Haiku Challenge, Week Four

My final week's responses to the #30DaysOfHaikuChallenge (see week one for details).  Thewildwords.com/haiku|NicoleGulotta

22  made you laugh

mountain goats roaming 

Welsh streets—past the tattoo shop,

the solicitors

23   seasonal shifts

just this afternoon

a splendid purple iris

took us by surprise

sparrows flown elsewhere,

and the coastal rocks empty

of pelicans still

24  pile of papers

bills — ticket refunds —

a Cezanne postcard never 

sent — last year's flax seeds

ticket refunds, last

year's birthday card to answer,

obituary

limone, pesca,

nocciola—gelatos

in an old story

25  tea or coffee

well-loved coffee mug—

its lip chipped years ago now, 

but still soothing mine 

26  lighting a candle

orange, palo santo:

a steady flame to cleanse my

writing space of ghosts

smoked birch and amber:

a small prayer, like burning sage

for clarity, health

sandalwood and myrrh:

fragrant as smudging sage to

clear a house of ghosts

Cedarwood, lighted

to clarify my thinking,

consecrate my words

27  on the road

dog ears fly in bliss

from the car window, heeding

asphalt whispers, wind

dog ears streaming from

the open window, hearing

what, that I can't hear? 

28  breath

Each breath outside brims

with birdsong, iris petals,

softly soughing pine.

Inspiration is 

literally "breathing in."

I breathe deep, deeper.

gauzy lengths of sky,

silver-shot scraps of ocean—

breathing it all in

the stooped old man feeds

ducklings—calls them, breath whistling,

like the Pied Piper

so hard to breathe, through

these protective layers:  no

clean, heartening air 

                                                                                                                                                                                                             

29  on your street

the sound of bagpipes

gone by now, where the piper

walked past to cheer us

our poppy patch draws

bees, small dogs, those needing cheer,

an artist's easel

30  through the window  

a rake on gravel

smoothing, soothing, evening

roughed pathways gently

corrugated roof

rusted, as in Hilo rains,

hibiscus haunted

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Waterlily

Haiku Challenge, Week Three

My third week's responses to the #30DaysOfHaikuChallenge (see week one for details).  Thewildwords.com/haiku|NicoleGulotta

15  thoughts while cooking

Old desert healing:

red chile pods, ground fine, pure,

like artists' pigments.

childhood smells linger:

simmering meat, chopped garlic,

taco spices, joy

16 pets

little turtles kept

once, terribly fragile in

their stony green shells

17 front yard view

Chartreuse living room:

the hundred-and-two-year-old

artist's, our neighbor.

Blissful ravishment

of poppies, liquid sunbeams 

pooled in every one.

  

18  back yard view

two ducks follow a

stooped old man with walking sticks:

jubilant parade

19  thoughts while cleaning

Dustcloth in hand, I'm

taking time for things I love.

Candlestick, shell, drum. 

20  trees

morning rain blesses

every thirsty needle of

the Monterey pine

21  morning breakfast

apricot preserves

evoke the old tree shading

my childhood bedroom

Moroccan fried eggs

behind the big museum

one year in New York

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Wet Pine

Haiku Challenge, Week Two

My second week's responses to the #30DaysOfHaikuChallenge (see my previous post for details).  Thewildwords.com/haiku|NicoleGulotta

8  hope

Trusting sparrows slip

onto the deck, not doubting

seed will reappear.

9  someone you love

Feeding me oranges . . . 

Paul McCartney with bagpipes . . .

my sunny soulmate.

10  plant friends

Sage, blooming purple

on my sheltered deck, evokes

far Cretan hillsides.

Philodendron leaves

pivot toward the light, just

as my spirit does.

11  a photograph (mine of Canterbury)

old stone and blue glass

in the cloister once welcomed

"those who journey here"

12  something you long for

Wandering favorite

cities—abbeys, gardens, shops,

books full of old words . . .

Saints beckoning us,

and music, and gold-hearted 

beads—Murano glass.

the chilly church with 

Murano glass chandeliers,

prayers for boatmen, all

Gilded saints, cellos,

and strands of gold and green glass 

beads, carrying light.

Strands of green and gold

glass beads in lighted shops, once,

holding off the dark.

Hands making music,

shucking oysters, pouring rum—

old New Orleans, gone.

(feeling hugely nostalgic for our European travels, after watching Andrea Bocelli's Easter concert from the Duomo in Milan, and views of all the empty cities; also for Italian composers and opera singers from days gone by)

13  birds

an oriole comes—

some kind of wayward magic,

drawn here by a fluke

yellow oriole

appears unlooked for here—far 

from his desert haunts

yellow oriole

appears out of nowhere—chance

avian blessing

(some days are more indecisive than others)

14  on a walk

keeping my distance

from the dogs I always love

frisking around me

watching for swallows

over the coastal meadows,

weeks late to arrive

the coastal meadows

locked away now, just beyond

this adamant gate

Planting snapdragons,

clay pot between her bare feet, 

grandmother of three.

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Wild Iris

Haiku Challenge, Week One

I have accepted this invitation to write one haiku a day this month that celebrates poetry—

#30DaysOfHaikuChallenge

Thewildwords.com/haiku|NicoleGulotta

"This is an invitation to notice.  We're all moored in our homes and neighborhoods now—let's elevate the ordinary and find meaning in the mundane...."

I'm sharing my week, in haiku.  A kind of tiny journal, which has reminded me of my always wanting to add all of the detail, a wealth of reminiscences and trains of thought traversing whole countries.  And the 5-7-5 pattern doesn't come easily to me; it feels often clunky, arrhythmic.  But it it a meditative discipline, perhaps more so than any other, and I've always loved the haiku form when done right by others.

1.  through the window

iridescence steeps

from bathing pigeons—feathers

oozing purples, greens  

2.  around the house

Soft red flannel horse

sewed for a child with love, once,

pastured on a shelf.

3.  thoughts while driving

The ocean, dazzling,

impartially considers

dogs, dogwalkers, all.

4. nourishing meal

Potatoes simmer,

steaming the kitchen windows,

blurring what's outside.

5.  spring light

Rain-darkened morning.

What light there is, quicksilver,

pooled in the birdbath.

6. mediation on flowers

blue wisteria

throws itself wantonly off

the staid old gray deck

7. while folding laundry

spiteful fitted sheet

refuses to lie still, ends

as this runkled ball

 image:  Last Year's Blossoms, Christie B. Cochrell

Sea-swallowed

My short story "Sea-Swallowed," inspired by the shipwreck on the rocks at the end of our road a year or two ago, has been published in The Writers Circle Anthology 2, whose theme is Ends, by Canadian publisher Prime Press.

Stella, the heroine, lives close to here as well, and studies Ocean Sciences at UCSC, though her family's back at home in Wiltshire, England.  The shipwreck mirrors life-changes out of Stella's control.

"Watching the commotion as she waited on the bluff for Bengal—Benjie—her Cardigan Welsh Corgi with his brindle (tiger-striped) coat, for once supremely indifferent to the human events, she heard the awful grating, grinding of the hull against the rock the fishing boat was hung up on, the pitiless waves, onslaught after onslaught, breaking it to pieces.  The noise and morning cold and foretaste of fatality rasped on her tender skin, chafed even in her lambswool-hooded coat."

image:  trying to identify artist

The Seine at Vernonnet

Another of my poems, "The Seine at Vernonnet," appears in the Spring 2020 issue of Halcyon Days Magazine.

Along with the poem "Amandier en fleurs," in the Fall 2018 issue of Birdland Journal, and short prose pieces "Bonnard in the Alps" and "Studio with Mimosa" in The Ekphrastic Review (April 29 and May 11, 2019, respectively), this reflects my life-long love of artist Pierre Bonnard and the inspiration he offers.

Here, I write about the Bonnard

greens and oranges and 

moments of that rapturous blue 

I could drown in,

sometimes with a little boat.

image:  Pierre Bonnard, La risée sur la rivière, Christie's (but alas, not this Christie's!)

The Blessing of the Animals

My poem "The Blessing of the Animals" was just published in the Spring 2020 issue of Halcyon Days Magazine.

Here are a few lines from it:

And I see people coming up the path outside 

the ruddy brick church in the reverential sunlight, 

bringing their spaniels, their dim-sighted 

old Airedale terriers; one child and her father 

carrying between them a brown rabbit in a cage.

image:  Emmanuel Episcopal Church