Hear ye! Hear ye! It's Original Poetry Sunday, Vol. 1, No. 1.
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At Departure Bayby Sandra Leigh
Yesterday, on a bench beside the sea,
in a woman's arms, a man wept quietly
his eyes betrayed his ruined heart,
her hair lay over him like cornsilk
(walking quickly,
passers-by,
eyes averted ,
guarded fragile hearts)
her hands practised helplessness
his eyes were wounds that love left
Yesterday, on a bench beside the sea,
in a woman's arms, a man wept quietly
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Here's Diana Krall's take on the same subject. (She's a Nanaimo girl.)
Fiddling online - well, Twittering, actually, I found my way to a site that's a perfect way to launch our new venture - It's the first annual Pet Haiku Contest over at SFGate.com. If you feel inclined to exercise your haiku muscles this week, and you're interested in winning a prize, that's the place to be. The contest ends May 22, so we have to write fast.
I also discovered something called The Joe Milford Poetry Show. I've linked to one of his shows, in which he interviews a poet named Lisa Forrest, founder of the Rooftop Poetry Club at SUNY in Buffalo. I'll be listening to the shows and reporting back.
And - ReadWritePoem wants us to put a little rhyme in our lives this week. Click here for more information.
That's all the news. Now I'm going to go visiting, in search of Original Poetry.
5 comments:
Very evocative poem, with lots of nice details-- great way to start things up. I liked the Diane Krall song a lot-- she has such a great voice, & she clearly knows a good song title when it's right to hand as a real place name.
Will have to look into those links-- SFGate is the online incarnation of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Thank you, John. Diana is quite the local heroine. We've recently named the square outside the main library Diana Krall Square.
Tender and evocative. We are fragile.
But our fragility sometimes makes for some very good poetry indeed.
I think that's a truly lovely poem, Sandra. I was just over at John's and read your comment. To me your result is graceful and captures the moment-- and that kind of a moment-- very well. I love "his eyes betrayed his ruined heart/her hair lay over him like cornsilk" and "her hands practiced helplessness." It brought back for me a similar moment in my life.
Barry and René, thank you for your supportive comments. I drove myself crazy over the poem - probably because I was the one who thought this OPS was such a great idea. It was hard, though, to remember the look in that young man's eyes, to see it clearly in my own mind, and then to try to translate what I saw - and its effect on me - into words. Maybe I'll do as John said and write the same poem for twenty years, if I have that long.
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