Haiku

Each is a wonder
the novelty of snowflakes
but have you seen one?

Haiku Sunday Evening

fish covered in mud
seek for the depth of water
to cleanse and to breathe

sunset, a corset
bound the nests of earth and sky
colors’ meeting place

Inside the snowflake
I see gold twinkling in ice
six points that soon melt

K Vibbert 2009

HAIKU

Haiku

These are some haiku that I will add throughout the rest of the month.
I find them refreshing, peaceful and I need that right now. I’m so tired of thinking about death and illness. Nature always takes me to a place of calm.

whiff of lavender
spread into purple needles
brush against my palm

trail of porcelain rain
the worn path where children walk
back and forth again

more beautiful now
is the snow falling around
it deepens with me

another sunset
but unlike any other
because it is now

Man in the Mirror

Today I’m watching another downpour
and reading through some poets that I found online
and various back corners of the local Barnes and Nobles.
I always feel as if I’m trying to sneak out the EXIT door
with unpaid merchandise because, well, that’s where the poetry
section is located. But I’m also doing a word study on the fruit
of the Spirit, a Bible study that in a way I couldn’t have imagined
is more revealing to me than some of my own poetry. It reveals
some areas that I have not given up control of. The sad thing
about control is, even in writing, is that sometimes you have to give
it up in order to grow and have peace. You must be careful who or what
though, that you give that control up to.

I always felt that my writing, or anyone’s for that matter,
revealed who we are. I still feel that way. However, now I tend to look
at it as even though it “does” reveal (emphasis on does) who we are,
when we study and read the Word of God, that not only reveals who
we are, but it reveals who God is and it won’t leave us unchanged.
Many of my poems from way back sound the same because I never changed.
Sometimes that’s a wonderful thing, other times not so wonderful.

In James 1, there is a chapter which incorporates my beloved simile,
a poetic device that comes naturally to me but more naturally to God, Maybe
this is a gift that he gave me; I’m not sure. I like to think so.
The verses it go like this:

 22Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror 24and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 25But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.
ah, the original Man in the Mirror. God’s Man in the Mirror.
He looked into the glass, saw his reflection, much like we do
when we write but then he did not regard it upon leaving.
He was quick to forget it, to move along, and live his life
and not remember the image.

One of the reasons poets (should) attempt to be original
is because people don’t remember what they’ve read, or don’t want to.
And a lot of times they don’t remember because they are reading
nothing new, not original and certainly not interesting enough to make
them delve deep into themselves and into God.

I like what I read toward the end of that section “blessed in what he does
because I don’t know of anyone anywhere who doesn’t need some kind of a blessing.
Some of these thoughts have me feeling as if the things that have been
so very hard and so seemingly unobtainable to me have been that way for a reason.
It sounds trite, perhaps. But then that’s the writer’s challenge.

To find a new way of saying them. A simile. That’s what good writers’ do.
That’s what they should do before they EXIT this world and begin their eternity
in the next.

THE MOST PLEASANT OF DAYS

This past weekend, I was thinking about an aunt by marriage,
I had seen her on and off throughout the years and always
enjoyed her company but I can’t say I knew her intimately.
Just about ten days ago a group of us were bundled together
so to speak, one from out of town, and we hadn’t seen
each other in many years. We sat around a table and talked,
and laughed about things that even happened in high school.
My aunt ate jelly beans and looked at me and said her hair
was her natural color, with all seriousness. I’m sure it was.

I remember when I left there that day, I thought, I’ve been in this
room before about thirty some years ago and seen many of these people
in this kitchen, or other places but now it was different. Each one of us
had something we were struggling with be it health or life circumstance.
We were different. The room only different from furnishings, appliances,
and a fresh change of candles, a warm scent and the breeze. But we,
we were different.

The chaplain said my aunt went very peacefully. That is the way I want to go.
I know where I’m going and believe me, there are days when heaven not only
sounds sweeter but I think that I can see a room waiting especially for me.
And once there I will never grow beyond my surroundings, age past them,
or be too ill to enjoy them.

When we left that day, I leaned over and kissed my aunt and said goodbye sweetie.
I’m not sure why I addressed her that way. It was a little more of an adolescent
greeting. But it seemed natural. Maybe I was thinking
how sweet heaven is, how her breath smelled like jelly beans,
and how the candles burning in the other rooms around us made it
the most pleasant of days, the most pleasant ways to say goodbye for good,
without knowing we really were.

THOSE MIND MATTERS

The kind of decisions we make that serve our spirits
the best, the kind of decisions God is supporting us to make,
will be those decisions that leave us with the most peace.

Peace isn’t that hard to define. Although you can’t see it,
you can feel it. Maybe it’s like the wind. And that leads
me to think that it’s a gift of the Holy Spirit. Ever be trying
to make up your mind about something and you’re mentally
holding a list of “why’s” and “because” and oh, this is my favorite:
“I have to do something!”

When I was writing poetry umpteen hours a day
convinced I had to write the perfect collection or whatever,
I had no peace. But I kept on. Sigh. We do that sometimes.
Our ways seem right, but they aren’t. Even if you aren’t a Christian,
you can benefit from Proverbs 14:12:
There is a way which seems right to a man. But the end
is the way of death. I think of all the things we all try to do

because of the way they feel. Then, we look back, or some never
do. That’s the worst part. Some still try to justify why something didn’t work.
The only job I was ever fired from comes to mind. They did me such
a tremendous favor. I wasn’t right for the job. At the time, I was so depressed over it.

Peace comes even in small doses. Like this ridiculous piece of exercise equipment I’m returning because I know in my heart of hearts it was a bad decision. There was a time I would have kept it lying to myself, oh, you’ll use it, you’ll use it. Well, actually I thought I would but I don’t care for it at all. I think a walk would be a much better idea.

Cheaper too!

But there’s no price for peace. None at all.

A Poem That Moved me Deeply

One of my favorite poets. This poem by Marilyn Hacker
deeply moved me.

Nearly a Valediction
by Marilyn Hacker

You happened to me. I was happened to
like an abandoned building by a bull-
dozer, like the van that missed my skull
happened a two-inch gash across my chin.
You were as deep down as I’ve ever been.
You were inside me like my pulse. A new-
born flailing toward maternal heartbeat through
the shock of cold and glare: when you were gone,
swaddled in strange air I was that alone
again, inventing life left after you.

I don’t want to remember you as that
four o’clock in the morning eight months long
after you happened to me like a wrong
number at midnight that blew up the phone
bill to an astronomical unknown
quantity in a foreign currency.
The U.S. dollar dived since you happened to me.
You’ve grown into your skin since then; you’ve grown
into the space you measure with someone
you can love back without a caveat.

While I love somebody I learn to live
with through the downpulled winter days’ routine
wakings and sleepings, half-and-half caffeine-
assisted mornings, laundry, stock-pots, dust-
balls in the hallway, lists instead of longing, trust
that what comes next comes after what came first.
She’ll never be a story I make up.
You were the one I didn’t know where to stop.
If I had blamed you, now I could forgive
you, but what made my cold hand, back in prox-
imity to your hair, your mouth, your mind,
want where it no way ought to be, defined
by where it was, and was and was until
the whole globed swelling liquefied and spilled
through one cheek’s nap, a syllable, a tear,
was never blame, whatever I wished it were.
You were the weather in my neighborhood.
You were the epic in the episode.
You were the year poised on the equinox.

Shelf Life

Your soul
a glass chime
raised up to drink
and drink
of sound,
and hours held with
frail hand –caged
lines of bone.
I almost envy you going.
Why so silent when all the world
longs to be in a more beautiful place?
A place
held in the hands
of this earth.
your
life is slowly coming back from the wave,
from that great sea inside you.

Kathleen Vibbert 2009

DEAR OLD MR. BELVEDERE

I grow old … I grow old…
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
TS Eliot- The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock

Dear Old Mr. Belvedere

I called him Mister Belvedere
he wore his pant legs up
and when the sun came near the hills
he’d fill his coffee cup

iambic meter through his pen
ah, reverie came due
his brow the smell of fish and fries
and powdered chicken too.

He wrote of aspens, birch and wood
and how he’d fit between
the poplars with their songs in place
the languid shades of green.

How strange, his ashes found their way
to seeds that spread foreshore
and like a tired old jetty swells,
he lines the river’s floor.

K. Vibbert

DISCOVERING A NEW POET

New to me, that is. Maybe it’s the Irish hiding
in my background, or the fact this poet truly got my juices going. I can’t get enough of her writing.

Thought I would post a link in case anyone else is interested.

EAVAN BOLAND