The idea is to take a three-line stanza, written by one poet…and write a two-line stanza to complete the Tan Renga. The first three lines were written by Chiyo-Ni (1703-1775)
morning glory!
the well-bucket entangled,
I ask for water.
and my answer is given
in rain.
I don’t usually credit photographs, but all photographs on my blog are taken by me. The very few exceptions will be noted.
For the last poem of the month for NaPoWriMo, we were asked to find a poem in a language we do not know and to write a “translation” based on what we think it means. I chose a poem by an Italian 16th century poet. His name and poem are printed below my poem, which is:
Your Soft Voice Fills the World
Your soft voice fills the world
and causes the fronds to tremble.
Oh Laura, my long love, even the trees laugh
as they spread their green blanket over my vagabond angel.
Sing your song for me
as you ride eastward
so I may hear it wherever I go.
When you speak in the night,
it resounds in the heavens.
If you want to be queen, be queen of my heart.
Our love endures in the mountains,
oh beautiful vagrant of the skies.
Both you and your words live within me.
In the end, they will sustain me like a fine cuisine.
Here is the original poem:
Ecco mormorar l’onde
Torquato Tasso (1544-1595)
Ecco mormorar l’onde,
E tremolar le fronde
A l’aura mattutina, e gli arboscelli,
E sovra i verdi rami i vaghi augelli
Cantar soavemente,
E rider l’Oriente;
Ecco già l’alba appare,
E si specchia nel mare,
E rasserena il cielo,
E le campagne imperla il dolce gelo,
E gli alti monti indora:
O bella e vaga Aurora,
L’aura è tua messaggera, e tu de l’aura
Ch’ogni arso cor ristaura.
Originally, I translated the last two lines as:
The smoke of your words lives within me.
In the end, I will eat them like fine cuisine.
I loved those two images, but they seemed not to go with each other
or with the rest of the poem, so I changed them.
Here is a real translation of the poem:
Now the waves murmur
And the boughs and the shrubs tremble
in the morning breeze,
And on the green branches the pleasant birds
Sing softly
And the east smiles;
Now dawn already appears
And mirrors herself in the sea,
And makes the sky serene,
And the gentle frost impearls the fields
And gilds the high mountains:
O beautiful and gracious Aurora,
The breeze is your messenger, and you the breeze’s
Which revives each burnt-out heart.
Leapin’Lizards
Iguanas, lizards, gekkos, turtles, toads and frogs and snakes
are not the things that we should fear in life, for goodness sakes.
These creatures in their own domains present no awful threat.
Just leave them where they are, for none were made to be a pet.
Our tame lives seek to steal the wildness from such natural things,
but wildness is not what curtailing wildness ever brings.
We must learn to leap ourselves––by entering our lives
and breaking free from prisons–our cages, pens or hives––
to buzz the world around us and see what we can find
to release us from our lethargy and the ties that bind.
If you do not know the way, just go and find a child
and follow him or her to places where they keep the wild.
The beach or any sandpile may serve to be your clues
of how to color your own life with more vivid hues.
A thing as simple as wet sand can take a child to
places where you had forgot you could be taken to.
Castle moats or rivers, dams, mountain tops or caves
huge mansions that are sacrifices to that evening’s waves.
Our wild imaginations are where we all should go
to find a little wildness when our lives are slow.
Go find a dog to walk with if you need a pet
then take him out to some wild beach–and both of you, get wet!
Wildness is for doing, not for sitting on a shelf.
So free the creatures pining there and find some for yourself!
(Click on first photo to enlarge and view gallery)
Those baby sea turtles are being set free, not being collected. Happy Leap Year!!!
(If you want to know more about the release of the baby turtles, go HERE.)
This poem was written partially in response to this strange strange news from my home town that was sent to me by two friends yesterday. Read about it here: http://www.chapala.com/webboard/index.php?/topic/60430-tiger-in-la-floresta/
It was also in response to the prompt “Leap,” in honor of this being the extra day in this leap year! https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/leap/
Packing Light
On a desert island, abandoned but alive,
with aids to my survival numbering only five,
I’d need a contraption to desalinate water.
Then a tent to sit under once the day got hotter.
But while I’m in the shade, a solar panel would be nice
to plug in my computer and also a device
to connect it to a satellite so I could Skype my friend
to send fast transportation to bring this to an end!
The Prompt––Five Items: what are the five items you must have on a deserted island? https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/five-items/
Today’s prompt is: “You are on a mission to Mars. Because of the length of of the journey, you will never be able to return to Earth. What about our blue planet will you miss the most?” My answer, as a writer, is that I would most miss an audience, which prompts the below poem.
The Prayer of the First Astronaut Poet
There is no Wifi in space
and so I send my words
out into the universe
hoping that each syllable
will emit a ray
somehow connected
to all my other syllables,
and if quantum entanglement
is right, they will one day
find each other
again.
(This is a rewrite of a poem I wrote to this prompt three years ago.)
This morning I woke up as usual and lay in bed writing my poem, rose to take photos to go with it, then opened my front door so my upstairs neighbors could go through to the porch when they got home from breakfast. When Cathy wandered in, she asked if I realized that I had a friend waiting on the beachfront porch. Who was it, I asked and she said she didn’t know but she was singing.
I went out in my nightgown to see who it was and found a stranger–a singer/musician who had read my blog and come to meet me. By the time I’d thrown clothes on, Fred–a slide guitar player who had been walking by and heard her singing, had come to join her. As the morning progressed, another woman wandered by on the beach. Fred recognized her as a musician who lived on the same island as he in Canada, so he invited her to join us. They ended up ordering breakfast from the cafe next door delivered to my porch. I made coffee and they spent the morning. Then Fred stayed to practice my “Ballad of Poor Molly” which he has set to music. By 3 o’clock, he, too had left and I fell asleep on the couch and passed the rest of the afternoon napping–something I almost never do. As I was waiting for my upstairs neighbors to come down to leave to meet friends for dinner, I wrote the first few stanzas of this poem.
Found Poem
One and two and three and four.
Four little music makers pounding on my door.
One beats a rhythm, one toots a horn––
wild and sweet––sort of forlorn.
One hums a tune behind her teeth––
a sort of descant underneath
the melody on the steel guitar.
The gulls reel in from near and far
to add their screams to the refrain,
then fan their wings, silent again.
Four musicians at my gate.
I wait for their music to abate.
Then I go and let them in
to add my music to the din.
I sing my lyrics fast and slow
first soft then loud, my lyrics go
up and over the drums and horn–
out into the sandy morn.
Over the rocks and out to sea,
setting all our music free.
When the drummer leaves my porch,
she leaves just three to loft the torch.
Too soon the horn, too, dies away,
but the hummer’s here to stay;
and steel guitar swells out to fill
the morning air until until
the morning bursts into full sun
and our melody comes undone.
Soon guitar and singer fade,
their morning share of music made,
and I fold my songs away.
I’ll bring them out some other day.
With music blown away, I wind
only words around my mind.
They weave their spell with me along.
I lose myself in their noisy throng.
Wander aimless, round and round,
in getting lost, this poem is found.
(You can see my “Ballad of Poor Molly” post HERE.)
The promptt: Critical Eye–Write about your blog as though you were a music critic.
Blowing Her Own Horn
This blogger writes of this and that––
sometimes sharp and sometimes flat.
And though her phrasing is not stiff,
it’s usually devoid of riff.
Her instrument of choice? Her blog.
Her subjects? Modern life, her dog,
photography or 3-D art,
affairs of politics or heart.
World Music would be how I’d class it,
so when you find it, don’t just pass it.
Her themes are most original,
from Pop to Aboriginal.
Lyrics are her major thing––
meant to read instead of sing.
The critic’s lines that she most hates?
“This lady sure ain’t no Tom Waits!”
The Post: Critical Eye–Write about the subject you usually blog about as though you were a music critic.
So Many Books
I don’t “do” lunch, I don’t do sport.
They’re things to which I don’t resort.
For time just seems to be the stuff
of which I never have enough.
As I grow older, and years grow tight,
I find that I would rather write.
So, much as I might like to look
at a favorite once-read book––
Jane Austen or a Bronte sister––
time after time, I must resist her.
So many books are being written
that when the reading bug has bitten
and I find the time to view one,
inevitably, I choose a new one
The Prompt: Second Time Around–Tell us about a book you can read again and again without getting bored — what is it that speaks to you?https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/second-time-around/
No “cauldron boil and cauldron bubble” for me. I’m too busy with a different sort of ritual.
Ritual
Up at eight, feed the dogs.
Back to bed to write some blogs.
Around noon, finally rise.
Open drapes, survey the skies.
It’s really time that I got uppa,
donned some clothes and had a cuppa.
Pull on Levis and a blouse,
Make my sojourn through my house.
Blend a smoothie, drink it down.
Get in my car and drive to town.
Do some shopping, have some lunch
or meet up with my writing bunch.
Go back home to meet my fate–
three dogs barking at my gate!
Throw Morrie’s ball, pat other dogs.
Go back inside and write more blogs.
Post more photos, read the Reader,
then to the garden to be a weeder.
Take some pictures of some blooms.
(Cee’s daily flower posting looms.)
Post the picture, read blogs of others:
Serendipity’s and Mother’s.
Go out to dinner or to dance,
then home to have another chance
to catch up on the blogs I’ve missed––
To see if I’ve been “liked “ or dissed.
By now you’re probably all agog
at how my ritual’s mostly blog!!
The Prompt: Just Another Day–Our days our organized around numerous small actions we repeat over and over. What’s your favorite daily ritual?
Blog-out
Dark genius sits there pondering and staring at the screen.
His features in reflected light glow a sickly green.
He works his cyber screwdriver slightly to the right.
His only tool––the keyboard––is his weapon in this fight
…………………………………………………………as every blog on WordPress skews slightly all at once.
He’ll show his third grade teacher for calling him a dunce!
He tugs a little here and there, adjusting cyber screws.
And just for fun, he adds a few zeroes to my views.
He knows that I am watching and he senses my excitement.
He chuckles that my false success has been at his incitement.
Then he shuts down the internet––Facebook, WordPress, Twitter.
and my seconds of great happiness turn just as quickly bitter.
Bloggers the world over are turned back onto themselves.
Photos trapped in media files or stacking up on shelves.
No place to reach out for a friend for shut-ins who, once freed
to roam a universe of blogs now sit in dire need
of someone just to talk to. To realize they are there.
They sit staring at their screens, though all of them are bare.
Week after week we wait for our deliverance from this blight.
We miss the internet all day, and even more at night.
I’m thinking about former friends, now lost across the miles,
tripping over poetry surrounding me in piles,
thirsting after comments about every brand new thought.
Having no fast outlet, my brain feels like it’s caught.
Bound up in old creations that have no place to go,
with no easy outlet, the thoughts are coming slow.
Jammed up creativity is worse than constipation,
for writing with no readers is just mental masturbation.
It’s true that I have friends to call and writers’ groups as well.
But they have not the patience to hear all I have to tell.
A blog gives me an avenue to fill out a whole world
with thoughts that for a lifetime, I’ve kept inside, tightly furled.
For those of us who always have felt slightly alone,
the Interweb has seemed a placed created to atone.
In the darkened hours when others are asleep,
we live that midnight life we’ve kept within us, buried deep.
History moves ever onward despite glacier, war or flood.
We see it trailed behind us in footprints etched in blood.
So we’ll survive the cyber war when it comes to pass
by spending more time with our friends, calmly smoking grass
or sharing drinks at Starbucks, devoid of texts or apps,
but we’ll miss our midnight family filling in the gaps.
The prompt: Life after Blogs– Your life without a computer: what does it look like?
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/life-after-blogs/
Okay, I must add a comment here, where everyone can see it. See that fifth line in the first stanza, where the line is skewed over to the right? WordPress doesn’t let you do that. Every time I put spaces in to make that happen, they erased them. So, as usual, I prevailed upon my tech expert/volunteer co-blog-administrator okcforgottenman to find a solution. As you can see above, he found one and I’m not surprised. What I am surprised about is his solution, that was nothing short of genius! His solution was to put in a line of periods in front of the line until it was out where I wanted it and then to CHANGE THE COLOR OF JUST THOSE PERIODS TO WHITE!!!! Tell me that isn’t genius.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 