the transparent forest
anything but bleak
season of lace-veiled slumber
secrets of summer
revealed, now dormant nests
and far-off mountain vistas
a backdrop for dreams
beauty in simplicity
where sky’s the limit
don’t sleep too soundly
there is so much to be gleaned
wisdom to ponder
when darkness overtakes us
frost bends the light like crystal
~kat
A tanka-haiku-tanka for the season.
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
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.
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…
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?
like mercury colliding... 