Haiku 27 — April 27, 2025

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Look at this little slip of a thing who joined me on my stroll around the neighborhood today (until she turned around and trotted home). It was just after I’d been introduced to the sweetest old Chesapeake Bay retriever with rheumy eyes, and right before I met a woman pressing seaglass into wet concrete to make a stepping stone. I love the things people and their pets get up to.

Haiku 27
April 27, 2025

A cat joined my walk
Like a parenthetical
(and made it mean more)

 

#lizsharespoems
#30daysofhaiku
#NationalPoetryMonth

Poetry Project — April, 2025

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This month we used vintage photographs as our jumping off point for writing ekphrastic poems. There were no other rules at all, except that we are using this overarching (underlying?) theme of conversation this year.

My photograph is one my maternal grandfather took of me as a toddler. I’m walking on the beach, alongside Lake Michigan, and he’s up on the bank. Some other adult — probably my mother — is surely just out of the frame, but you’d never know it. I’d never know it.

When I look at this photograph I think, I always knew how to be alone.

My poem, a villanelle, became a conversation between me and my child-self, obviously. But also, maybe, between me and my grandfather. I’m grateful to him for capturing this. For capturing me.

(PS this is still a draft but it’s been A WEEK, and it’s Friday already, so I’ll post what I’ve got and life goes on…)

The Little Girl We See
By Liz Garton Scanlon

She doesn’t know yet who she’ll be
The clock is started, limbs mid-stride
The little girl we see is me

Loved and unguarded equally
A certain dreaminess abides
She doesn’t know yet who she’ll be

Made precious here, by lens and tree
(Though we all know the frame is wide)
The little girl we see is me

When left alone like this, she’s free
A rolling swash line by her side
She doesn’t know yet who she’ll be

Unhindered, still, by some degree
She tugs her strap up, does not hide
The little girl we see is me

Just strolling with Calliope –
already I’m amazement’s bride!
I don’t know yet just who I’ll be
This little girl we see me

 

Read the others here:
Laura
Sara
Tricia
Mary Lee
Tanita

Poetry Friday is at My Juicy Little Universe this week!

And if you’d like to write with us in May, we’re writing Golden Shovel poems, using a line (any line) from Elizabeth Bishop’s Letter to NY. Join us?

Haiku 22 — April 22, 2025

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This morning I encountered a rather magnificent turtle with a wee plant growing on its back! Alas, it was crossing a busy trail and headed away from where it belonged so I lifted it up gently, turned it back around, and hoped for the best.

Haiku 22
April 22, 2025

World-bearing turtle
Let me point you toward water
where you’ll make a splash

 

#lizsharespoems
#30daysofhaiku
#NationalPoetryMonth

Haiku 21 — April 21, 2025

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While I was in Wisconsin this weekend, things were inching ever closer toward some semblance of spring. It was still grey, and damp, and chilly. The trees were still bare.

But the cord of wood outside my parents house had dwindled to nearly nothing, so in a spontaneous ritual that felt both grand and ancient, my dad decided to burn what was left — all in one fell swoop — putting an end to winter.

The fire blazed for awhile, and the house got so hot we had to open the doors. But the wood is gone, the tarp is put away, the buds are pushing up through the warming soil. Spring always, eventually, arrives.

Haiku 21
April 21, 2025

And it’s nearly May –
All winter’s wood burned to ash
Daffodils burn bright

 

#lizsharespoems
#30daysofhaiku
#NationalPoetryMonth