Haiku 1.1.25

new year’s day snowstorm

just enough to paint it white

counting syllables

Haiku 10.20.23

Photo by Dhivya Subramanian on Unsplash

tuna casserole

warmed up in the

microwave

this black fly loves it

Haiku 9.3.23

Photo by Amy Garrett-Williams on Unsplash

orange dying cedar,

among the lush green oak trees,

aflame as it dies

“Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye

Photo by MM Tey on Unsplash

This seems like exactly the poem I need to read and re-read and re-read right now. It’s a comfort and an inspiration.

Kindness

by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

“Gravy” by Raymond Carver

Photo credit: victoria.

Any poem called "Gravy" is going to get my attention because I just love that word and, once upon a time, I loved gravy. I am also remembering today how my Grandaddy Barker used to call my cousin Robbie "chicken gravy." The sweetest term of endearment ever. Anyway, here's the poem by Raymond Carver. It speaks of sobriety, which is always a happy theme as far as I'm concerned:

Gravy
by Raymond Carver

No other word will do. For that’s what it was. Gravy.
Gravy, these past ten years.
Alive, sober, working, loving and
being loved by a good woman. Eleven years
ago he was told he had six months to live
at the rate he was going. And he was going
nowhere but down. So he changed his ways
somehow. He quit drinking! And the rest?
After that it was all gravy, every minute
of it, up to and including when he was told about,
well, some things that were breaking down and
building up inside his head. “Don’t weep for me,”
he said to his friends. “I’m a lucky man.
I’ve had ten years longer than I or anyone
expected. Pure gravy. And don’t forget it.”

Haiku 7.23.23 by Cynthia Cummins

Photo credit: Edgar López

poppyseed sprinkles
on every windowsill
last night’s party bugs

Haiku 7.15.23 by Cynthia Cummins

Photo credit: Autumn Mott Rodeheaver

wildflowers in a
Ball jar on a tabletop
petals falling quiet