Thank you, Michelle Barnes for hosting this week. Be sure to find her at Today’s Little Ditty and discover what poetry treasure she has in store for Poetry Friday.
Just a few haiku to share this week. The one below inspired by a tree near my home. What caused its unusual split? Weather? I can’t explain this strange pine tree. But it grows on and I see hope in what the tree becomes.
I’ve been feeling more nervous about the next few months. We will be changed by pandemic, that’s for certain, and I hope for the good. I feel fortunate to have a steady governor, Andrew Cuomo, who gives a thorough briefing every day. He usually talks about building back and building better. I’m hoping for positive change.
My son in New York City is doing well and getting through the worst of it. I read the New Yorker Magazine to see what’s going on in the city. Here in Syracuse, there is less virus, but everyone is still staying in, wearing masks when they are out, and thinking of others. I’ve been making bread, like so many others on Poetry Friday. I have these to show for it:
Below are a few haiku inspired from vignettes I read in New Yorker. I feel so much gratitude, for all the essential workers who are cleaning subways, delivering food, caring for the sick, teaching, doing so many different jobs, while my job is to stay safe at home.
NEW YORK May 2020 Job over for now. Seventy five cents in bank, will stimulus come? Brighten Beach high-rise. Sunrise over glistening waves. Ambulance sirens. At the reservoir, Central Park runners in masks, slow down, keep distant. Medical students graduate a month early, to do what they can. Nurses, exhausted return home after long shifts faces creased by masks. ©Janice Scully 2020
I’d like to share a poem my Stephen Crane. The “I” of the poem is a free thinker.
"Think as I think," said a man by Stephen Crane "Think as I think," said a man, "or you are abominably wicked; You are a toad." And after I had thought of it, I said, "I will, then, be a toad.
Free thinking is best informed by science these days. Stay well and keep writing in spite of the distractions.