Broad leaves, raindrops pooled,
funneling later to roots
thirsty in the sun
Thunderstorms puddle
watery lakes on broad leaves,
Nature’s reservoirs
Deep throats open to
botanical champagne flutes
drink a dewy toast
The scene a suburban lawn
a row of geese
waddling slowly across the grass
all suddenly freeze
and time stops. Continue reading
April – what a month. I ushered it in with my annual April 1 (bunny bunny) reading of T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” then spent almost the entire remainder of the month reading and listening (and reading and listening, and reading and listening) to Leonard Cohen’s last book, The Flame. At month’s end, I had read the tactile book twice and listened to it on CD at least four times, if not five (starting in March). It was worth every minute. In between, I got to see Andrea Gibson perform, and read a lot of other poetry by a wide range of authors. I read poetry every single day of April, and it was a blessing. I also wrote poetry every day, although not all of it got published here. Here are all the pieces that did. There also were pieces I started and am still working on, pieces I discarded, and little snippets that found life only on my Twitter stream. Case in point:
April Sunrise when even the treetops don Easter bonnets and parade their new finery for all to see, dazzling yellow-green spring foliage glowing high against the western sky
— Kim Kishbaugh (@kkish) April 27, 2019
On the last day of National Poetry Month—today—I turned my attention finally away from Leonard Cohen and listened to a CD of e.e. cummings reading his own work. Undeterred by the fact that he was a pretty terrible reader (or this was one truly substandard performance), I was happily reminded how much I love his poem “somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond.” Continue reading
The grebe builds its nest
in a compost heap,
a basket of dead and rotting plants
sending up ripples of heat
to warm the eggs.
My mother might not have known this
when she built a compost pile
below our rabbit hutch. Continue reading
I’ve never tried that chocolate angel food recipe
but each time I see it in my cookbook
I think of you
trailing Grandma Fay around her kitchen
writing down her every move
forcing her to measure ingredients
she could gauge by sight or feel
getting in her way
so you could replicate her result
transform the mediocrity of your own first effort
(the mediocrity of her written recipe)
into the mouthmelt you knew this cake to be. Continue reading