by FRAN TABOR
Let me believe you for a little while;
Let me dwell within your smile,
Let your touch overwhelm all I’ve known
Let me live
within
the vision
You have shown.
When the sun chases misty stars away,
Let me pretend, you will stay.
Tag Archives: poetry
Change (For the Summer Solstice)
By M. F. Erler
The world is like a river flowing,
Permanently changing,
Forever running,
Building its own land.
And in the same way,
Changes creep into me, unfelt
Whirling ‘round my feet and head in eddies.
So my soul:
Longs for where I’ve been
Craves where I am going,
But can only be here—in the now.
Why can’t I be like the river?
At its source—trickling from the deep,
dim, in-parts of earth?
At its mouth—wandering slowly, at ease,
before losing itself
in the wholeness of the sea?
–and everywhere in between?
M. Frances Erler, PeaksAndBeyond.com
HAIKU
By Diane E. Boker
Lucky for me that (5)
I think in pentameter. (7)
It can be a game. (5)
In September of 2020, several members of Montana Women Writers met via Zoom for a word-lover play date (a.k.a. the monthly meeting). The activities were led by member, Barbara Schiffman, a recent haiku enthusiast.
You probably already know that a haiku is a poem of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five. Traditional Japanese haiku focuses on the seasons and observations of nature and is in present tense. According to Barbara, “modern haiku has no limits to subject and doesn’t need to be somber. You can be humorous, satiric, ironic or even silly.” For silly, see my example above. She pointed out that working on haiku is great training to tighten prose, to be concise, to find the exact word to evoke the feeling a prose writer is trying to express.
We created some haiku on the fly with prompts from Barbara and really surprised ourselves. We even wrote some collaboratively, with one member throwing out the first line and others adding line two and three. It was exhilarating.
You can try it too. Here are some suggestions to write about:
- Something you ate today
- The pandemic
- The weather
- Your pets
- A summary of your book
Speaking of the pandemic, there is a Face Book page dedicated to haikus about the pandemic. Check it out:
Haiku for a Global Pandemic group – https://www.facebook.com/
I am going to contribute the one below, based on a random comment heard from the mom of a fifteen-year-old:
Dawning on the boy, (5)
All snow days are lost to Zoom. (7)
Unforeseen results. (5)
And here are two more that I came up with after the MWW play date:
Karma is a bitch, (5)
They say. And here we are caught (7)
Choking, cloaked in smoke. (5)
Try to be normal, (5)
All the while knowing that you (7)
Are simply the light. (5)
Now, go have some fun yourself.
Nancy Rose
By Marie F. Martin
Poet Nancy Rose visited the February meeting of Montana Women Writers and read three of her poems to our gathering. I enjoyed her haunting cadence and choice of words so much I asked Nancy if I could share one of her poems on our blog. She kindly agreed. but then I had a terrible dilemma. Oh my, which one do I choose? I opened her book and began reading. This is the one I finally chose after a nice time in a comfy chair dwelling on her words.
Night Music
Hey, firelight music
Your playful beat says get up and dance
Move my body so freely
Every creak and groan is gone
Drum vibrations moving through me
Taking me out of my body
Into a wide night sky.
I’ve been wanting all summer
To climb into the Big Dipper
And swim all night in the star pool
Backstroking with the northern lights
Dancing overhead
I would come back
Resplendent in moonlight
Breathing deeply
Trailing stars
Oh, yes
This is the start of her author blurb on the back cover. Nancy Rose is a rare flower of the Kentucky hills.
Nancy now makes Montana her home. Her website is www.NancyRoseMT.com
(Originally published March 14, 2016)
My Grandfather’s Poem
By Marie F. Martin
Some time in the middle 1930s, my grandfather Yeats wrote the following poem. He homesteaded a Montana flatland spread just north of Gilford, near a town named Goldstone. In the evenings after chores, he wrote the rhythms that ran through his mind while doing endless chores in his Red Chief tablet . The ranch is gone, the town is gone but the poems live on. I have several newspaper clippings from the Havre newspaper and tried to scan different ones, but the letters were too small to read. I chose this poem to share because it shows determination. My heritage goes deep into Montana soil, but also the desire to put words on paper was passed along. In the photo is my father on the tractor and my grandfather on the combine. This is before Mom and Dad were married. Yep, she married the hired hand.
Wheat for 40 cents
By William Yeats in the 1930s
Oh, please tell me how the farmers in Montana
Can ever pay their taxes and the Rents,
And keep their poor old trucks and tractors running,
When they have to sell their wheat for forty cents?
For at that price you cannot make expenses,
And keep your equipment up in shape,
When you know its worth at least six-bits to raise it,
You can’t help that you’re Just an ape.
Now the tractor needs a set of sleeves and pistons.
For the way it is pumping oil near breaks my heart.
And I’ve cranked and cracked, till my poor back is broken,
Trying to get that cussed thing to start.
The timing gears are rattling and banging.
The old crankshaft is getting mighty flat,
The radiator leaks like a spraying fountain
And nothing that I do seems to help that.
Twas many moons ago it shed the skidrims,
The broken worn out lugs have lost their grip.
And every time the plow hooks on a boulder,
The tractor stands still while the clutch does slip.
And the old truck isn’t faring any better.
To tell the truth, its nothing but a wreck.
And some day, crossing the O’brien coulee,
I’ll have to spill and break my dog gone neck.
When in the rattletrap I go ariding,
I thank the Lord, my heart is good and stout
As in the cab I sit with nerves aquiver
A listening for the rear tires to blow out.
Yes, it sure is great to be an honest farmer
A horny-handed tiller of the soil,
But right now, I’d pass for a first class scare-crow,
All smeared from head to toe with grease and oil.
Didn’t dare to go to church on Easter,
For through my shoes the folks could see my toes.
Indeed there’s very little joy in living,
When you’re wearing gunny sacks for underclothes.
They say, of everything there is surplus,
Just what to do with it nobody knows.
Now really, if there’s such an awful surplus,
Why can’t I have a suit of Sunday Clothes.
Oh, I’m sure if people only had the money,
There’d be an awful jam in every store.
They’d soon clean up that over-rated surplus,
And have them jumping round, a rustling more.
Montana Women Writers 