I just got home from a beautiful and extraordinary event, hosted by Maria Popova of Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings) fame. It was a night of science and poetry and a little music and a lot of eclipse anticipation and somehow the way it all came together was enough to make a person weep.

It was one of those nights where you realize what a tiny miniscule amount of knowledge you really possess but instead of feeling dumb, you just feel awestruck.

We are in the path of totality tomorrow. We don’t know if it will be too cloudy to see the subtle shifting of the eclipse over time. We don’t know if we’ll be standing in the spring heat or the soaking rain. We don’t know what the birds will do when it grows dark, or the dogs, or the babies. We don’t know anything, really. Isn’t it amazing?

What must the moon think
on the eve of the eclipse
all of us, watching

#lizsharespoems
#30daysofhaiku
#nationalpoetrymonth

“Come out of your shell!”
“I’m just barely hanging on…”
Friends give their friends space

#lizsharespoems
#30daysofhaiku
#nationalpoetrymonth

Beans like beady eyes –
even ground down and worn out
they’re sharp, they mean it

#lizsharespoems
#30daysofhaiku
#nationalpoetrymonth

Broken-footed spouse
brings me love and birthday blooms
all via Door Dash!

Oh, what am I grateful for today? SO MUCH!
These gorgeous tulips… my husband, healing… delivery services… and having lived another year with health and love at hand. Whew… xoxoxo

#lizsharespoems
#30daysofhaiku
#nationalpoetrymonth

A humble stem dons
this floral fascinator:
I blush, swoon, curtsy

#lizsharespoems
#30daysofhaiku
#nationalpoetrymonth

For those of you just catching up with the fact that it’s even April, welcome and wow are you in good company. Blame it on the leap year/time change/eclipse/fool’s day, but who knows what way is even up anymore???

Enter… haiku!

This is my 15th year of writing a haiku everyday in April and there have been a lot of benefits of the practice, but chief among those is the utter presence it offers. Who doesn’t need a nudge to pause, draw in, and pay attention?

This year I’m writing about something grateful for each day. Please join me in doing the same or your own variation, using the hashtags below, so that when May arrives we will really know it! And without further ado, here’s haiku #2, with gratitude for last night’s rain.

Each leaf’s pearly gloss
A glistening confetti
Celebrating life

#lizsharespoems
#30daysofhaiku
#nationalpoetrymonth

It’s that time of year again, friends!

Happy National Poetry Month and more specifically, Happy Haiku-ing! This is my 15th year straight of writing a haiku every day in April and, as always, I invite you to join me for as many of those as you’d like! You might remember that last year’s theme was scientific processes, so my haiku were quite specific — glaciation, reproduction, evaporation. This year I’m staying a little looser and will just be writing, each day, on something I’m grateful for.

Starting, broadly, with spring:

Spring snowstorms give way
to warmth, pollen, pink blossoms
It’s flip flop weather!

#LizSharesPoems
#NationalPoetryMonth
#30daysofhaiku

NOTES:
— More on the specifics of haiku in the next couple of days but suffice it to say that if you’re writing three lines of observation you’re within shouting distance.
— Feel free to use the same hashtags I always use so I can follow you as you write!
— This year I’m sharing on my blog, facebook and instagram

Hello, friends!

This month our challenge was to pen a pantoum and — the only other rule — it had to include or feature an animal. Some of us used some version of this utterly lovely prompt by Pádraig Ó Tuama to get started, some of us used some version of this generator to get organized.

I drafted two — one about an owl (or rather, the absence of an owl — we didn’t get an owl in our box this spring!) and one about our dog who is, in his dotage, increasingly and utterly terrified of thunder. The dog won out this time around. And let’s face it… he usually does.

Busy week here so I’m definitely calling this a work-in-progress still, but here’s where it stands today:

Necessary and Too Much
By Liz Garton Scanlon

Forget the radar, storms bloom like magic
Disembodied over the aquifer
Each spring, these surprises are inevitable
But the dog quakes like bones of an old house

Things can be necessary and too much
Each spring, these surprises are inevitable
No thank you, we want to say but don’t
Forget the radar, storms bloom like magic

For more pantoums, visit:
Sara
Tricia
Tanita
Mary Lee
Kelly
Laura

And, bonus, our very own Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect is hosting Poetry Friday!

This month, my poetry sisters and I decided on epistolary poems — poems written in the form of letters, diary entries, text messages, and the like. And (because February) we thought, why not make them love letters or Valentines?

When we met over Zoom to get ourselves started, I thought I was going to write several short poems, all in the voices of the lovers (the dog lover, the sports team lover, the lover of sushi or space or Taylor Swift) — because of how language is specific and personal and contextualized in cool and important ways. So a poem to a dog is going to be ever so different than a poem to the Packers or Yankees — all of them wholly unique and special.

But in the end, all that fell away and what kept coming up for me was the actual writing of letters, the actual function of writing instead of speaking, the fact that for so many of us the written word is not just tender or loving, but necessary — the only way.

So, sorry to the dog lovers and falling star followers among us. This is quieter and simpler and more general, maybe, than all of that…

Oh, Dear One,

I am asking
which of us
will be unraveled,
will come undone?

_______________________________________________________________________________________
For more love letters, go to:
Kelly
Tanita
Laura
Sara
Mary-Lee
Tricia

Poetry Friday this week is being hosted by Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference.

PS: Would you like to write with us next month? In March, we are writing Pantoums and all that we ask is that your poem includes, refers to, or incorporates an animal! Fun, right? See you then!

Hello, friends. I couldn’t be gladder to be back with my Poetry Sisters (and you all!) for another year of poetry prompts. We are kicking off 2024 with ekphrastic poems, inspired by the truly incredible paper artistry performed by Roberto Benavidez. His sculptures are, in fact, piñatas but are so exquisite (and imaginative) (and otherworldly) that surely, I thought, they’re never actually hung and hit, right? Well, sometimes they are, and what that says about the magic of transformation (last year’s theme dies hard!) and the necessary willingness of any creator to make and then let go? I am agog.

I fear my rather last minute poem comes nowhere near to living up to the inspiration, but what a lovely rabbit hole this has been to stumble upon. Hope you enjoy the exploration of his work as much I have.

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A post shared by Roberto Benavidez 🌈 (@roberto_benavidez)

A Tree Takes Flight
Inspired by the Piñata work of Roberto Benavidez

The solid promise
of a tree, felled
and pulped and
pressed into paper

lavish, beak open
in song and then
in one swing,
taking flight

See the other poems here:
Laura
Tanita
Mary Lee
Tricia
Sara

And thank you to Susan at Chicken Spaghetti for hosting Poetry Friday today!

Oh, and join us next month if you’d like — we’ll be writing epistolary poems that are (in some form or another) love letters or Valentines! Be safe and well, all — and see you then!