Mudiferous,
squelching ramble
beneath bare branches
and yearning buds
yields a vast harvest
in my wintry soul
of spring faith. Continue reading
Tag Archives: nature
Happy Birthday to Robert Frost
Roses for Noses
My nose misses roses
through long winter days,
but Trader Joe’s knows.
There, summers scents
come in cellophane.
Continue reading
Peace is like Sunlight
Peace is like sunlight:
I yearn toward it.
I can’t hold it in my hand.
I want it most
Continue reading
Yellow Thing
I enjoy every
yellow thing
that blooms in
early spring.
Copyright 2016 Brenda Davis Harsham
Note: This ditty is in honor of writing and rewriting manuscripts galore. Plus, today, I won an award-winning book thanks to a cat named Maggie. Continue reading
Who are You?
I prefer tea.
I prefer rain to drought.
I prefer quiet to parties.
I prefer gardens in the centers of cities
where I can lay on my back and imagine flying with birds.
I prefer to feel than to be numb.
I prefer grief to forgetting.
I prefer dragon to draggin’ and phoenix to flames.
I prefer the golden rule.
I prefer chocolate to anything else
except passion and a lover’s approval.
I prefer to worship love than hate.
I prefer wildflower meadows
to gardens sliced by boxwood canyons.
I prefer to build rather than tear down.
I prefer the rhetoric of peace but cannot abide genocide.
I prefer mystery to someone’s else certainty.
I prefer to go unnoticed by Murphy’s Law.
I prefer happy to perfect and joyful to tidy.
I prefer to melt in the rain
than to send out flying monkeys.
I prefer books to movies except the Lord of Rings.
I prefer walking to gyms.
I prefer children laughing to silence.
I prefer silence to rage.
I prefer rage to despair.
I prefer to share despair than to turn away.
I prefer to look for magic rather than
ranting about its absence.
I prefer poetry to newspapers.
I prefer humble to Trump-eting.
Who are you?
Copyright 2016 Brenda Davis Harsham
Note: I was inspired to write this list poem by The Drift Record post celebrating Possibilities, a poem by Nobel-prize winning poet Wislawa Szymborska. When I understood who she was, I better understood myself.
I also put this up in honor of Women’s History Month and World Poetry Day (Monday). Please feel free to write your own preferences and link up here, there or everywhere. Or put yours in the comments. Have a magical weekend!
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.
Copyright 2016 Brenda Davis Harsham
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.
Reindeer Games in #Finland
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!
To Oulu from
far and near,
they race and laugh
with joyful reindeer.
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.
Copyright 2016 Brenda Davis Harsham
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).
Gamine Grin
Gray rain, icy day,
can’t take my grin away.
Copyright 2016 Brenda Davis Harsham
Note: It rained all day, and I have the flu, but I can’t let it get me down. Have a magical week.
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.
Copyright 2016 Brenda Davis Harsham
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.
Spring is Green
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.
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.
Copyright 2016 Brenda Davis Harsham
Wet-Toes the Rabbit
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.
Copyright 2016 Brenda Davis Harsham
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!!
Friendly Fairy Tales 