On the Night of the Supermoon

I'm late with my post because the world and I have had a very busy week. But tonight the moon will rise over the prairie appearing bigger than it has or will for many years. In its honor, I'll share this poem with you:

Moonrise

She blushes as she rises,
Naked,
And pulls a filmy cloud
Across her face.

But modesty is not her virtue.
Soon the blush has faded,
The cloud is cast aside,
And she strides
Silver, shameless,
Across her sky.

copyright 2011

Itty Bitty Poems Pique My Interest

For years I've been writing very short poems I called vignettes for lack of a better word. They didn't fit into the structure of haiku or any of the other accepted short forms of poetry. Most of them were intended just to paint a picture with a few brushstrokes, and I enjoyed them, but nobody else seemed to take them seriously. Then along came Twitter....

Recently I've discovered an entire community of poets who write Twitter poems, some of which are haiku and similar forms, but some of which are hashtagged #micropoetry and seem to fit none of the established forms I know about. I'm not sure if the micropoetry hashtag is an open community, so I haven't used it, but I have tried tweeting a couple of my vignettes. Twitter doesn't have enough characters for titles, but the first one is "Carpe Diem" and the second is "View From My Bedroom Window--Broken Bow, OK."

Purple thumbprint clouds / Like bruises / On the smooth pink flesh / Of sunset....

The moon, somewhere above my sight / Mocks the darkness of the night; / A thousand clouds reflect its light / To turn the earthen road to white.

copyright 2011

Thunderhead

The first real thunderstorms of the season swept across the Midwest last night. While the worst of them seemed to part and flow to the north and south of my home town, others had tornadoes and floods. 

This time of year, storms usually come in huge banks of black clouds that roll over the prairies in lines that stretch for miles. But in the summertime, they sometimes come singly, dark galleons floating in an ocean of sky.

Thunderhead

Storms never surprise the prairie,

They build up on the horizon,

Great blackening hoards of cumulus

Like the gathering forces of evil

From some old Scandinavian folk tale.

Or they travel swiftly alone--

Silver, anvil-shaped giants

Floating over their own shadows,

Muttering to themselves deeply

And juggling lightning bolts,

Sometimes dropping one.

copyright 2011