Rain in Mexico
When we lived for a time in Mexico City,
It rained every afternoon at four.
No matter how bright and harsh the sunny morning,
Nor how closed with smog the skies,
At four p.m. something turned over
In the god-pantheon, and woke up--
Old Tlaloc, yes, that's who it was--
Remembering something, he smiled the rain-god's smile,
And let us have it. Yes, he let us have
Rain, and peace, and quietness.
A fitting arousal, drowsy and sweet,
From the fitful siesta we'd been sleeping.
We roused, looking out our window
At the blessed rain, washing the needy Mexico City,
Rushing down gutters, dripping off kioscos and roofs.
Everything was washed.
After a time it stopped, and it was blue-violet- colored twilight when we went out on the streets,
Walking on the blue-violet blossoms of the jacaranda,
Through a maze of bright reflection of the neon lights
On the brilliant asphalt.
Okay, that was a beginning and better than yesterday. Do you know when that became a poem, the germ of a poem? At "something turned over." I was just writing words to that point, but at that point the poem woke up to its own reality and here came Tlaloc.
I'd started with the remembrance of nap time in Mexico, and seeing the rain of the afternoon through apartment windows, and of walking out for supper underneath the blooming jacarandas...Tlaloc woke up on his own, and there is the beauty of writing poetry. You evoke more than you know. It's the poet's job to deal with the words and believe me, that poem needs work. But it is a poem. YAZZYBEL
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Monday, April 8, 2013
Limerick a day?
Oh no, it is windy again~
I wish I could sleep until ten
I'm sneezing and wheezing
And dang near to freezing
That's it for today, and AMEN.
YAZZYBEL
I wish I could sleep until ten
I'm sneezing and wheezing
And dang near to freezing
That's it for today, and AMEN.
YAZZYBEL
Sunday, April 7, 2013
When I Wrote A Poem a Day Before
This was the last poem in that series.
I see that I had trouble then, also, coming up with a poem every day. It is not that, however--it isn't "coming up" with a poem. The poems are there. We just have to give them their time, and we often just won't do that.
As this poem told us what we had learned by the exercise:
This is no more a poem a day
Than it is a poem a week.
Fewer poems than ideas for them:
Less time granted to the ideas;
More of both than solitude
In which to think and write them.
Poems hover around the corners of our minds
Trying to get in, to get to light.
They are the things that want the hard edges
Of reality, that want to come alive.
Oh, how we fight their strong desire;
We snooze, we read, procrastinate,
Clean sinks, pull weeds, clip flowers,
Stand at the open window and look out at nothing,
Fighting back the poems just crowding to be born,
The poems, which really ask for nothing more
Than word-cloaks, tatty clothing, less by far
Than the magnificent garments which they should have worn.
Do you see that subtle little rhyme that sneaks in there at the last? That's a conceit. It springs from the days when I used to try to write sonnets. I love sonnets and liked the discipline required but that form seems to have left me for a kind of jeremiah-crying-in-the-wilderness kind of formlessness. Oh well. I shouldn't try to explain it.
Tomorrow I will come up with a new poem. It will be crass compared to the one above, but that is the way we must start when we have ignored that voice; it is a bit sulky and must be coddled awake by gentle daily prodding until the poet becomes herself a poem. YAZZYBEL
I see that I had trouble then, also, coming up with a poem every day. It is not that, however--it isn't "coming up" with a poem. The poems are there. We just have to give them their time, and we often just won't do that.
As this poem told us what we had learned by the exercise:
This is no more a poem a day
Than it is a poem a week.
Fewer poems than ideas for them:
Less time granted to the ideas;
More of both than solitude
In which to think and write them.
Poems hover around the corners of our minds
Trying to get in, to get to light.
They are the things that want the hard edges
Of reality, that want to come alive.
Oh, how we fight their strong desire;
We snooze, we read, procrastinate,
Clean sinks, pull weeds, clip flowers,
Stand at the open window and look out at nothing,
Fighting back the poems just crowding to be born,
The poems, which really ask for nothing more
Than word-cloaks, tatty clothing, less by far
Than the magnificent garments which they should have worn.
Do you see that subtle little rhyme that sneaks in there at the last? That's a conceit. It springs from the days when I used to try to write sonnets. I love sonnets and liked the discipline required but that form seems to have left me for a kind of jeremiah-crying-in-the-wilderness kind of formlessness. Oh well. I shouldn't try to explain it.
Tomorrow I will come up with a new poem. It will be crass compared to the one above, but that is the way we must start when we have ignored that voice; it is a bit sulky and must be coddled awake by gentle daily prodding until the poet becomes herself a poem. YAZZYBEL
Saturday, April 6, 2013
Here's what happens when you write a poem a day
A Woman Who Writes a Poem a Day
A woman who writes a poem a day
Becomes herself a poem;
A poem walks among you all,
A poem orders at the cafe,
Reads, sits at the computer.
A poem sits in the bathroom,
Makes the choice of bath or shower,
Goes to church and sashays primly up the aisle.
A poem goes into the garden,
Contemplates the flowers,
Goes to the nursery and
Buys more plants. Or not.
A poem buys books
And reads them, or does not;
She does as she will because she is a poem,
Seeing the world with poet's eyes
And pulling the words out here from somewhere,
Turning herself inside out for her own sake,
Smiling astounded if you dare to criticize.
YAZZYBEL
A woman who writes a poem a day
Becomes herself a poem;
A poem walks among you all,
A poem orders at the cafe,
Reads, sits at the computer.
A poem sits in the bathroom,
Makes the choice of bath or shower,
Goes to church and sashays primly up the aisle.
A poem goes into the garden,
Contemplates the flowers,
Goes to the nursery and
Buys more plants. Or not.
A poem buys books
And reads them, or does not;
She does as she will because she is a poem,
Seeing the world with poet's eyes
And pulling the words out here from somewhere,
Turning herself inside out for her own sake,
Smiling astounded if you dare to criticize.
YAZZYBEL
A Poem a Day for April
I'm almost a week late with this, but why don't we write a poem a day, for every day in April?
April is National Poetry Month, so it is appropriate to start writing a poem a day this month. A poem can be as few as four lines long, and can be anything from rhymed verse to doggerel to blank (metered, unrhyming) to free (unmetered, unrhyming) verse. Want to try it?
I tried it a couple of years ago for a time. I didn't get in a whole year's worth, but I wrote a lot more than I am writing now.
Shall we try it? I am sitting here without an idea in my head, as probably you are too. But I'll write a poem on this page before I leave it. And I hear my husband getting out of bed, and that is a double whammy for creativity.
Here he is. Shall I postpone? No, let's soldier on.
Another rule I had for a time, regarding poetry writing, was--no first person. That eliminates lots of boo hoo hoo thinking. Write about something else for goodness' sake. I think I'll write today about rain as that has been my theme since Apr. 1st.
When the parched earth
And the parched soul
Long for water,
Blessed be the showers
That fall from the source
Of blessing.
Okay, that is terrible, but it is a start. I am having interfering thoughts of bacon and eggs which I need to go fix. I may go back to that poem later and work on it. On the otherhand, poor though it is, I hardly can think of a way to improve (save) it. I guess that is my poem for today. You write one too. Get a composition book, or make a page on your computer and start putting them down. In a few weeks, you'll be amazed.
I am going to come back later and copy down a poem that I wrote a couple years ago after days of writing a poem a day. YAZZYBEL
April is National Poetry Month, so it is appropriate to start writing a poem a day this month. A poem can be as few as four lines long, and can be anything from rhymed verse to doggerel to blank (metered, unrhyming) to free (unmetered, unrhyming) verse. Want to try it?
I tried it a couple of years ago for a time. I didn't get in a whole year's worth, but I wrote a lot more than I am writing now.
Shall we try it? I am sitting here without an idea in my head, as probably you are too. But I'll write a poem on this page before I leave it. And I hear my husband getting out of bed, and that is a double whammy for creativity.
Here he is. Shall I postpone? No, let's soldier on.
Another rule I had for a time, regarding poetry writing, was--no first person. That eliminates lots of boo hoo hoo thinking. Write about something else for goodness' sake. I think I'll write today about rain as that has been my theme since Apr. 1st.
When the parched earth
And the parched soul
Long for water,
Blessed be the showers
That fall from the source
Of blessing.
Okay, that is terrible, but it is a start. I am having interfering thoughts of bacon and eggs which I need to go fix. I may go back to that poem later and work on it. On the otherhand, poor though it is, I hardly can think of a way to improve (save) it. I guess that is my poem for today. You write one too. Get a composition book, or make a page on your computer and start putting them down. In a few weeks, you'll be amazed.
I am going to come back later and copy down a poem that I wrote a couple years ago after days of writing a poem a day. YAZZYBEL
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
April Showers
Gracious.
It's only April 2nd, and it did rain last night!! How beautiful is the rain, even when we cannot hear it. Our house is too sound and the rain comes from the wrong direction, so we almost never do hear the rain, unless we're in the living room where we can sometimes hear it beating on the vinyl roof of the patio.
But it almost always rains in the night, and it is not heard in our bed. I saw it in the morning when I got up, looking out the kitchen window into the cloudy grey morning and the wet driveway and street. Here, it rains "at night," by which I mean, from about three until five or six in the morning. Strange. But it did rain, and the early morning when we had to go out earlier than usual to go to the doctor, was fresh and sweet.
I forgot to mention some flowers that are growing in front of the house. They are growing in their nursery pots, crammed into a big earthen bowl by the front door...they are a mallow and a trichostema, two wild flowers; and a sticks of fire and a Cleveland sage. So far, they are all smallish and go well together in the big bowl. I moved them all from their former perches where they were just sitting around, and lo! the apricot mallow put out a beautiful apricot-colored blossom and promised another, and the trichostema lanata proved its common wildflower name, Wooley Blue Curls, by putting out two complex blossoms of vivid blue. Cleveland sage has yet to bloom, but will make a complicated flower of lavendar blue when it does; it smells so good that I don't even care whether it flowers or not. And the sticks of fire burns steadily on with the reds and oranges of winter, strange plant that it is.
I watered them all using a tomato juice can; they benefitted not from the showers of the early a.m., but seem happy for now as is. Me too.
YAZZYBEL
It's only April 2nd, and it did rain last night!! How beautiful is the rain, even when we cannot hear it. Our house is too sound and the rain comes from the wrong direction, so we almost never do hear the rain, unless we're in the living room where we can sometimes hear it beating on the vinyl roof of the patio.
But it almost always rains in the night, and it is not heard in our bed. I saw it in the morning when I got up, looking out the kitchen window into the cloudy grey morning and the wet driveway and street. Here, it rains "at night," by which I mean, from about three until five or six in the morning. Strange. But it did rain, and the early morning when we had to go out earlier than usual to go to the doctor, was fresh and sweet.
I forgot to mention some flowers that are growing in front of the house. They are growing in their nursery pots, crammed into a big earthen bowl by the front door...they are a mallow and a trichostema, two wild flowers; and a sticks of fire and a Cleveland sage. So far, they are all smallish and go well together in the big bowl. I moved them all from their former perches where they were just sitting around, and lo! the apricot mallow put out a beautiful apricot-colored blossom and promised another, and the trichostema lanata proved its common wildflower name, Wooley Blue Curls, by putting out two complex blossoms of vivid blue. Cleveland sage has yet to bloom, but will make a complicated flower of lavendar blue when it does; it smells so good that I don't even care whether it flowers or not. And the sticks of fire burns steadily on with the reds and oranges of winter, strange plant that it is.
I watered them all using a tomato juice can; they benefitted not from the showers of the early a.m., but seem happy for now as is. Me too.
YAZZYBEL
Monday, April 1, 2013
April Showers Bring May Flowers
Good morning!
My favorite newspaper cartoon, Mutts, has today as its theme a big black rainstorm, and the punchline, "It's April!"
And that reminded me of the childhood rhyme, "April showers bring May flowers," which I always loved because I loved both rain and flowers so much. Here in Southern California, it's not the flowers so much as the rain. I'd love it if it rained today and, say, every other day in April. Just a nice daytime gentle soaking shower. How lovely it would be.
However, let me say that my flowers are doing well, thank you. The roses are blooming well; the drugstore rosebushes that a renter planted for us are thriving and putting out giant crepe-paper blossoms of pink and white and yellow. My old rosebush that I brought over from next door is putting them out as usual, strange pink blooms tinged with darker pink--a pleasure to have in the yard.
Out in back, we have Gregory Neff making his annual riotous appearance in the form of the nasturtiums that were the last thing he planted in his active life. We brought over some plants and seeds from next door, and they keep thriving. Of late, they have proliferated and are growing huge, with giant water-lily leaves and gorgeous multi-orange and red and yellow and salmon flowers.
The front bed is gorgeous, the one in front of the garage. There's rosemary,(that's for remembrance), with its beautiful blue flowers. And Mexican sage with purple blooms. And the Mexican marigold with an abundance (at last) of brilliant yellow flowers, and the dusty miller which is silver,with big yellow flower heads. Creeping along beneath these are a number of "ice plant" plants with blossoms ranging in color from pale yellow through orange to red-orange. All so beautiful.
I was going to spend this posting talking about Easter, but I guess I did anyway. I have written about joy and thanking God for the blessing of flowers. And showers. And, yes, I want to wish a happy birthday to my childhood classmate. Happy birthday, Frank!
And many more!! YAZZYBEL
My favorite newspaper cartoon, Mutts, has today as its theme a big black rainstorm, and the punchline, "It's April!"
And that reminded me of the childhood rhyme, "April showers bring May flowers," which I always loved because I loved both rain and flowers so much. Here in Southern California, it's not the flowers so much as the rain. I'd love it if it rained today and, say, every other day in April. Just a nice daytime gentle soaking shower. How lovely it would be.
However, let me say that my flowers are doing well, thank you. The roses are blooming well; the drugstore rosebushes that a renter planted for us are thriving and putting out giant crepe-paper blossoms of pink and white and yellow. My old rosebush that I brought over from next door is putting them out as usual, strange pink blooms tinged with darker pink--a pleasure to have in the yard.
Out in back, we have Gregory Neff making his annual riotous appearance in the form of the nasturtiums that were the last thing he planted in his active life. We brought over some plants and seeds from next door, and they keep thriving. Of late, they have proliferated and are growing huge, with giant water-lily leaves and gorgeous multi-orange and red and yellow and salmon flowers.
The front bed is gorgeous, the one in front of the garage. There's rosemary,(that's for remembrance), with its beautiful blue flowers. And Mexican sage with purple blooms. And the Mexican marigold with an abundance (at last) of brilliant yellow flowers, and the dusty miller which is silver,with big yellow flower heads. Creeping along beneath these are a number of "ice plant" plants with blossoms ranging in color from pale yellow through orange to red-orange. All so beautiful.
I was going to spend this posting talking about Easter, but I guess I did anyway. I have written about joy and thanking God for the blessing of flowers. And showers. And, yes, I want to wish a happy birthday to my childhood classmate. Happy birthday, Frank!
And many more!! YAZZYBEL
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)