tanka – SALT CITY VERSE

“Hissing” in the Yard

Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted my the talented Marcie Atkins Herehttps://www.marcieatkins.com.

Salt City Verse still exists!

I have been away for a while, my life has been busy with many good things. In May my husband, Bart, and I were in San Francisco visiting our new grandson, Tommy, who is now already seven months old! We stayed through June.

He’s a miracle to us. He can turn over and grab things and hold on with his strong little hands. He laughs and eats. We are home now in New York State and his other grandparents are visiting him and we wait for the daily videos that tell us what they are up to on the West Coast.

But it’s nice to be home back to Upstate New York warm weather, and my books and friends. I hope to be writing more regularly. Also, inspired by many on Poetry Friday, I have been trying to paint with water colors and have found some YouTube videos to help me. It’s really fun!

As many do, I love to listen to the cicadas hiding out in the trees on warm summer evenings. The sound surrounded me this Wednesday evening.

Like in the Song “The Hissing of Summer Lawns” by Joni Mitchell, cicadas hiss, don’t they? You can find her song, one of my favorites, on YouTube. For some reason I had difficulty embedding the video here. Sorry.

Anyway, it was an incredibly loud the sound! I happened to be searching for something to inspire a poem and surrounded as I was, this tanka came to mind.

SUMMER EVENING IN UPSTATE NEW YORK 

Cicadas hissing.
My yard a colosseum of trees.
I could be in Rome;
but no amphitheater,
stars the only scheduled show.

©Janice Scully 2025

The Colosseum in Rome

The Hollywood Bowl, I suppose, could have come to mind as it is a huge space full of sound. But wherever I imagined myself, the cicadas, like many natural events, transported me.

I look forward to reading your poems this weekend. Thank you, Marcie, for hosting.

Unicorns and Narwhals

Welcome to Poetry Friday, this week hosted by poet Laura Purdie Salas, HERE. Thank you, Laura, for hosting.

What is Poetry Friday. Find out HERE.

I’d like to celebrate a museum today: The Cloisters, in New York City.

My husband, Bart, and I happened to be in the NY suburbs visiting family and on a Sunday morning, drove across the GW bridge to one of our favorite places. It is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and sits in northern Manhattan, close to the bridge, in Fort Tryon Park.

The museum displays medieval art including the seven Unicorn tapestries, woven in the late 1400’s.

The unicorn, of course if a legendary creature with a single horn protruding from it’s head. To some, the unicorn is the symbol of Christ and its pursuit and capture a metaphor for the crucifixion and resurrection. For others, the tapestries are explained by some as an allegory of marriage, the devotion and subjugation of love.

However you interpret them, through Christianity or culture, the tapestries are amazing. For instance, according to Wikipedia, in the background are 100 different plants, 85 identified by botanists. That’s a lot of detail! At the Wikipedia site, you can view the seven tapestries.

 Unicorn in Captivity, the last of the series of seven tapestries.

I always learn something at every museum. One thing I learned at the Cloisters was that the tusk of the narwhal whale was thought my many to be that of a unicorn.

Such tusks, ten feet in length, when found were safeguarded in churches from London to Cracow. One such tusk, in France, was said to have been given to Charlemagne, according to a museum plaque. Other prized unicorn horns were gifted to San Marco of Venice, Philip the Good, the Duke of Burgundy and other deserving fellows.

A Narwhal tusk or, if you prefer, a unicorn horn, displayed in the corner of the tapestry room

What do you think? Is it love/marriage or religion, or today, government gone amok that has placed this beautiful unicorn inside a fence? Here’s a tanka:

I WONDER

Love or religion?
A lovely animal fenced--
medieval, me thinks.
Who made the fancy collar?
Why fence an innocent in?

 ©Janice Scully 2025

Image from Freepic

Thank you for hosting, Laura!

Welcoming a New Baby

I have been away from Poetry Friday since August and am delighted to be posting again. I was worried I’d be too rusty or my website wouldn’t know me. But now as I write, it seems like I never left.

My little grandson was born in a big rush two days before Christmas, eight weeks early, miles away in California and the sea.

So my husband Bart and I left snowy New York

for chilly northern California.

In the December Christmas Poetry Swap organized by Tabetha Yeatts, I received this lovely poem written by Tabatha. She knew I was awaiting my first grandchild.

EMERGENCE
      for Janice by Tabatha Yeatts

A New Baby,
like a sky vibrant
with the northern lights,

draws us together 
where we gaze 
exhilarated

upon this gift--
The world,
Illuminated.

I love “like a sky vibrant.” Every child is so different and each “illuminates” the world in a new way.

But now, on January 31st, Tommy Bartholomew has been with us a month. He was born quite early, and we were so worried! But thankfully, he is fine, and will be able to leave the hospital soon.

I wrote this in response to Tabatha’s poem:

FOR TOMMY B. 

we will watch; 
wait each day
as this new star
marks his path.

Will we understand
what he brings 
from so far away?

We will make sure he knows
he is part of a family
and we have been waiting
breathlessly to meet him
 
in our world of oceans,
rocks, and endless sky.


©Janice Scully 2025

POETRY SISTERS prompt:

Tricia, one of the POETRY SISTERS suggested we write a tanka followed by a haiku in response to it. It was written in honor of the doctors and nurses in the N.I.C.U at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. It was a wonderfully supportive place, kind and professional.

THE N.I.C.U. December 23, 2024

in between two worlds
a tiny boy, eyes still shut,
cannot leave here yet.
kind nurses swaddle and feed,
keep him warm and safe.


sudden arrival!
doctors hustled late at night,
work that never ends.

© Janice Scully 2025

I’ve anticipated claiming a new little word this year and I think it has to be HOPE. Hope for all babies, all families, hope for our country. I’ll see what I can come up with. Happy Belated New Year, everyone!

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.

Today’s Tetanus, Diphtheria and Pertussis vaccines given together

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.

Fits and Starts of Spring

It’s Poetry Friday! Thank you Molly at Nix the Comfort Zone for hosting. Stop by and when you do, check out her photographs of birds and much more on her previous post as well. They are quite beautiful.

I have two poems to share today, but just as I was searching for another poet’s work to spice up my post I received this card from a second grade student named Andrew from the Poetry Project in Happy Valley, Oregon. It made my day that had included a brief local power outage while I was about to put bread in my electric oven. Anyway, all that resolved and I can’t wait to share Andrew’s poem! Was it a coincidence that my husband and I had pizza for dinner?

Spring is coming to Syracuse, N.Y. in fits and starts. My forsythias this morning were blanketed overnight:

Change of course is the only thing we can depend on. It comes no matter what, and is determined as a main character, in a middle grade novel. Strong and persistent.

In many things, there is no clean break with what came before. Think seasons, kids growing up and adults aging. Change reveals our humble place on the planet, our part in something bigger.

The seasons here in Syracuse change like the flow of cold molasses. Seasons moves forward as if ambivalent. Spring to summer, summer to fall, fall to winter, and winter to spring takes weeks, even months.

So, with all the time I now suddenly have on my hands, I’ve been watching closely out my window and on long walks, spring approaching with its fits and starts, stepping forward and then backward. Below is a tanka and a short free verse poem inspired by this week’s weather.

SPRING CAUTION 

Trees wear snow today,
coating limbs way past elbows,
halting the lilacs.
I suspect spring was frightened
by yesterday's hyacinths. 

© Janice Scully 2020

And another inspired by a sideways windy day this week:

WINDY TUESDAY

The wind ebbed
and flowed through the trees
like a witch
with lips pursed blowing,
cheeks big as balloons
starting and stopping,
unsure if she 
wanted company or
to scare everyone away.

© Janice Scully 2020

I hope everyone is enjoying the amazing progressive poem organized by Margaret Simon at Reflections of the Teche. It’s been really interesting to see the choices the poets are making. Thank you, Molly, for hosting Poetry Friday this week!