Poetry Corner: Disappearance

POETRY CORNER – The Regional Reading

– 03/29/17

Hosted by Kathabela Wilson

This is the first in a series of haiku Poetry Corners featuring poets who will be visiting Santa Fe, New Mexico in September 2017 for Haiku North America 2017*.  Our corners will develop from the themes highlighted by their poems and concerns.

In today’s corner we travel cross-country from Southern California, to New Mexico to New England and back again, to reveal a common awareness of disappearance of natural life and anticipation and hope for the sweetness of return.

~ Kathabela

Orange blossoms (Photo – Greg Longnecker).

Greg Longenecker

where the orchards were
the scent of orange blossoms
morning walk

Greg Longnecker lives in Pasadena where orange trees grace backyards and a singular trees stand like sentinels guarding hinting at unseen orchards of days gone by. Greg says: “Agriculture was once a key component of the Pasadena economy; that time has passed. Now when I walk through my neighborhood the scent of those days returns.”

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Waiting for turtles (Photo – Robin White).

Robin White​

no hum
from the turtle shell
the dead pond

Robin White​ is an artisan, gardener & beekeeper who lives in the foothills of the Pawtuckaway Mountains, Algonquin for “Place of the Big Buck.” She says: “Thirty miles from the Atlantic, this part of New Hampshire is rich in coastal forest. It is abundant with pine, maple and birch, wild marshes & ponds, sweet fern, chaga & protected turtle species. Every June the turtles emerge from the wetlands to lay their eggs in her gardens, working their claws into the minty loam. The turtles all but disappeared last summer, one of the driest on record. Finding a turtle shell, she cupped it to her ear…Now after deep snow & quenching rain, she waits for the their return.”

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Fundy Cove at Pawtuckaway (Photo – Robin White).

Jim Applegate

snow on mountain top
gets less in spring sun
sandhill cranes all gone

Jim Applegate of Rosewell, New Mexico says: “Sandhill cranes and snow geese come here in the fall to winter at the Bitter Lakes Wildlife Refuge just east of Roswell, and you can see v shaped flights of them going to feed in corn fields. They make a sound that can be heard and seen from the ground both morning and evening. Roswell is in the southeast corner of New Mexico 200 miles from anywhere…Hot summers and mild winters 3500 feet elevation.”​

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After the fire (Photo – Marcyn Del Clements).

Marcyn Del Clements

a white butterfly
meanders through blackened sage
Bluecut Fire

Marcyn Del Clements lives “on a branch of the San Andreas Fault, up against the Transverse Range of the San Gabriel Mountains.” She says: “When fire breaks out, it travels across the Range at hyper-speed. This one started in the canyon east of us, and we only had a few hours to get the horses out of their paddocks, walk them down the street. When it was over, I went up there and pressed hard against the chain link fence, that keeps the wild animals out of the housing developments, was a dead fox.”​

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♣ We welcome and encourage your response especially in the form of short poems. You may reply by leaving a comment below.
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*The Regional Reading will be performed live at the conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in September, 2017, led by Kathabela Wilson. The dramatic presentation will be accompanied by Rick Wilson on flutes of the various regions. Poets from Australia, India, Canada, United States, and many other regions will be presenting. Look for their haiku in future Poetry Corners.