nature

A Poem & A Picture (On Meeting Robert Hayden in a Dream)

/ Janna Hill / Leave a comment

On Meeting Robert Hayden in a Dream

by Abdul Ali

Winter Daybreak

here among them   the dead   the others   the aliens

I see you without    coke bottle glasses   a wavy comb over

your nose buried inside a notebook  over-

 

flowing with strange sightings   men and women

without a homeland   a library to shelve histories

dreams   the names of rare flowers  fruits  baby names

 

exiled from their villages   learning to say hello

with accents thick   with nostalgia   for their purple planets

here UFO sightings aren’t so spectacular

 

border crossing is quintessentially american  universal

crowds gather in squalid ghettoes where every country is a city

every city is a verse  & every verse echoes “Those Winter Sundays”

 

where a New World opens up where all the martians are welcome

at the writing table with their fountain pens & swollen digits & you

 

whispering

 

what took so long?

A Poem & A Picture (Colorado)

/ Janna Hill / Leave a comment

Poem by Carl Adamshick

My dream lives close to my lungs.
Sometimes I feel it as a pen
spilling ink in the dark purse
of my breathing. My body
lives here in Colorado,
in an apartment with a few plants.
I am what the experts refer to
as history, a small totality
making its way to the future.
In the evening, I inherit death
as an idea, as a subject I’ll be tested on.
Mid-afternoons, I take long walks.
I live by myself as the state lives
by itself in borders it had nothing
to do with. I, too, have a river.
If you ask, I’ll tell you all about the light.

A Poem & A Picture (Your Birdhouse)

/ Janna Hill / Leave a comment

And we’re off…

Did you hear the gun? It is officially National Poetry Month.

This pretty ditty is by a woman known only as Ariella, I suppose. No last name or links were provided. 😦

Enjoy your weekend off and keep the suggestions coming.

 

Sparrows Invade (1024x641)

I Used to Be Your Birdhouse

Poem by Ariella

I  used to be your birdhouse.
I could coax you out from your seat in the treetops
from behind the camouflaging greens
and watch you edge out shyly with the wind ruffling your blush feathers.
You’d cling to me when the spring showers started falling
and I could keep you safe and dry, I could always do that.
I’d be there to hear your youthful songs, and I’d whisper back in a language just we knew
and then I’d hug you goodbye and watch you step precariously from my perch,
flapping in the wind, unsure, unaccustomed.
and  I’d be there for you the next day and the next
because I thought you’d still need me.
I never thought I’d see you, the point of a flying V
soaring with your head held high,
not even glancing down at
my tired wooden walls
and faded empty perch.