Stillness, Late Winter

Leaves 
against blue sky

my eye drawn up

the lightest breeze

on the vines

orange flowers

honey-laden

sunlight touches grass

Submitted for Poets United's Verse First — The Red Wheelbarrow. Assignment: an eight-line poem of complex simplicity. (Hard to do as well as William Carlos Williams did!)

Tweet Poems

Explanatory note

These are poems I write specifically for posting on twitter (and then duplicate here). They are 140 characters or fewer, including punctuation, spaces and hashtags. Nowadays many poets are doing this, designating the verses micropoetry and/or poetweets. When I began creating them in May 2009, I labelled (and hashtagged) them tweetpoems. For sentimental reasons I still call them Tweet Poems here, though you can also find them tagged by the other labels, and on twitter I now hashtag them as poetweets.

At Obiri Rock

At Obiri Rock a woman,

chalked on dark stone, floated 

next to the orb of the moon.

Drawn hundreds of years ago,

her delicate lines have lasted.

Around Obiri, the sheltering scrub

was sparse, the grasses 

dotting bare earth. I wanted to be

an Aboriginal child long ago

running that ground.

Note: Obiri Rock is in Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory. The drawings are in a shallow (but tall) cave created by an overhang. I have never seen a photograph of the particular images in the poem, though photos of the many other drawings there exist and can be found by Googling. The ones in the poem were apart, very high up, and not so sharp or detailed as others.

Submitted for dVerse Form For All: Poetry as Semaphore, in which Samuel Peralta (@Semaphore on twitter) invites us to create poems with verses of exactly 140 characters. I found that this discipline 'fixed' an old draft that wasn't quite working before.

My own twitter name is @SnakyPoet. I tend to use it (poetically) for short poems, where the whole poem is 140 characters or fewer, or else to link to longer poems on my blog.

Falling hard, sudden rain: haiku, June and July 2013

falling hard

sudden rain fills the air

falling loud

15/6/13

confetti
shaken from the box 
flickering sunlight

***********

setting out

on a new path

many footprints

30/7/13

My Lover ...

my long-stemmed lily

my lamp in the garden

my wild fragrance

my sun plenitudinous

my close star

my bending willow

my splendid sunset

my tricky sea

my ride-a-cock-horse

my high-stepper

my rearing stallion

my milk-white steed

my born baby

my map-maker

my quiet cradle

my far song

my unbuckled belt

my turning leaf

my whirlpool

my gone traveller

I'm not writing many new poems at present. This is a very old one (written 1974) which fits the current dVerse prompt Listing and also an earlier one, Anaphora.

Basho on Haiku

Answering a question by Romaru, Basho explains his art:

'...this way is a haikai where, waiting for the cherry blossom or their scattering, the moon becoming cloudy or clear, freely I simply state what I feel in a single verse.

'Nothing else is there to learn.'

He's the Master! So perhaps I have been writing haiku after all. *Smile.*

An Email

'I thought I was being a good friend,' she said.

'I thought you would like it if I kept asking

all about your days.' (I would have liked it if

she had just let friendship grow at its own pace,

naturally, not trying to plan or force it.)

'It is just as I feared,' she says, 'You don't want to 

tell me each detail of your life. I conclude that you like 

other friends, older friends, better than me. I should be

used to it. I have this trouble from most women.

'I can't stand it,' she says. 'It's wearing me out.

We've come to an impasse and should leave it there.

Take care now,' she says, and signs it, 'Love and hugs.'

Submitted for Poets United's Verse First: Water Table (what wells up)

But my 'haiku' are not haiku!

I have come to the terrible realisation that most if not all of the pieces I have been posting under the label 'haiku' are not in fact haiku. Somehow the 'juxtaposition' aspect of writing haiku did not sink in properly until just the other day. What I have created are in fact three-line poems. They have some features of haiku, perhaps, but that's not what they are — not even in terms of contemporary haiku in English.

Where I do have some sense of a break between parts of a verse, even an apparent juxtaposition, usually the sense is nevertheless ongoing and linear, which is not the idea.

However, I never pretended to be an expert, so these attempts can stay here for what they're worth. Future attempts will of course incorporate my new understanding. Whether they will even then be haiku ... one can but try!

The Unseen

Dark moon.

I don't go outside.

I heard deliberate footsteps 

up the front stairs

just before the cats

banged to be let in.

When I opened the door

I half expected to see

a man standing with them.

Instead, before entering 

they turned, looking back 

down the empty steps.

Last night I felt a presence

standing behind my chair.

Today I learn it was that time

my cousin John died.

I don't go out

in the cold, wet dark tonight

but I do say my thanks

to the Goddess.

One way and another

She is with me.

Submitted for dVerse Poetics: fantasy and reality blend. (Supposed to be mirages of summer heat — but it's winter here, which blurs reality in its own way.)

I Am the Cat

I am the cat

with silent eyes

I mark the fall of the leaf

and the grasses glistening

I listen to life

and death.

Life grieves

death leaps

outside

and both together breathe.

I sleep in the warm

inside.

I am tied to the loves of my house.

But sometimes

I come untied.

Wild in hail or rain

electric to thunder

voluptuous for sun

I am chameleon

old wise woman

the witch

and then

the child on your lap

I am a universe.

Cat.

© Rosemary Nissen 1981

from Universe Cat, Pariah Press (Melb.) 1985

First published Luna

At Poets United this week, Kim at Verse First asks to write with omniscience. I'm cheating a bit, but this old poem — the title poem of my first book — is written from the viewpoint of a being who is certainly omniscient as well as everything else! 

The Widow Rejects an Offer

(sedoka)

Beautiful charmer —

you are a sweet friend indeed,

but I don’t want a lover.

Why make yourself sad?

My desire is in the grave;
I am now my own soul-mate.