San Francisco December 11, 2022
Hungry pelicans hunt fish, turtles, and tadpoles-- coastal water fest. © Janice Scully 2022
Tag: Haiku
Day #5 National Poetry Month
Details outside my window:
4/5/23 7AM A gray house through trees, obscured by brown mottled trunks-- a crow darting past. © Janice Scully 2023
Day #4 National Poetry Month
The daffodils in my yard are paused here, on the verge of a full-bore celebration of NPM.
4/4/23 8AM
daffodil chorus
in the cool splash-splash of rain
feet anchored in mud
© Janice Scully 2023
Day #3 National Poetry Month
The return of birdsong marks spring mornings in Central New York.
I often hear the Cardinal. Click on this link to hear it, too.
4/3/23 it breaks the silence the sudden chirp of birdsong sun lights my window ©Janice Scully 2023
Day #2 of National Poetry Month 2023
A gift from my neighbors: Home made maple syrup, almost gone.
4/2/23 sap flowing in trees drips and drops into buckets— a gift of sweetness. ©Janice Scully 2023
Water and Heat
Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by Mary Lee HERE. She has turned one of Lindas “clunkers” into delightful verse about green beans. Thank you, Mary Lee, for hosting!
Today I sat on my porch with a glass of iced coffee, water dripping from the glass, thinking about summer and the 92 degree heat, listening to the sounds of insects, imagining the heat rippling upward from my suburban street.
The heavy air bore down and the loud chirp of the crickets or cicadas in the trees did too, in peaked crescendoes.
I documented the day in haiku:
HEAT rippling off asphalt practically invisible— searching for water WATER In all things alive. Clear, cool, modest miracle quietly cycles. SUMMER SOUNDS Sweltering back porch. Leaves wave as cricket sounds flow like ocean waters.
I wanted to celebrate the living things around me and the interdependence in nature that supports us.
Everything everyone does, day to day, involves water. Water is part of all that is alive and beautiful in the world. I am grateful for heat, too, appreciating as the temps rise how it is moderated so it doesn’t hurt us, balanced by water in lakes, rivers and oceans.
Below is Skaneateles Lake in the Fingerlakes, where I can practically see the water cycling and cooling the air. I recently read how, in the 1800’s, as America grew westward, acres of swamps and wetlands, considered useless and even dangerous, were destroyed to create farmland. White settlers moving out west didn’t appreciate the role wetlands play as thermostat. We know more now about the need for wetlands.
Skaneateles Lake in the Fingerlakes of New York State
On my road trip to California earlier this year, I passed through South Dakota, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, and saw many hot places with few trees, endless rocks, and little water, like the Badlands National Park in South Dakota, or parts of the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.
The Badlands
The Petrified Forest National Park
So I’m celebrating water and I know I’m not the only one feeling the urgency to protect our environment.
Thank you Mary Lee for hosting!
Two Haiku and Two Novels
Welcome to Poetry Friday! Today we are hosted by Carmela at Teaching Authors. Here. Stop by and see what she has for us today.
What is Poetry Friday? Find out more HERE.
I didn’t post last week. Things have been hectic but I’ve been reading and there are two novels I’d like to share them with you.
But first, an haiku.
The following greeted me in my in-box from Poets.org this week.
ONE FLOWER by Jack Kerouac 1922-1969 One flower on the cliffside Nodding at the canyon
This little verse captures a moment, and the beauty in it for me is the image of something small and beautiful, calm, simply there, and brave in the face of an abyss, here in the form of a canyon. It seemed a perfect beginning to this post as both novels are about courage. They are both written in prose.
The first is a fabulous middle grade novel entitled ONE SMALL HOP, by author Madelyn Rosenberg, published in 2021 by Scholastic Press.
The abyss in this novel, like the canyon in Kerouac’s haiku, is climate change. The main Character, a seventh grade boy named Ahab, and his friends live in a dark futuristic setting. The young characters in this novel their reality head on.
Most animals are extinct. The sea has risen, the water is toxic and children live inside most of the time. But when a lone male frog is discovered by one of Ahab’s friends, the kids focus on the possibility of saving the frog species. To do it, they must smuggle a frog across toxic terrain into Canada, where they have located a lone female frog. Will the kids introduce the frogs and create a new future?
I expected to find this book devoid of hope. Read it and I promise you will be uplifted by Rosenberg’s story and humor.
The other novel I read is HEARTS UNBROKEN, a YA novel by bestselling author Cynthia Leitich Smith. Like her main character Louise, She is a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.
Louise sits on the canyon/ abyss of racism. She is working on the school newspaper. Her little brother, also Muskcogee, has been cast as the Tin Man in the school play, The Wizard of Oz, and a black girl, a talented singer, has been casted as Dorothy.
When the wrath of the parents in this mostly white school come down against the casting of the play, (Obviously, complained white parents, they got the parts only because they were minorities). Louise and her brother get caught up in the swirl of anger which leads to a grave threat of physical danger.
But Smith has crafted a page turner and we see believable conflict play out in several compelling story lines as truth battles misinformation and prejudice. Readers will see, and understand, through this story, the hatred all minorities are up against day after day in America.
One last haiku.
SUMMER READING On a beach, at home, or shadowed by deep green leaves, stories fill the hush. ©Janice Scully 2022
Thank you, Carmela, for hosting.
Poetry Gifts
Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by the talented Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Here. Stop by, she always has wonderful poetry to share.
And so do I today. Thank you Jone Rush MacCullough for organizing the postcard swap, to celebrate the New Year with poems. Here are two lovely gifts I received this week. This postcard was sent by Mary Lee:
On the back was this haiku:
each flame provides light we illuminate this world us all--together Mary Lee Hahn
Maybe Mary Lee is referring to Poetry Friday bloggers. She could be. I’m so grateful to feel welcome and part of this group.
And from Linda Mitchell came a Christmas ornament inspired by one of Sara Teasdale’s poems:
There will Be Stars There will be stars over the place forever; Though the house we loved and the street we loved are lost, Every time the earth circles her orbit On the night the autumn equinox is crossed, Two stars we knew, poised on the peak of mid-night Will reach their zenith; stillness will be deep; There will be stars over the place forever, There will be stars forever, while we sleep. by Sara Teasdale Dark of the Moon (1926)
On the sky colored star-shaped ornament that Linda made is a haiku inspired by “There will be stars.”
stillness will be deep stars forever while we sleep circles on the night Linda Mitchell
Linda also added another poem:
Between joy and sorrow, all I need to do is look up to know the stars are above you too. Remember to look up. Happy New Year! 2022 Linda Mitchell
I was so thrilled to get these in my mailbox and so grateful.
No matter what happens this year, there will be stars.
Stay well, Everyone. Thank you, Carol, for hosting Poetry Friday!
Beginning
Welcome to Poetry Friday! This week we are hosted by artist and poet, Michelle Kogan, HERE. Stop by and check out what she has for us this week. Thank you Michelle for hosting!
First of all, the tragic school shooting has to be acknowledged. I’m praying for those families that are experiencing the unimaginable, for the children crying for their lost friends.
This week, on and off at my computer, I have been thinking about beginnings. After all, 2022 is about to begin and none too soon.
The calendar, of course, is totally empty. There is no choice but to arrive at January and see what will happen when we get there. Everything has a beginning. New Years Day is my favorite day of the year because it’s a beginning and I am always hopeful.
New buds on branches Full moon rises in the sky our calendar world. © Janice Scully 2021
© Janice Scully 2021
I have been writing poems on the prompt “beginnings” for a submission to an on-line journal. Human beings are always beginning something, and maybe children have even more beginnings in their daily life. I don’t know but it seems they must. But adults have more begin agains.
I didn’t submit this poem. I revised it this morning and thought it might speak to teachers.
BEGINNER
Once, you didn’t know
how to read.
but you
learned words,
turned pages.
One new word
led to another
and soon you read
sentences.
Which led to reading
your first book
and the next,
which is how it is
for everyone.
At the beginning
is where everyone
In the whole world
begins.
© Janice Scully 2021
I hope you find hope and joy in your week. Begin or begin again a few books.
Lastly, I have had good news this week. A short non-fiction essay I wrote from my childhood entitled SWIMMING TO PENNSYLVANIA, was published on line at RavensPerch.com here. I was thrilled. The piece began as a monologue for my playwriting group, but I turned it into an essay.
Thank you, Michelle, for hosting.
Remembering Diptheria
Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by Catherine HERE. Thank you, Catherine for hosting! Be sure to stop by to see what she has for us this week.
What is Poetry Friday? Find out more about it HERE.
The hesitancy surrounding the Corona Virus vaccine is discouraging as is the lack of understanding and respect towards our public health officials who are trying to get America well and out of our hospitals. No one wants to be in the ICU, but too many people end up there when they could have been vaccinated and out and about living their lives.
Trees wave in a breeze, sunshine, blue sky, stars at night-- viewed from ICUs. Nurses put in overtime. Sick patients lay bewildered. © Janice Scully 2021
So now is a good time to ponder the past.
In the October issue of Smithsonian Magazine is an article entitled “The Plague Among Children” by Dr. Perri Klass, who recently wrote a book entitled HOW SCIENCE AND PUBLIC HEALTH GAVE CHILDREN A FUTURE.
No one today remembers when Diphtheria was a plague in the United States. But in 1735, Noah Webster wrote, that from a town in New Hampshire, the disease “Gradually travelled southward, almost stripping the country of children . . . Many families lost three or four children–many lost all.”
Children quiet, hands still, whole families playing no more-- Diphtheria struck. © Janice Scully 2021
“Throat Distemper” as Diphtheria was called, created a thick crust in the throat of children and slowly suffocated them as parents watched.
Having seen this horror, one day in 1894, there was shouting and applause, hats tossed in the air at a convention of Doctors in Budapest. Dr. Roux had presented certain research findings: the discovery of an antitoxin that could save the lives of children with Diphtheria! It wasn’t a vaccine, but a treatment that saved a high percentage of children.
A vaccine was later developed that would stimulate in children antibody formation against the disease toxin and totally prevent the disease.
Diphtheria was essentially eradicated in America and those who created it were celebrated. Most doctors today have never seen a patient with diphtheria, but as of 2017, children in war-torn countries such as Yemen who are who not are getting preventive health care and vaccination, die from this disease.
The scientists who, through painstaking work, developed vaccines that prevent horrible suffering and death, need to be remembered. They need to be thanked. Gratitude for those to those who risked their own lives fighting disease is appropriate. Dr. Fauci lived through several epidemics and should be listened to.
Young people today have been educated by the pandemic. I hope they might be inspired by their experience to study science and public health. I know some will.
We eat sleep and work as if the past never was-- Leaves fall then winter. © Janice Scully 2021
Have a great day. Stay well. May everyone get vaccinated.