Life In Progress

The beautiful changes

A Christmas Ornament

The winters frosted  ChristmasTree
your red fleece scarf 
and matching mittens
blushing your cheeks rose.

Snow crisped air freshened
tree farms with your musical laughter
and the scent of pine 
while we hunted for Christmas trees.

Now, even without you here,
when my eyes are misted
by a steaming cup of hot chocolate 
melting a peppermint stick,

I see your hands cradling
a mug that matches mine 
and the promise ring 
I once slipped on your finger.

And I see your eyes,
their hazel green,  
inviting me
into a new world. 

Even if it were your body cuddling
here with mine, I wouldn't be able
to unravel where I end inside
and where you begin. 

She never asks 
about the hand-stitched 
Christmas ornament 
I place each year on our tree.  

She leaves 
the part of you 
in me
for me. 

 

Dedicated 
Copyright (c) 2016-2018 by the authors

March 01, 2018 | Permalink | Comments (0)

A Magical Backyard

Onomatopoetic from Cat to Snake 
Cat01

Too far across a great sea,
there is a magical place
guarded by stunning mountains,

where chickens cluck, cluck
just to hear children cluck
chicken sounds along with them.

"What are they clucking about now?",
a magical person,
who hasn't had her coffee yet, clucks. 

Meanwhile, a cat meows and purrs to teach
her humans how to speak, read, and write
cat sounds in English, sounds like meow and purr

so that the humans can understand
bedtime stories when they say
good night to the moon. 
 
Wait! A sleepy snake hisses, spits, and strikes
when he's stepped on. In this backyard though,
hissy snake sounds can only be learned in books.

In magical places such as this, children
learn the first sounds ever turned into words,
words like moo, baa, woof, quack, roar;

words that when spoken, imitate or suggest
the sound of the thing they describe
in whatever alphabet the sound is written in.

When all the world can cluck, moo, baa, woof, quack,
and roar together with the animals that taught us, then
we can read our children "Good Night Moon" without worry. 

 

Dedicated to Nora
Copyright (c) 2016-2017 by the authors

 

(Poetic Ornament #2: Onomatopoeia)

Onomatopoeia

There are many words in every language that have little meaning beyond the sound they make, sounds that mimic nature, words like boing, bloop, drizzle, whoosh, cluck, etc. These can be used to great effect in writing because they are some of the first words that humans formed and in just a syllable they evoke sights, sounds, smells, and emotions.  

 

 

 

 

 

October 08, 2017 | Permalink | Comments (0)

An Old Kurdish Crone and her Magical Chicken

Antimetabole from Adverts to Hollywood to Broadway 
     

Beyond the grand canyon of Gully Ali Beg
and its majestic waterfalls,
 
there is an old Kurdish woman somewhere
up, up Mount Nwathnin near the stars

embowered in a stone house
that she gardened out of rock.
 
All manner of men and women climb
the ruddy, pebbled path to her door

for she has a magical chicken,
one that clucks poetic ornaments.

A government official from the department of ticy was jealous
of the old woman's fortune to have such a chicken and asked

"How, when I am much smarter than you, old Crone
can you have raised a chicken so smart?"

"Cluck, cluck. It's smarter to be lucky than it's
lucky to be smart; you should know that, you smug cluck." 

A young Peshmerga named Nahida, after crossing
the canyon and scaling the mountain did not

question the old woman, she simply rested in the garden
and wondered how best to continue to face death.

"Cluck, cluck," clucked the chicken clearing its throat,
"When the going gets tough, the tough get going."

One evening just before dusk a rich poultry farmer
from Qoshtapa, in his finest clothes asked the old woman

"I have hundreds of chickens. I've brought many thousands to market
and yet none has ever recited poetry. What is wrong with them?"

"Cluck!! Ask not what your chickens can do for you,
ask what you can do for your chickens! Cluck, cluck."    

One early morning, a wizened, distraught poetry teacher
mumbled "How do I teach antimetabole to engineers?"

"Cluck, cluck, a + b = b + a," came a response
annotated with "have you forgotten your math?"

And once upon a time, a wizard from the magical land of Oz
asked how best to bestow a heart to a man made entirely of tin.
 
"A heart is not judged by how much you love;
but by how much you are loved by others," was the response. 

 

Dedicated to Nora
Copyright (c) 2016-2017 by the authors

 

 (Poetic Ornament #3: Antimetabole)

Antimetabole is a poetic device in which an idea or meme is repeated, but in reverse order. Writers use antimetabole to ornament or call to attention the idea or to change hearts and minds by demonstrating that current perceptions are not always what they seem.

"It's smarter to be lucky than it's lucky to be smart."
Stephen Schwartz, Pippin

"When the going gets tough, the tough get going."
unknown

"Ask not what your chickens can do for you, ask what you can do for your chickens!"
paraphrased from John Kennedy

"A heart is judged not by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others."
L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

 

October 08, 2017 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dear Reader

In a life raft
sinewed with verse
and caulked with rhyme

I picture you
in my castaway imaginings
walking along a beach

your bare feet squishing the sand
and the surf foaming
the footprints behind you.

The sun shatters water droplets
shaken free by the waves
and sets them ablaze.

I hope that one day
you will find
bobbing in the surf

this bottle stuffed with poems
and read one
which leads me to you.

Comfort Food
Copyright © 2005-2017 by the authors

March 30, 2017 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ever Green

Autumn orange, crimson, and yellow 
colors our thoughts
here at home

paints portraits of us soon living colored
by Minnesota's only two winter crayons,
white and black.

In a couple of months, our black and white
Winter will steal all color
from our little patch of the U.S.

It will try to freeze our hearts and bones
with its -30 (Celsius) breath.
Our maples, oaks, and elms will be barren.

The snow piled along our sidewalks will be black with soot.
Clouds will grey the sky and
the air we breathe will bite our lungs.

We'll wake for work
in darkness and return
from work in darkness.

That is why we plant evergreens.  


Dedicated to Deya
Copyright (c) 2016 by the authors.

September 15, 2016 | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Recent Posts

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  • Dear Reader
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References

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  • Silva Rhetoricae: The Forest of Rhetoric
  • Sonnet
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  • Wystan Hugh Auden

Poetry Journals

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  • PLOUGHSHARES - Emerson College
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