Tanka

 

The blue sky, hidden

wind painting clouds in brushstrokes

crows, a swath of dots --

winter is tracing its name

I wait patiently for spring.

The Library, Mid-Winter

The Library, Mid-Winter

The library chair holds the shape of a body
better than the body holds the news.
Outside, the rain is a gray slant of percussion,
drumming a rhythm for a march starting 
somewhere south of our borders.

We ate eggs while discussing our work
of mending, healing hearts and minds.
We called out each other's blind spots
to examine, completely safe within
our connection of love and respect.

But it’s time to undress the Christmas tree,
to stow the baubles and lights, yet I dawdle.
The branches hold beloved memories
that visit once a year. There is no guarantee
I will unpack them again.

I think of the earth, waiting for the pine,
waiting for me -- to be turned back into
something that helps the flowers grow.

Poem

Jagged peaks meet

ice-capped glaciers;

braided rivers weave 

across windswept plains.

Haiku

The last maple leaf

having let go of the branch 

second-guessed its choice.

 

Poem

What if I told you 
that the carpet of lights 
below an ascending plane
are sparks of souls, 
our ancestors visiting 
to light our way through life?

Haiku

Old rickety steps

each step strewn with leaf debris

leading nowhere new.

Haiku

Last plucked from the vine,

summer's juicy gift lingers

destined for my tongue.

Haiku

The sky flows towards 

upended kayaks resting

on the inlet shore.

Haiku

Bookended by oaks

glowing sunset confection,

sweet sherbet colors.

Lay Down Your Suffering

 Little Altars Everywhere

There are little altars everywhere
in the world, places where you can
lay down your suffering for a while.
Hollowed-out oak trunk by the forest trail
where you leave acorns and pine cones
and worries you’ve gathered on a cushion
of moss, whose patience softens everything.
Or the bench at the busy intersection
where streams of people crossing the street
parted around you, and you fell in love
with each of them—the men in suits, babies
strapped in strollers—and left your fear
crumpled there like a useless receipt.
Or the shelf where you keep the box
of your mother’s ashes next to an electric
candle that flickers day and night, how you
give your grief to the yellow glow of that
false flame over and over, knowing
that even the plainest of light can be
enough sometimes to hold your pain.

--James Crews

Haiku

Oh, Mother Morro!

Steadfast refuge for wildlife;

sacred ancient land.

Haiku

In the black abyss

glorious color shifting

revealing a path.

Haiku

A gondola skims
across the bay, ushering
the evening's peace.

Poem: A Therapy Hour

As a therapist, this reads true. It's not a script. For me, the poem evokes the essence of being a therapist, meeting whatever the client brings, staying present and authentic. Of course therapy also involves deeper responses, examinations of beliefs and thought patterns, skill practice.

Click to enlarge for better reading.

Poem: Little Hymn

Click the poem to enlarge it for reading. 

NPR Tiny Desk Contest 2023 - Andrea Gibson - MAGA HAT IN THE CHEMO ROOM

 

 

Andrea Gibson's brilliant force has departed their body. They were a beacon of courage and compassion communicated through poetry. I mourn our loss. May their brilliance and love manifest forever. 

 

Andrea Gibson's website.

 

Andrea Gibson's Substack.

Recognition

Recognition

Playing truth or dare an hour before daylight
among the bean trees, I encounter a stranger at the gate.
When I ask what she is doing, she replies,
"Composing a life." She seeks to answer the question,
"Is there no place on earth for me?"

I ask how she will know the answer, and she says
she will track her progress in the stone diaries.
She has an amazing grace, this girl with a pearl earring
wearing borrowed finery, and I want to know more.
I ask with an open heart, open mind, what it is she seeks.

She wants to understand the savage inequalities,
to have a reckoning with the fact that she lives
in a world where the poisonwood bible increasingly
becomes the rule of law. She wants to help people
to stop running with scissors and enjoy the perfection
of the morning.

We are surrounded by landscapes of wonder, if we
would only make the effort to see differently.

She in turn asks what I seek. I reply that I want
the courage to be, to cast a slender thread
of hope into the sea, the sea of humanity.
I want to plant new seeds of contemplation,
embrace the grace in dying. I want to
know the mystery of tying rocks to clouds.

From her angle of repose under oleander,
jacaranda, the magnificent spinster listens.
I tell her she has a beautiful mind, that
I can see the molecules of emotion swirling in her.
She tells me that I am a succulent wild woman,
that I have zen under a wing. She reminds me
that art is a way of knowing and solitude
a return to the self.

Then we part, blessing each other with traveling
mercies, with a promise to meet again
at the healing circle in Gilead.

                                               -Kathryn Harper

She Said Hello

                                    She Said Hello

                                    She said 'Hello, I’m digging

                                    sand nests' and handed

                                    out shovels.

                                    Seagulls lurked nearby

                                    shouting manic laughter

                                    keeping an eye open

                                    for unattended food.

                                    Farther along the beach,

                                    six shrieking dervishes

                                    flirt with the water’s edge.

                                    And the kelp garlands

                                    strewn across rocks

                                    host a caucus of starlings.

                                                        -Kathryn Harper

(No Wind, No Rain)

 (No Wind, No Rain)

No wind, no rain,

the tree

just fell, as a piece of fruit does.

But no, not fruit. Not ripe.

Not fell.

It broke. It shattered.

One cone's 

addition of resinous cell-sap,

one small-bodied bird

arriving to tap for a beetle.

It shattered.

What word, what act,

was it we thought did not matter?

-Jane Hirshfield

Snow

Snow

 

Little soul,

for you, too, 

death is coming.

 

Was there something

you thought

you needed to do?

 

Snow

does not walk into a room

 

and wonder

 

why.

-Jane Hirshfield