Haiku in October

Celebrate our love
Frolic late into the night
Rainy Saturday

Since our anniversary fell on a Wednesday, Shawn and I did not go out to dinner until the weekend. I’ve been wanting to check out Barrio Queen in Avondale for a while and we finally had a good excuse. Then we went over to a friend’s house for a combined birthday and anniversary celebration.

Barrio Queen Avondale Oct 15, 2022

Toast – Salud Oct 15, 2022

This week one of my haiku is included in the Haiku Pea podcast – S5E20 In Depth. Thanks to Patricia for her continued hard work, sharing her love and knowledge of haiku.

My loyal readers will notice I wrote about the palo verde again. I do love how every April the green tree blooms yellow flowers of course the clean up is not so fun.

Backyard Oasis

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#NaPoWriMo An Ode On Saturday Morning

The Rosebush

Copious buds bloom
Petals lay bare on sidewalk
Nothing gold can stay

NaPoWriMo Prompt – Our optional prompt for the day also honors the idea of Saturday (the Saturdays of the soul, perhaps?), by challenging you to write an ode to life’s small pleasures. Perhaps it’s the first sip of your morning coffee. Or finding some money in the pockets of an old jacket. Discovering a bird’s nest in a lilac bush or just looking up at the sky and watching the clouds go by.

Good morning and welcome to day eighteen of napowrimo where my ode to the rosebush looks suspiciously like a haiku with a borrowed line no less.  Here is the link to read Robert Frost’s poem. I grabbed the link from poets.org as they are running a shelter in poems series, asking readers to share poems they are reflecting on while we are sheltering in place. My favorite Frost poem, A question, doesn’t seem to be in their archives. I used it on a previous napowrimo for a golden shovel.

Yesterday we ventured outside headed off to the mailbox. Robin’s reading care package from Changing Hands Bookstore seems to be MIA. As we walked down the sidewalk, Robin was hit in the face by a flying object and exclaimed, What was that? Gretchen responded, I think it was a petal from the rosebush. They’re all over the sidewalk. Yes, it was pretty windy yesterday and rose petals were dropping off and flying away. On top of being hit in the face there was no book in the mailbox. 😦 Maybe today will be a good mail day.

Poet’s Family

Frost family spring/summer 1910

Always annotate
Pictures, my mother would say
Who is the poet

Okay don’t strain too hard, because I don’t think Robert Frost is in the photo. My great-grandmother, Bertha Mae (Frost) Tiger, is one of the women with a child on her lap. She and Robert Frost were cousins. My mom assumed the photo was taken in 1910 because her dad is not in the photo and he was born in December 1910. For most of my life, when my mom would get photo prints, she would annotate them with the person/people name(s) and place and year. It does come in handy when looking at old photos. But the above photo was not annotated and there has been speculation for years whether or not Robert Frost is there. I’m doubting it, because I was told he only showed up for one family reunion.

I still order photo prints, but my children, grandchildren and so forth will have to conduct online facial recognition searches. No mom, I do not annotate my pictures.

NaPoWriMo Day Eighteen – Ruba’i

Every morning I wake to greet
The sunshine and love my retreat
Back east they’re still dealing with snow
My desert spring lush in dry heat

 

Picture taken by Shawn Hosking on Camelback Mountain

NaPoWriMo Prompt – And now for our prompt (optional, as always). Today I challenge you to write a ruba’i. What’s that? Well, it’s a Persian form — multipe stanzas in the ruba’i form are a rubaiyat, as in The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Basically, a ruba’i is a four-line stanza, with a rhyme scheme of AABA. Robert Frost’s famous poem Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening uses this rhyme scheme. You can write a poem composed of one ruba’i, or try your hand at more, for a rubaiyat. Happy writing!

Yesterday, I was busy writing tweetkus.  Tweets written as haiku. I heard Western New York had gotten more snow. I thought I better threaten the sun to get with the program.  I don’t want to deal with snow when I visit Buffalo in July. 😉

I’m no fan of snow
Summer better warm July
Sun has been forewarned

 

Then today I check the writer’s digest PAD prompt more weather poetry.  I decided to write a ruba’i on my beautiful Sonoran Spring. And now I have miles to go before I sleep… I need to get ready for the weekend.

 

NaPoWriMo Day Five – Golden Shovel

If Only…

To read a poem inside a
poem, trying to echo voice
looking at what another said
I mean sit down and really look
Can you say you truly know me?

Words are written on the page in
a frenzy, thoughts spill out the
question posed, gazing at the stars
And…

I am not confident they will tell

Perplexed, I look within me
Is it possible to truly
know all the thoughts men
will voice over coffee of
all the poems written on earth

If…
Powerful two letters holds all
we have ever pondered in the
cosmos, we tremble soul-and-body
lingering on what-ifs scars

There are many people who were
consumed pondering the universe, not
one poet questioned life or love too
much…

If Rudyard Kipling failed to
write his verse what loss we’d pay
searching echoes to answer for
the confidence of birth

 

 

A Question

A voice said, Look me in the stars
And tell me truly, men of earth,
If all the soul-and-body scars
Were not too much to pay for birth.
Robert Frost

 

NaPoWriMo Prompt – Today’s prompt is a little complicated, which is why I saved it for a Saturday, in the hopes that you might have a little more time today than during a weekday. I think this is a very rewarding form, though, so I hope you’ll enjoy it! Today I challenge you to write a “golden shovel.” This form was invented by Terrance Hayes in his poem, The Golden Shovel. The last word of each line of Hayes’ poem is a word from Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem We Real Cool. You can read Brooks’ poem by reading the last word of each line of Hayes’ poem!

Phew! This one was a doozy.  I like a challenge sometimes.  It helps one grow as a poet.  Last night, I took my birthday girl out for pizza and wings (with her big sister of course).  We walked over to our little corner of New York, NYPD.  It was bustling.  We had a nice, attentive waiter.  And he discounted Gretchen’s birthday cheesecake. 😀 Thank you!

Yesterday, I finalized our plans to shuffle off to Buffalo this summer.  Since my sister woke me up with a 4:20AM phone call, she was tagged for our 1AM airport pickup.  Actually she volunteered. Oy… the nonstop flights to PHX BUF were at the oddest times.