I wrote my April 28th haiku in bed last night, just in the nick of time, and posted it on Instagram and facebook but not here. So, correcting that now!
Haiku 28
April 28
Squirrels deserve seed too
(I’m egalitarian)
They take a mile
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)
The best thing (the only decent thing?) about having insomnia is never missing an early morning…
Haiku 26
April 26, 2025
Coffee, the paper
The yolky light of morning
I’m the early bird
Haiku 25
April 25, 2025
Delicious beauty
Feeding our conversation
Luck beyond measure
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 24
April 24, 2025
Wide green brim, blossom —
Every vine’s a lady’s hat
Such heady perfume
Content Warning:
A rather racy duck pic and poem to follow!
Haiku 23
April 23, 2025
Spring blushes deep pink
Even the ducks are spellbound
and oblivious
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
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
It is spring, and all the frogs and fruit trees and feathered friends are fertile. And they are noisy about it, honestly. Proud almost. Singing. Strutting. Making their lush, ready presence known.
At my parents’ house, in the country, it is truly an all creatures great and small situation. Just today, I’ve seen an osprey, a bald eagle, muskrats, wood ducks and a dozen squirrels who are the size of small bears, thanks to my dad’s bird seed.
Meanwhile, there is a very insistent robin who is looking for a place to nest. And she has decided that maybe it should be … well … inside. She comes to the window each morning by about 5:45 and knocks, flaps her wings, kicks up a fuss. I mean, who can blame her? But she’s a bird, so we call out gently, There’s a tree! There’s a protected terra cotta pot! How about there??
What if we just opened the doors and windows instead? What if we let her in? What if we let them all in?
Haiku 20
April 20
Tapping on the pane –
am I welcome? Is there room?
The robin wants in