The assignment: Limericks. Three of them. About birds or bees or both.
Let me tell you. It is hard not to be silly or bawdy in this form. Plus, you feel as if you should be drinking a Guinness while composing. Oh, well. It’s summer vacation. Let the fun begin!
Hummers
Sugar water dyed a deep red
as if Grandmother’s peonies bled
tempting jewel-hearted birds
whose hearts beat in thirds
to gather outside of our shed.
The Grackle
Everyone mocks the grackle
all mangy feathers and cackle
he swoops at our food
is nothing but rude
a pigeon, but truly ramshackle.
The Birds and the Bees
The bees and the birds coexist
in a sweetness that’s hard to resist.
When the meadow’s in bloom
we all can presume
that even the bugs will be kissed.
The assignment (from Sara this month): To make a toast!
The only rules: The toast has to begin and end with the same two words.
I’ve made toasts. At both weddings and funerals. At the occasional event or gala. Toasts are something writers are sometimes asked to make and something humans are sometimes moved to offer up.
So what’s the problem? I ran out of time. April was National Poetry Month so I was fixated on haiku. And then upon my own work and submissions. And then on my students’ work. My daughter’s exams. My other daughter’s dive meet. You get the idea. And suddenly here we are on the first Friday of the month.
Time to make a toast, I think. About time, I think. And why not, I think, write it in Fibonacci style, in which syllables tick out like moments upon a page?Yes! I think.
See, just a couple of days ago, I read this beautiful article about the intersection of math and poetry. Add time to that equation and we’ve got one big swirling ball of universal magic! Right? Well, I mean, I have no idea if anything magical actually ended up on the page but who cares because it was fun! So, here goes. A toast!
A Toast to Time in Fibonacci Sequence
A
toast
to time
ticking by
perishable time
racing like heart palpitations
rushing past this daughter’s drawing of a yellow sun.
A
toast
to time
or rather
an apology
because it is me ticking by,
rushing past this drawing, past this perfect yellow sun.
A
toast
to time
a promise
a promise to stop
blaming, ticking, rushing right past
my daughter drawing, this yellow sun, the perfect kiss.
A
toast
to time
generous
both spacious and full
ready at a moment’s notice
to spread out like waxy rays upon a blank white page.
A
toast
to time
both promise
and apology
both opening kitchen curtains
and also doing nothing but this, making a toast.
There have been some Aprils where 1/3 of my haiku have been devoted to my dog.
It makes sense. I spend a lot of time with him. A lot of outside time.
And, dogs are all about moments. They are a furry, four-legged lesson in staying present.
But this April, for whatever reason, I neglected to write much about him.
In some ways, that worries me. Was I rushing? Did I miss what was right in front of me?
Even in the midst of the yogic practice that is haiku?
Or maybe he was just further ahead of me than usual, deeper in the woods and off the trail.
Whatever the reason for the neglect, let me rectify it on this, the last day of April, in my final haiku.
We ask him to wait,
food untouched, for a moment.
Eyes hunger for yes.
Thanks, everybody. I’ve loved connecting with you through haiku this month. I’ll miss you as we all move ahead through our own days. May our own hungers be answered with yes, yes, yes….
Today I watched my younger daughter — the one I used to call “Small One” in all my online posts — the one who is officially, and will always be, my baby — fight fires. No, really. She is in training to be a certified firefighter and EMT by the time she graduates from high school. So she and her cohort gather on the occasional Saturday and practice connecting and priming firehoses, battering down locked doors, donning oxygen masks, entering dark houses, dragging victims out into fresh air. It is thrilling and impressive and kind of scary to watch.
You can scale the walls
break the windows, staunch the blood.
You can fight fire.
I can’t believe it’s nearly the end of April.
I can’t believe we’re a third of the way through 2018.
I can’t believe I’m 51.
I can’t believe it’s almost summer.
I can’t believe my girls are grown.
I can’t believe how much there is to do.
I can’t believe how much I’ve done.
I can’t believe how time flies.
I can’t believe how time stands still.
The bridge holds morning
safely, like a turtle shell.
I watch it pass by.
No picture today. It was just that kind of day.
An at-least-we-all-made-it-through-to-the-end-still-alive kind of day.
A Thursday-that-felt-more-like-a-Monday kind of day.
You’ve had that kind of day, right?
Still, there was time to scribble down a haiku.
I’ll call that a success.
Alarm rang early
and all day aspired toward
jarred spaghetti sauce.
One of the ways my younger daughter and I are a good fit for each other?
Cards. Well, actually, lots of other games, too, but cards are most often at the ready.
During this year of nearly empty-nesting, we sometimes make-up for empty spot at the dinner table by playing cards as we eat. It’s not fancy, but we don’t care….
I was sure I’d won,
flicking cards down fast as wings.
You’re a lucky draw.
