Poetry Corner: Making an Impression

POETRY CORNER

– 5/11/16

Dragonfly tattoo – Pat Geyer

Pat Geyer

I strolled through an Autumn festival. Played games. Went on rides. Ate caramel corn. Drank cider.

Giddy from hard cider when a dragonfly landed on my arm. This never happened before. I wanted to savor the moment. Went to the tattoo tent.

dragonfly
once pulsing life…
transformation
on my forearm
inked in stillness

Pat Geyer says “As residents of East Brunswick, N.J. each year we’re lucky enough to attend the Middlesex County Fair. Always lots to do. Lots to see. One year in particular, a dragonfly was following us around the grounds. We all stopped, it landed on me. A few steps later we came across the tattoo tent. I was thrilled to have a dragonfly, my totem, inked to my forearm!”

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Tattoo photo – Sara Heisley.

Briony James

my stained glass skin
glowing with the rainbow
emptied
a sudden blank page
nightmare

Briony James says “My tanka is based on a real repeated experience I’ve had over the past 20 years. Making an impression I knew that my tattoos were always an integral part of me: I never got one lightly or without thought. But my subconscious made sure I knew it soon after I started my back piece. I dreamed I woke up and got out of bed as usual, went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror and saw, to my horror, that all of my tattoos had disappeared. I felt utterly naked and bereft; worse, I felt as though a major part of myself had been torn “away somehow.”

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“The poet brings light to darkness” created by Smita Padhy, Pravat’s daughter, on a visit to the USA.

Pravat Kumar Padhy

the poet scripts
her well-lit voyage
ripples of love
the darkness paints
gently on the silken edges

Pravat Kumar Padhy‘s tanka highlights the power of a poem to impress itself on our minds, the page and the world. Pravat is a poet-laureate in Bhubaneswar, India His short form of Japanese poems have appeared in many international journals.

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Stevie Strang

Lazy afternoon by Stevie Strang.

In Stevie Strang‘s haiga (image and haiku) her heavy house impresses itself, by reflection, into the weightlessness of the bubble. Stevie makes her home in Laguna Niguel, CA.

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> Kathabela is hosting this corner from Shanghai, China. Journeying to conferences with her mathematician musician husband Rick Wilson, she fills her pages with poems, drawings, and impressions of their adventures. Their current trip will continue till June 8th and culminate in a tanka poetry conference in Japan. Look forward to Poetry Corners with a taste of her travels.

♣ We welcome and encourage your response especially in the form of short poems. You may reply by leaving a comment below.