Seasons of Challenge and Healing

Life is so full of seasons, of unexpected twists and turns. Sometimes it's a rollercoaster ride of fun, sometimes the rapid-fire ups and downs can make you nauseous.
Sometimes the changes are slower, the shifts less perceptible.
Life brings its seasons of challenge and then of healing.
Othertimes, life plateaus - this is a good season too, a season of rest, of comfort or fulfilment.
I'm in challenge at the moment. Its not easy, but it's a period of growth.
Where are you?
What is the good in this part of the journey for you?

This poem is an account of two life shifts: from the challenge of loss, to the healing of new companionship.

Transitions

Earth-spattered roses marked you transition
From one life to another, but unlike your love,
The move took you to no higher world,
No paradise where you might breathe lightly again,
But left you treading the same patterns through the day
As always; at night lying alone beneath an empty sky.

Roses on a coffin lid; the first handful
Of cold dirt fell like rain, but lifted
No regenerate beauty from her cold bones.
You walked away (I imagine all of this)
With the same dignity you have carried all the years since:
Uncowed by fate or chance, bereft not beaten.

The heavy harness of bereavement has not bent your back
(Though the dullness in your eye was absent I am sure
In youth). If I am able to lighten your future
I will never seek to quench your past.
Never will you walk blindly through sun or shadow,
But may I be the blessing you count nightly beside your loss.

Louise

Stretching The Poetic Muscle

With all this sketching and painting filling my free hours, my poetry writing has just about dried up. My thoughts are elsewhere with pretty-faced girls and art journal pages. I am not sitting still for long enough with pen and paper and a jumble of words in my head.
I need to rectify this. So this week I have written two short poems. They were written quickly and fall far short of the masterpieces I would like to write (!!), but they serve their purpose in just flexing those poetry muscles a little in preparation for some more serious exercise in the hopefully near future.
I share them with you because their simplicity allows us to ask some questions about poetic technique. I would love to know your thoughts on the points I make below.

The house I grew up in had a line of poplars at the end of the garden, a lasting image of my childhood scenery that came to mind as I racked my brain for a starting-point image:

Standing Sentries

Poplars stand sentry
As the field is ploughed
As the soil is turned
As the seed is sown

Poplars stand sentry
As the crop is grown
The harvest taken
As you come home.


And as it is painting that is keeping me from the poetry, I took the hindrance and charged it to be my muse:

Hidden Portrait

Painting your portrait
I take care
As my brush sweeps the tender
Curve of your nose,
As I colour your eyes
With the shine of experience.

Painting your portrait
I swirl joy
Into the curls of your auburn hair,
But at your cheek
My brush slows to uncover
The tear I know is hidden there.

How about a little analysis?

Do you notice how each of these poems repeats the first line in each stanza? I used this as a simple technique to lengthen the poems, by building on the same ideas a couple of times.

Do you notice how there is a slight twist at the end of each? This provides a reason, a justification, for capturing these scenes in poetry in the first place: they are not quite as ordinary as they seem. Having these changes at the end of each poem also provides a proper end, a completion, without which the poems may have just petered out unsatisfactorily.

The first poem is not very creative in its use of language: "the seed is sown" is unoriginal and an automatic, common description of the activity. Should the seed have been "flung" instead?  Or perhaps it should have been "bedded?" But neither of these would have created the uneven rhyme with the later word "grown".
"The harvest taken" is a very minor improvement on "the harvest gathered", not because it is a better word, but just because it is slightly less obvious. Do you think the use of familiar descriptive language is sometimes helpful to the reader, or does it simply make for a poor poem?

The inspiration for the second poem came from the drawing you can see here. This one I posted without the tear, but I have a copy of this girl in my sketchbook, with a tear on her left cheek. Hence the hidden tear. However the poem changed the girl substantially: the poem paints her in colour and curls her hair. What do you think of these developments? Should I have disciplined myself to describe what I first saw, or was it better to let the poem go where it would?

I would love you to let me know what you think of these ideas.
And why don't you follow similar inspiration to write a simple poem or two of your own? Again I'd love to see.

Louise

Yellow Leaves - AEDM days 3 & 4

I didn't manage to post yesterday - crisis time at home kept me away from the computer - but I did carve out a little time for a quick painting inspired by the gorgeous trees at the top of my road.

Trees were the only thing I could paint when I was at school, but I'm afraid I'm well out of practice now, especially when squeezed amidst a crisis.
Today I'm working on my bigger art project for Willowing which I'm hoping to maybe finish tomorrow and then show you...
So today comes my first little droplet poem on the same autumn theme:

Yellow Leaves

Hidden wind chimes sing accompaniment
To the leaves that fall in yellow
Showers from the beeches at the roadside.

If they're short enough I'll tweet my droplet poems too. (Link to my twitter page at the bottom of this blog). X

Autumn - Where My Poems Spring From!!

I have discovered L.L. Barkat's On In And Around Mondays writing link and it reminded me of where my poetry sprang from.
As a teenager I wrote anguished poetry, as certain souls do. Then I grew out of it for a while. Four years ago I grew back into it (much of it still anguished, but not always). I ventured back via Autumn leaves - my first poem then swirled with the colours of Autumn, weaved into a royal rug of red and golden hues. Since then the weather and the seasons have been a strong element in my verse.
 But today's offering is in keeping with where I am around this Monday (yesterday). I write this looking out at my Autumn garden, here in Essex, England.

          The Autumn Garden

The rain is light, but unhurried as if wishing
To be somewhere else entirely.
Drops catch on the four webs
Which drape the iron fence,
shimmering.

The bare patch in the yard
Where the summer's swimming pool
Stripped the grass from the earth
Is sprouting again, green heads
Like lost friends returning.

A squirrel, settled migrant, interloper,
Tight-ropes the bough of the cherry
Severing leaves. A blue tit
Emerges from a drainage gap
In the brick wall.

Beneath the misplaced gum, stones
Mark tiny graves where the children
Buried platys and guppies
From our tank after disease
Swept through.

The rosemary bush in the southern bed
Lifts the upturned triangle of its branches
In welcome, but the rain
Still reluctant, ungenial,
Peters out...

So now you know where I am as I send out my posts.
If you write poetry, what was your springboard? Was it the weather, a season, a mood, a drama in your life? Do share the story.
And remember to check out the other poems and seasonal writings linked to L.L. Barkat's link above.