Mostly Poetry for Children
Remember the Women’s March six years ago? It was the largest crowd I’d ever seen.
Women's March, Washington D.C. On cold trampled grass-- girls and women protest trampled rights to come. © Janice Scully 2023
Haiku master Issa (1762-1826) wrote this:
In crevice after crevice on the cliff face-- wild azaleas. by Issa
My haiku today is inspired by the above haiku by Issa and this California photo:
December, Santa Cruz.
Scattered on ledges and lulled by the sea-- cormorants. © Janice Scully
Happy Easter and National Poetry Month!
California Dreaming?
Several songs come to mind at the Santa Cruz Pier.
Santa Cruz Pier The Pacific swirls and roars. Seals sleep, well fed, exhausted, under the boardwalk. © Janice Scully 2023
Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by Margaret Simon on her blog Reflections on the Teche, Here. What is Poetry Friday? Find out HERE.
On her blog, Margaret will be posting the next line of the Poetry Friday PROGRESSIVE POEM, now in delightful full swing. Thank you for hosting!
Many individual poets celebrating National Poetry Month. For example, I am posting a new haiku a day and today that will be #7.
To find out which poets are doing what on Poetry Friday during National Poetry Month, click HERE. You will find a round up of NPM blog events on Jama’s blog, Jama’s Alphabet Soup.
As I thought about the haiku for this post, I remembered this is the week when Cherry Blossoms bloom in Washington D.C. I thought they were breathtaking to look out when I lived there. The trees were a gift in 1912 from Japan to the United States. More about this interesting history HERE.
This picture gives you an idea, only a rough feel for what it’s like to walk among so many cherry blossoms.
Spring in Washington D.C. April visitors— pink clouds of cherry blossoms in sky and water. © Janice Scully 2023
Happy National Poetry Month!
San Francisco December 11, 2022
Hungry pelicans hunt fish, turtles, and tadpoles-- coastal water fest. © Janice Scully 2022
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
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
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
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
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!