this slope,
keeping my feet, holding out hope.
Pollen coats my skin in gold dust
and I run as lightly as a wind gust.
I lift my arms to the sky,
I’m not a gazelle, but I can fly!
l reach the dim of the tree line,
and each leaf sings harmony with me.
Part of me dwells there, in that perfect hour
when spring is eternal: sweet, soft air and
cool breezes. Infinite beauty. Birds sing,
deer graze and rabbits nod to the grass.
The scent of wildflowers is heaven.
Heaven is in our memories.

Note: The title is from a quatrain that has been niggling at the corners of my attention all week. I decided to embrace it, celebrate it. This is the first of two posts about it. Do you know it already? It’s this one:

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour.”

― William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

Posted by

Brenda Davis Harsham

Posted on

February 20, 2016

Posted under

Photography, Poetry

Comments

59 Comments

Spring Dreaming

Cherry blossoms

close dreaming eyes
fragrance of cherry blossoms
intoxicates, breathe

Note: Dreams are magic. I dreamed spring into being today as I soaked up the lemon winter sun. The park may have been wet with snowmelt and smelling of mud but I was remembering cherry blossoms.

Posted by

Brenda Davis Harsham

Posted on

February 19, 2016

Posted under

Photography, Poetry

Comments

87 Comments

Housebound

New snow,
pure and white,
softly falls and
outlines every tree limb
with its sharp contrast.
Blizzards stick to windows,
narrowing the view.
Each flake whispers,
Stay at home; stay inside.
The wildwood looks halved,
dark below but the white above
merges with the sky.
Snow settles, white as wishes,
paler than low clouds,
whiter than frozen breath,
pale as goose down
clinging to puffy coats.
The world is muffled
by the whitewash.
Sounds are muted and
traffic has ceased.
Wind whips crystals
into snow devils,
spinning like memories
of childhood past.
Thunderous snowplows
transform white into
salty mounds.
Each frozen drop
feels like summer’s tears.
We’re frozen into place,
housebound and
remembering.

Notes: Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted thanks to Donna Smith at Mainely Write. She has posted a wonderful rhyming poem, perfectly setting out the in-between place today holds, adrift between holidays, seasons and weather. I hope you have a moment to visit her, even thought it means a jaunt out of WordPress and into the wilds of Blogspot.

I recently realized that being housebound during a snowstorm is not a thing everyone has experienced, strange as that concept seems to me — having life-long experience of blizzards and hurricanes. I thought about what being housebound during a blizzard means to me, and this poem emerged. Maybe you can share your own memories of being housebound, if it’s a thing that’s happened to you.

Posted by

Brenda Davis Harsham

Posted on

February 15, 2016

Posted under

Photography, Poetry

Comments

34 Comments

Winter Color

The colors of life,
of all things growing,
form a complex rainbow
in any season.
They linger as autumn
slips seamlessly into winter. Continue reading →