Poetry

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 2024 #4

humanist55

Dear Kay
Oregon, I believe
is a state full of trees
and a child of Oregon
would have no difficulty
visualising the setting for
Little Red Riding Hood
originally written by
the Brothers Grimm of Germany
but repeatedly rewritten and
referenced in book, film and TV.
Even in America
Cordellya Smith of Kentucky
wrote a Native American version
Kawoni’s Journey Across the Mountain
a Cherokee Little Red Riding Hood
the classic tale of a girl in jeopardy
is a warning to children everywhere
against walking in the woods alone
and to watch out for wolves…

The Poetry Postcard Fest is a challenge which encourages poets to write an unedited poem on a postcard and send it to a stranger. Organised by the Cascadia Poetics Lab, who organise the participants into lists of 31 + yourself for you to address your offerings to. This was my second year and I was on List 10. The lists are sent out in early July and you have until the end of August to send out your missives – to date I have received 16 of 31 possibles and now that we are into September, it is allowable to share the cards and poems you sent.
Although the original poem is to be sent as written – crossings out, blots and all, I have typed them out for people who can’t read my writing and I am allowing myself to edit if I feel like it…

Down to the Sea Again…

humanist55

People ask if I miss Ireland
but I can travel there anytime
in my mind’s eye
standing on the rocky ledges
three hundred and fifty million years old
as gentle swells roll in from the West
smoothly curved as a reclining breast
no more than eighteen inches high
rising to just below my feet
it looks gentle but one
slightly higher wave
spilling onto the ledge
would take the feet from under me
pluck me into the water
the high tide daring me
to stand so close to the edge
I guess six tons of water
moves within six feet of me
six feet deep and a few million years
of fossil coral reef beneath me
slowly etching back into the world
with every passing swell

I set up my rod and cast
whose first retrieve
snags a bunch of seaweed
with a Pipe Fish
– a straightened cousin
of the Seahorse curling its
tail to cling amongst the fronds
the pollock are running
and I cast my heavy silver Toby again
splashing into the glassy Atlantic water
so clear I can see the bottom
slowly retrieve, pausing, simulating
the rise and fall of a weary baitfish
my lure is about to break the surface
when the Pollock strikes
turning in a thrilling
savage flash of silver
right before me.

I walk my haul back along the ledges
past the place I met the otter
– playing hide and seek
with matching curiosity
for a full twenty minutes
after he slipped into the water
and dived only to resurface
elsewhere to spy on me repeatedly
– until I turned the tables
to crouch out of sight of him
making him the seeker…

Past the lime kiln
dug into the low boulder-clay cliff
now half exposed revealing its
bottle shape – lined with
fire-proof granite boulders
gleaned from its digging out
when was it built and how many
houses did its quicklime mortar
build in turn – perhaps ours…

I file these memories
of sparkling swells
in the most special room
of my Memory Palace
to be visited on dull days
far from the sea
or maybe set down in verse…

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

Over at dVerse Poets Pub,  lillian in Poetics asks us to write to a line from the Mitch Miller song “By the Beautiful Sea“

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 2024 #3

humanist55

Dear Jill
The couple on this postcard
were supposed to be a long-haired poet
and a commodity trader
with over their heads, their thoughts floating
but which is which I wonder
this AI offering did not get my vote.

You live close to a great lake
but also near a windy city
and I wonder which
dominates your sense of place
are you a suburb of Chicago
or a separate town in Gurnee?
Does the place you live
influence your poetry
perhaps I’ll get to see
when you reply to me
I would say ‘if’ but I
have my fingers crossed…

P.S. Your card was my second arrival Jill!

The Poetry Postcard Fest is a challenge which encourages poets to write an unedited poem on a postcard and send it to a stranger. Organised by the Cascadia Poetics Lab, who organise the participants into lists of 31 + yourself for you to address your offerings to. This was my second year and I was on List 10. The lists are sent out in early July and you have until the end of August to send out your missives – to date I have received 16 of 31 possibles and now that we are into September, it is allowable to share the cards and poems you sent.
Although the original poem is to be sent as written – crossings out, blots and all, I have typed them out for people who can’t read my writing and I am allowing myself to edit if I feel like it…

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 2024 #2

humanist55

Dear Colette
Amidst the city reduced to heaps of rubble
revenge for one innocent peoples’
centuries of persecution and trouble
now enacted and exacted on another
a child learns resilience from new life
and wonder turns to hope…


I’m sorry this is such a heavy subject to start the season with but sadly it is the world we live in. I appreciated all your comments on my posts last year and was delighted to find you on my list, Colette – Lots of Love, Andrew

The Poetry Postcard Fest is a challenge which encourages poets to write an unedited poem on a postcard and send it to a stranger. Organised by the Cascadia Poetics Lab, who organise the participants into lists of 31 + yourself for you to address your offerings to. This was my second year and I was on List 10. The lists are sent out in early July and you have until the end of August to send out your missives – to date I have received 16 of 31 possibles and now that we are into September, it is allowable to share the cards and poems you sent.
Although the original poem is to be sent as written – crossings out, blots and all, I have typed them out for people who can’t read my writing and I am allowing myself to edit if I feel like it…

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 2024 #1

humanist55

Dear Chastity
I write to you seated
at a boulangerie in Boulogne
on the last day of a roadtrip
holiday around northern France.
You are my first PoPoFest
card this year and I must
once again choose a card
for an unknown correspondent
so for this magical moment
I have chosen a Witches Cat
a la mode ‘Steam Punk’
and I hope it finds you well
and equally looking forward
to 31 poems à un étranger…

The Poetry Postcard Fest is a challenge which encourages poets to write an unedited poem on a postcard and send it to a stranger. Organised by the Cascadia Poetics Lab, who organise the participants into lists of 31 + yourself for you to address your offerings to. This was my second year and I was on List 10. The lists are sent out in early July and you have until the end of August to send out your missives – to date I have received 16 of 31 possibles and now that we are into September, it is allowable to share the cards and poems you sent.
Although the original poem is to be sent as written – crossings out, blots and all, I have typed them out for people who can’t read my writing and I am allowing myself to edit if I feel like it…

Tableau of the Fallen

humanist55

From my writing seat
the window frames the
tableau of yellow leaves
the wisteria
has met with Autumn
too early this year

Did I not water
one crucial day when
wind plucked the water
as surely as sun
drying out the leaves
killing them too soon

Today that same wind
plucks them from the vine
to lie in yellow
drifts upon the ground
the devastation
plucks at my heart too

Do those leaves accuse
me for lack of care
plants grown in a pot
need more vigilance
did I then fail them
like Gaza’s children

Plucked from life too soon
all because Zion
“is mowing the grass”
arms makers making
money from the war
leaders not leading

Have we the people
seeing the tableau
of all the fallen
done enough for those
unlucky to be born
trapped in a pot

They did not choose to
be born in a land
others had decided
they could not share with
had to have it all
to be safe from death

Children of Gaza
lie countless as my
wisteria leaves
accusing me of
not raising my voice
sufficiently yet…

© Andrew Wilson, 2024
Previous poems of protest and images generated in Midjourney…

https://how-would-you-know.com/2024/03/six-questions-from-pablo-neruda.html
https://how-would-you-know.com/2024/08/breaking-news-and-hearts.html

Over at dVerse Poets Pub,  Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft, marks the birthday of American poet Sam Hamill (1943-2018) of whom she says “Hamill’s poetry is absent on rhyme and heavy on unadulterated lyricism. He talks his poetry to the page as here in “After Morning Rain” which switches between his personal loci and wider, world issues […] Hamill was a poet both in the world and of the world, being the leading light for ‘Poets Against the War’ and still his poetry does not stray far from what he sees, feels and knows directly”.

Laura also asks us to write in the poetry form ‘The Tableau’ created by Emily Romano in 2008:

Poetry Style:

  • 1 or more verses
  • 6 lines per verse
  • 5 beats/syllables per line

Poetry Rules:

no rhyme scheme
title should contain the word ‘tableau’
poem should aim to be pictorial

Revolutionary Laughing

humanist55

I read a book by
a Serbian revolutionary
sharing his experience
of nonviolent action
to bring down dictators
and even military juntas
his greatest tool – laughter
poking fun utterly defeats them
imagine trumpety-Trump
the big, inflated, orange baby
wouldn’t he just hate it…

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Mish in Poetics invites us to write about laughter and since I have little time before work, and as I am getting into the whole Quadrille thing, I have written something in just 44 words.
As a child, one of our favourite records to come on the radio, because it inexorably activated our audio mirror brain cells and had us giddily joining in – I give you “The Laughing Policeman” by Charles Jolly/Penrose…

Oh, and the book – Blueprint for Revolution, by Srdja Popovic

Spin Cycle

humanist55

Separate whites from coloureds
wisdom has it
but my clothes are so old
there’s no possibility of
dye displacement
I am a keeper
I have T-shirts
forty years old
faded a little
but not turned pink
I use conventional wisdom
when washing something new…

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, whimsygizmo in Quadrille invites us to write a Quadrille – a poem in exactly 44 words – a regular feature at the pub and although we may use “spin” in any sense of the word, I immediately thought of a recent poem I wrote on the subject of washing clothes. The last stanza was 46 words long and might have made a standalone poem with just a two-word edit but I decided to practise the art of distillation and go for editing the whole poem down to 44 words to see if it caught the gist of it. I include the original below so you may be the judge of whether it works or is an edit too far…

Colourfast?

Always separate whites from coloureds
in your weekly wash
conventional wisdom has it
as passed down from
mothers to daughters
and even to sons
given the reluctant recognition
there will be a lacuna
between a mother’s ministrations
and another’s

But my clothes
are for the most part
so old and washed
so many times
there’s no possibility
of errant dye displacement
polluting one colour with another
so I sort according
to type – trousers and pants
socks and shirts
one wash destined for
the drying rack
one on coat hangers
hung up to dry

I am a keeper you see
I have T-shirts and
hand me downs
from my late father which I calculate
must be forty years
since newly purchased
on a trip to Australia
did my mother hope
to see some resurrection
in my wearing them?

Those T-shirts have
I grant you
faded a little
the fabric at least
if not the poster extolling Australia
or the intricate dots
of aboriginal art
but they haven’t turned pink
in some laundry accident
I do, after all
use conventional wisdom
when washing something new…

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

Alone Is the Star I Follow

humanist55

“alone is the star I follow. In love & in solitude”
 – from February & my love is in another state – by José Olivarez

to live with the one you love
Is to immerse one’s self
in the illusion of not being alone

but alone we truly are
Coming into, leaving &
passing through the life of this world

so when illness, short of death
physical or mental, intrudes
we are shocked by our solitude

reminded we are alone even
in the presence of the other
and all the constructed togetherness

house, history and family
are all props in the play
& all of us but strolling players

not to disrespect the construct
which is our way of fighting entropy
creating meaning amongst disorder

we weave our fabric and let our flags
flutter in the winds of vicissitude
for friends and family to rally round

but in. the end, we are all
fallen soldiers in a battle
that nobody can win

Take the timely reminders
of essential solitude
to wrap your flag more tightly

around you & your loves
and Reaffirm the meanings
you choose to fight for…

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Punam – paeansunplugged in OpenLinkNight offers us the chance to post a poem of our choice. This is one from my writing group after discussing and writing in the shadow of “February & my love is in another state” – by José Olivarez

Stormy Weather

humanist55

“Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away

”From “Ozymandias” – Percy Bysshe Shelley

Like the banks
we deemed ourselves
too big to fail
but when the rains came
mudslides and hurricanes
and all of them stronger
and more frequently
we discovered then
there was no-one
to bail us out…

Our leaders
many of them
thought that wealth
concentrated upwards
would rain gently
down upon the
huddled masses
or at least as far as
the middle classes
but the one percent
were so elevated
they couldn’t see
our plight
so far below

They thought
complexities of
climate change
too gnarly to
change course
and set their sights on
settling another planet
spaffing their pointless
bucks to fire off rockets
some of which
increased their wealth
seeding satellites
in an unholy net
across the heavens
to offer others
the dream of making it
to the top
or charged other
aspirants to admire
the blighted but
still beautiful Earth
from brief
sub-orbital sojourns

Will their legacy be
any more than Ozymandias
half buried in a desert
of their own making?

And what of us
the little people
are we to throw up
our hands in helplessness
and blame it on
those above us
for failing to
curb or even
feeding our appetites
for cars, fresh fruit
flown out of season
and batteries for our
mobiles – phones and cars

We may not leave
individual
broken statues
as our testaments
yet we are not islands
but part of the main…

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

Tonight, I am guest editing the prompt at dVerse Poets Pub for the Tueday Poetics spot. I have suggested an activist poem on any subject that gets your goat and as an optional challenge, poets can choose to begin with a Glose or quote, from another poem as I have done here…