Tuesday, January 22, 2019

Poems from a Twitter Poetry Party

Tuesday, January 15, was cause for a reunion of sorts when Tweetspeak Poetry, part of T.S. Poetry Press, sponsored one of its famed, fast-paced Twitter poetry parties. Following are a few of the small tiny poems and remixes I created from words found among the hour's tweets, including my own. (And yes, I took a wee bit of liberty for reasons of grammar and meaning.) My thanks to Prasanta Verma for all her retweets throughout the evening and to player-contributors L.L. Barkat, Laura Lynn Brown, Sonia Joie, Sandra Heska King, L.W. Willingham, and Glynn Young. Go to Tweetspeak Poetry on January 29 and February 5 to read what Glynn has done with the tweets.


I hear the silvery trill
north of cold,

feel the chill of moon,
the frost of maple.

Elms whisper,
and all the woods

shiver.


When a willow turns
red, it is time

to shed
what autumn foretells.


The fall of rain on moss 
is nearly silent. 

Not the voice of a mother,
keeper of small poems.

Her weeping — no song
that lights upon the lips

like a gift of strawberries —
tastes like the ash

of fires long gone cold.

~

The gift of returning
makes fair each day

of a husband's absence.

~

The gift of weeping 
clears to understanding.

~

Beyond some invisible boundary,

where still-bare branches
trace the grammar

of animacy, the mother
weaves her stories —

grown long
but well-balanced and -constructed —

while braiding sweetgrass
at the hems of twined moons.

Hand-over-hand,
like circles and circles and circles,

she braids, humming

her gratitude, her allegiance
strong as a pecan shell.

~

The mother sighs,
losing her way

through the stories,

asks:

Do you hear the willows,
how their sounds of being

whisper the consolation
of water lilies?

Let me settle you. 
Let me settle you.

~

When is it easy,
this searching of earth?

More north,
the pines yield no secrets —
not of the keepers of fires,
nor of time

that draws to night.

The answer lies
in the space between

whispers,
where light that shines

upon the asters and goldenrod

offers the secret
of happiness:

a way back home.

2 comments:

drew said...

These are inspired and fun, Maureen!
How does the Twitter poetry party work? I'd love to know your process.

robtkistner said...

Hi Rob Kistner here, a ghost back from the dead... These are beautiful Maureen. Like a gourmet spread of yummy little treats! Thank you for the sharing these. I have been off the poetry blog trail for so long that I fif not revognize the site thst prompted your pieces. But I now must explore I am visiting because I began writing again seversl months ago after having stopped for a number of years owing to failed. I was suffering deeply from congestive heart failure, and exacerbated brittle diabetes. I now have an i,planted Pacemaker to monitor my heart failure constantly using electonics to keep my heart beating, after it stopped on April 6, 2017.

Now I also have an Embedded Lifestyle Libre Electronic Continual Glucose MONITOR, so my highly unstable sugar levels are monitored in real time 24/7 by a microprocessor that gives me a constant graph of my sugar leveld - no mre comas! I am a bionic man, and finally writing again... and LOVING it!!

i just reopened up my Image & Verse site after a mutle year shutdown. I began posting new work. I was also reading the hundreds of comments regarding my poetry over the prior 11 years. I kept coming across wonderful comments from you Maureen, and it put me in touch with how much I enjoyed our interaction - how a little spark of exciting came with your fresh comments posts so I wanted to say hi... so... HI! And now that I and writing again. I was wondering if you could clue me into poetry community sites that regularly offer prompts.

I also want to ectend to you an invitation to again visit my writing on my Image & Verse site. I need to see your name in the comments again... OK lovely lady? http://www.image-verse.com you still seem to be witing, si lets synchronize our wrting orbits so they intersect weekly as often as possible. Imam currently part of the dVerse Poet's Pud. Frequent prompts 2-3 a week, so it keeps me challenged,

Well, thatis all I had to say. Hooe you visit Maureen dear, Thank you m'Lady! ;-)