Poetry Corner: Hope

“A song trembles” art and tanka by Caroline Skanne

POETRY CORNER

– 11/19/15

Caroline Skanne

folding
and unfolding
origami wings
one day i will rise
above my fears

fluent
in the language
of dawn
a blackbird’s flute
becomes my mantra

mourning dove
so much healing
in song

Caroline Skanne lives by the river in Rochester, UK. She is ever so slightly obsessed with winged things, including birds, origami and poetry.

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Houses Near the Gravel Pit, 1913, by Paul Klee

John Brantingham

If you are Paul Klee
You can see pastel joy
even in the houses
near a gravel pit,
even in the gravel pit itself,
even as the Great War

is gearing up
with mustard gas
and trench inevitables.
You squint your eyes
and tilt your head
just enough
until hope potentiates
in everything
all around you

John Brantingham is a creative writing teacher and local author of seven books of poetry and fiction including Dual Impressions: Poetic Conversations about Art. He chose his “Houses Near the Gravel Pit, Paul Klee” as the final poem for that book. John runs the new poetry magazine Ekphrastic California and 30 Days Until Done which gives a prompt a day every day for a month so poets end up with a unified collection at the end of the month.

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Benita Kapa

80th Birthday bouquet

Benita Kapa lives on the East Coast of New Zealand. She received the bouquet (pictured) on the occasion of her 80th birthday in September. It was “a true reminder of spring and the season of hope.” She publishes her poems in journals worldwide. Poetry, nature and the universal friends and family we share online draw us ever together in renewed hope.

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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. The Poetry Corner is hosted by Kathabela Wilson.