Gaia – a Pleiades

So, this has been a creative endeavor. While playing around with a recent photo of the forest in my back yard I stumbled upon the face of the goddess herself, smiling at me through the trees…or maybe I just have an overactive imagination. At any rate it made for an interesting poem and an even more interesting graphic to accompany it. I’m posting the original and then the enhanced mirrored version. Do you see her? Or maybe it’s just me! 🥰

Gaia

Grecian immortal
goddess, primordial
great-breasted nurturer,
gift-giver, earth mother,
green-adorned sustainer
giving birth to the sky…
generations, extolled 

~kat

Pleiades

This titled form was invented in 1999 by Craig Tigerman, Sol Magazine’s Lead Editor. Only one word is allowed in the title followed by a single seven-line stanza. The first word in each line begins with the same letter as the title. Hortensia Anderson, a popular haiku and tanka poet, added her own requirement of restricting the line length to six syllables.

Background of the Pleiades: The Pleiades is a star cluster in the constellation Taurus. It is a cluster of stars identified by the ancients, mentioned by Homer in about 750 B.C and Hesiod in about 700 B.C. Six of the stars are readily visible to the naked eye; depending on visibility conditions between nine and twelve stars can be seen. Modern astronomers note that the cluster contains over 500 stars. The ancients named these stars the seven sisters: Alcyone, Asterope, Celaeno, Electra, Maia, Merope, and Tygeta; nearby are the clearly visible parents, Atlas and Pleione.

The poetic form The Pleiades is aptly named: the seven lines can be said to represent the seven sisters, and the six syllables represent the nearly invisible nature of one sister.

Source: http://www.shadowpoetry.com/resources/wip/pleiades.html