Category Archives: nature

A ReVerse Poem – Sunday, October 16, 2022

I thought this was a good time for a look back. Autumn has taken hold full force here on Bramlett Mountain, with the leaves blushing orange, gold, and crimson and the trees letting them go to ride the wind. The hummingbirds have set flight to the tropics. The days are growing shorter and the mornings are dusted lightly with frost. 

As I reflected on the past several months of poems that made it to the page despite my too busy life, I was struck by how moved I was to read the words again. It’s been an unsettling time for the world at large, and in my own corner of it, having let go yet another life-long companion to the rainbow. Four sweet souls this year. Gone. I don’t know that I have fully grieved for each of them as their departures came too soon…always too soon…before I could catch my breath, another and another.

Because of all this, it seems my writing is tinged with melancholy. And yet joy has a way of breaking through even in the darkest of times. Nature reminds us it’s time to let go, to slow down, to rest. I’m listening. How ripe am I for resting, for breathing deeply…for letting go!

A ReVerse Poem - Sunday, October 16, 2022

despair is like a tidal wave
there is not much that can be said
your dreams are clinging on the brink
the wind rushed trees, the sky, dark gray
there’s a special place in hell for you,
just beyond the veil, while we weep
joy breaks through
of resilience, audacity, of life..
as most lives go, pendulums swing
as the world grows darker by the day
the bitter and the sweet
you will wonder where time’s gone,
to embrace moments of joy,
how odd it feels
like a whisper summer fades
fall leaves, gone with the wind

~kat

A ReVerse poem (a practice I started many years ago) is a summary poem with a single line lifted from each entry of a collection of work over a particular timeframe and re-penned in chronological order as a new poem. Unlike a collaborative poem, the ReVerse features the words of one writer, providing a glimpse into their thoughts over time. 

shade growing thin

shade growing thin 

how soft the sun’s light
bends through the trees
shade growing thin beneath
bare boughs lonely for
birds of summer, like
fall leaves, gone with the wind

~kat

A poem written with online magnetic poetry tiles using the Nature Kit. Digitally enhanced photo by Kat Myrman in October 2022. Hickory tree in the Bramlette Mountain foothills. 

a shadorma for autumn

blustery
billows cool and damp
ride the wind
frost the dawn
like a whisper summer fades
autumn blushes rouge

~kat

A Shadorma (3/5/3/3/7/5) is a fun short form. NO metering, no rhyming…just count syllables.


comes the rain…





comes the rain…


how odd it feels
this dark drear night
as sheets of rain
and milky fog
obscure my sight
while puddles swell
earth waterlogged
from outer bands
that sweep the sky
a monster with a single eye,
a tempest wielding misery
over a thousand miles,
its bitter tears from
too warm seas brings
half a nation to its knees
odd, i think, to taste the rain
that's caused such pain
to neighbors i will never meet
terribly connected, we,
and yet so far, so very far away


~kat
This poem was birthed in the foothills of Bramlette Mountain at dusk on the 30th of September 2022 as the outer bands of Hurricane Ian bent the pines and drenched the loam while simultaneously making landfall several states away on the South Carolina coast. We humans truly are a wrinkle, a mere blip on the vast landscape of this earth. Who are we to boast of anything at all when a raindrop can render us small?

little tree

take care, what you wish for
little tree; don’t rush to blush
amidst midsummer’s balmy
haze, for summer comes but
once a season; take your cue from
elder trees, their lavish manes
of sparkling emerald, chartreuse
and sage, wisdom comes from
weathering life’s cycles, grace and
age, and autumn, with her cool dawn
snap will be here soon enough
you’ll see; so entertain the breeze
and dance, while dusk holds back
the shade of night, your dreams
will keep, they’re never late,
but lie in wait until the time
is right…oh little tree stay green,
let your sprouting limbs grow strong
stretch your roots into the loam
that holds the memories of home
in just a blink your innocence
will be laid bare, as winter’s
snow becomes your hair, the night
will wrap you tight and long and
you will wonder where time’s gone,
and think about the summers passed,
while drifting off to sleep

~kat