Spring Synethesia

This has been a year

Of extended blooms 

And profuse meanings 

Spring synesthesia

Everywhere abounds

Daffodils for three weeks

Straight and the magnolia 

Still in all its glory 

While just now the cherry tree

Has let loose its charms

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I ran into our neighbor Alicia today who is the incoming president of our local garden club. She confirmed my suspicion that the cool and damp weather this April has gifted us with extended blooms, from one end of the garden to the other, it's like a florist's cold storage out there, and what's good for the flowers must also be good for the bees, who are already back in business, the hives roaring back to life.  Photo by @marrisabridge.

The Science of Poetry

Haiku is amber

That traps a moment of breath

Nothing more or less

It's taken more than a decade of field work for me to begin appreciating the science that underlies and animates poetry. A haiku starts as a frequency that is transmitted from some small corner of the universe. It's a burst of electromagnetic energy that travels through air just like a radio signal. To the poet it may feel like a little work of wonder if that signal can be received and recorded faithfully, without the slightest slip of the lip or wrist.  In any case, the mind of the poet works best in a limited fashion, first as a receiver and then a re-transmitter of the signal, without any need to author or create the truth that resides inside the poem.

A Spring Like None Other

There's no spring other

Than the present one vividly

Rushing back to life

There's no time for regrets

About things left undone

There are only seeds to be sown

And always more shoveling

And to make the most 

Of these daylight hours

You must extend yourself too

A little further every day 

That's what a growing      

Season is all about

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These days I don't write many poems. But there's an April exception. The older I get the more I love spring, so every once in a while, like an unfolding blossom, a new April poem bursts into view.

Mind you, age has taken its toll and now that I'm well into my sixties there's a noticeable difference in how I respond to spring's magic spell. A decade ago, when I first started writing poems, I felt swept up enough to write a poem every day for the month of April. (You can read those poems here, on the Lampoetry blog, in reverse chronological order.) Now I don’t have the stamina to sustain that sort of output, so this poem, short and sweet as it is, will have to suffice.

Marissa took this picture the other day, which I think sums up anything else I might have to say.

The Field Guide of Creatures in their Wild Pursuits

What is a poem
But a page from the field guide
Of creatures in their wild pursuits

I wrote this haiku in response to the poem Field Guide by Tony Hoagland, which I've copied below.  What a fine poem it is.  A friend had posted it on FB and as soon as I read it, I went and bought the book it's from - Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty.  I rarely buy poetry books, but that was a title I couldn't resist. A title that immediately conveyed a sensibility - the same sensibility that informs the poem -- and charts a path for the poet, as the self-appointed explorer of our strained kinship to the natural world, filtered through the mediums of close observation, Tang poetry and digital ink. I love poets who master this form of direct address, in which the poetry is secondary to the narrative and what the poet has to say.