A compass needle, a lizard, spins half a turn
To keep me in sight, tweaking my sense of direction:
Spring is coming — that way.
According to my 2010 turtle calendar, the Vernal Equinox arrives Saturday, March 20. To celebrate spring’s arrival last year, WIZ ran a Spring Poetry Run-off that turned out to be lots of fun. [...]
She could smell the season on him. Summers
he came through the door redolent of horses
and wild mint; winters, copper and ice.
Metallic and snow-clean, he cooled the house.
The poplar’s shadow on her hand
Indicates a tree in spring.
Willets, catbirds, and broncos all hear
Big-hipped nature dancing across the Rockies
Stripping and putting on the many faces of
A weather-beaten land:
Green, red, brown, and white,
The flag of summer on the horizon.
They are indivisible incompatibles,
This landscape and
The mutterings of a middle woman.
Her words lie naked in a field,
Lost [...]
I cannot kick a mound of maple leaves
or see a pumpkin peeking from the vine
before the frost and not remember hills
where summer laid her green. A distant line
of poplars gleams like curtains made of coins;
it shakes at passing clouds. And everywhere
the magpie hops, I see another sign
of hawthorns beckoning the winter air
to breathe upon the [...]
(for my father)
Late afternoon came floating down the creek.
The Appalachia air chilled gradually;
Ringlets formed round shivers on a pool
Where mayflies burst its skin, and theirs, some trailing
Papery shells behind them in their flight.
Brown trout missiled the sylphs, arched and slapped
The surface, falling back, while I cast toward
The trembling pool, slowly wound my line in,
Looked up. [...]
[Post edited 12/17.] Since this haiku chain launched itself before I had a chance to lay groundwork, I thought I’d backtrack and provide some perhaps useful information.
A haiku is a classical Japanese poetical form, usually 17 syllables all in a single line in Japanese, but I understand that there are longer and shorter forms. In [...]
Stand of Trees (by J. Kirk Richards)
I’ve been neglecting what it takes
to piece together dawn from old
snapshots and reminiscence faded
as the blush from Adam’s skin
when God’s question stunned
the garden and he slipped with Eve into
the shadow of God’s voice, their shame
a stand of trees backlit by cherubim
come hounds a-bay to flush them into
death, sin, recognition, [...]
The sun’s ten fingers came unfurled.
He gathered struts and made a world.
With careful breath the sphere was blown:
a hollow ball of molten stone.
And with the glass-sharp stars in thrall,
he spun the geodesic ball.
The moon stretched out her oyster hand
and on the struts she lifted land.
In mercury streams the valleys bled:
the mountain shook its hoary head.
She [...]
Listen to Mark Bennion read “Waters of Mormon”
Amid the tingle of forest and shadows,
you ford through the water
to the sway of its purl and girth,
a surge of billow where air arrives
in speckles of light. The only
distance is the reach of your hand
and the life after petition and promise.
Trees rustle in incandescence
as the crowd’s whisper fades.
You [...]
The intertwining of spirituality with images, metaphors, analogies, parables and other language containing strong veins of agrarian- and wilderness-oriented content is part of what gives scripture its power. Along with a large proportion of the rest of this Bible-reading country, as Mormons increasingly move inside and explore via the electronic frontier, scripture becomes one of [...]