sun – Serendippity

[A very sparing young poet named Nick]

A very sparing young poet named Nick,
Having mastered the compact limerick,
Yearned for verse
Even more terse,
So he strove to compose a slimerick.

Nick was not only sparing, but picky,
Which made the slimerick extra tricky.
Nothing he tried
Satisfied—
They were all, in a word, slimericky.

I’m also posting my first response to Monty Vern’s Silver Lining June collaboration. In a silver lining poem (Monty’s invention), the last words of each line in the poem are the key words, in order, of another line of poetry, with appropriate credit given to the original poet. The borrowing poet can forget those pesky little words like a, the, and of and can write about an entirely different subject. Thank you, Monty, for the opportunity to participate! Peace to our ♥s!

[“A molten gold flows away from the sun” from “Evening Sea Wind” by Carl Sandburg]

Self-Sabotage

~after Carl Sandburg

Once the heart becomes molten,
Carefully cup the blistering gold
In your hands and gloat as it flows
Through your fingers. Then put the blowtorch away.
Tomorrow, stare at the sun.

Sun and Moon Poems

NaPoWriMo22 Day 25 — I don’t recall when I first came across the Kinbourg quote, but I do know I’ve wanted to write a poem inspired by it for years, and I knew I wanted the poem to be as beautiful as the quote. After a few clunky attempts a few weeks ago, this elegantly simple two-liner came to me, and I decided to put it into picture form. I’m really pleased with the result. The poem below is similar in that it’s a streamlining of an idea I was fiddling around with and that also benefits from being illustrated. Peace to your ♥!

Notes on Healing

Daffodils
are a start. Warmer
weather helps.
Longer days,
lighter days, all good. But not
what I really need.

What I need
(okay, really want)
is summer,
hours and hours
steeping in the sun, healing
from the outside in.

Then I think:
skin cancer, rogue moles,
sun damage.
Then I write
poems—fibs,
shadormas, sijos—healing
from the inside out.

NaPoWriMo22 Day 4 — A poem I’ve been pondering several weeks that finally came into its own as a series of shadormas. It happens to fit murisopsis‘s poetry scavenger hunt prompt #12, to write about healing. I now have 18 poems written in the wake of my parents’ deaths (see “Afterdeath“) and will post more of them once NaPoWriMo is over. I’m calling it my Afterdeath collection. Peace to your ♥, particularly if you’re healing from the loss of a loved one or dealing with cancer personally or among family or friends.

Bramasole

I’m a Kansas girl,
my heart a sunflower
rooted in humble prairie soil,
forever following the sun.
In Tuscany the word is bramasole,
something that yearns for the sun,
like Sangiovese grapes, exotic
and vicarious on the tongue.
One taste, and I soar
sunward.

NaPoWriMo 2016 Day 8 – Write a poem about a flower. I don’t remember where or when I first came across the word bramasole, but it captures me to a T. Peace to your ♥!

“Brocade”

Hold out your hands to feel the luxury of the sunbeams.
Helen Keller

Isn’t that a lovely thought? Ever since I wrote Helen Keller’s observation in my notebook of quotes, I’ve wanted to use it in a poem. Despite being intangible, sunbeams have a way of draping themselves across your body as cloth does. The contrast between brocade’s heaviness and the lightness of sunbeams works, for me, because of the connecting “thread” of luxuriousness (couldn’t resist that :) ).

Brocade

Sometimes you have to make your own sunshine.
You have to roll out the gold gossamer-thin
To feel the luxury of sunbeams on bare skin.

 © Stephanie Malley

Peace to your ♥!