This week I continued working over my list of collected phrases and making short form poems out of them (or the ideas they bring up. I’m enjoying the process.
I’ve been showing you photos of my basement project progress but I forgot to take any this morning while I was painting a couple of doors. Rest assured it is progressing. I think by next week you may be very surprised to see it…finished???
Instead, I will show you some photos of the full moon I saw early this morning before the sun came up. And I will give you a few examples of poetry work, too.
A haiku. The phrase was “something aggressive”. I have been seeing a lot of hawks in the air in the last couple of days, and this is what made me think of this image.
10.
something aggressive
the hawk has been thinking and
the rabbit has not.
This shadorma chain came from an experience I had a couple of weeks ago. My husband and I go out early in the morning to walk or run – it is dark when we leave and as the winter draws in, it is still dark on the trail for a while (though we have headlamps). Anyway, I heard an owl hoot in the darkness – the sound carried in the silence all through the trees, so that I could not even tell from what direction it came.
12.
twice the owl
in the far-off said
something I
heard it loud
in the darkness but no more
again that morning
as daylight
dragged itself awake
not that day
not ever.
That I heard him speak I know
it was not to me.
This tanka started off with “decorous toothbrush”. I’ve mixed memories here – a green bathroom we had in our previous house, and how the comb felt as my mother raked it hard against my scalp to part my hair when I was young.
5.
decorous toothbrush
lazy hairbrush snappish comb
familiar voices
bounce off green tiled walls. The world
is a five by eight bathroom.
Here is a photo from Norristown Farm Park from last week. It’s the Dairy Barn complex across the field of now harvested soybeans.
I show it to you because it is calm and peace-giving, and seems like a nice image to leave you with here. Thank you for reading.
Claudia McGill Writes Poetry, Did You Know That? 
Magic, both moon and owl. (K)
Being outside in the winter – I think winter is my favorite season outdoors. There is no covering up when the trees are bare and the light goes everywhere, or when at night there is space even in among the trees, to hear and see.
I also love seeing the bones of trees. And the sounds are magnified.