Poets Salon: Finding Our Way Home

POETS SALON

– 8/21/19

Bridges to Cross (Photo – Debbie Strange)

Hosted by Kath Abela Wilson

Challenges we face…being a community, while each odyssey, each personal trajectory weaves its thread through this human web in time and space. Threatened. We all feel a certain psychological homelessness and use our creativity to find our way. We try to repair the broken, make a nest in our hearts for others. Our power is a shield. Poets. Collecting fragments and phrases in our minds year after year.

all of us onshore
figures of humor
and strange beauty
searching driftwood
to find a wand

~ Kath Abela

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Doors to open (Photo – Debbie Strange)

Chen-ou Liu

talk of war
with each glass of wine
his words sharpened

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the stretch
of ocean blue…
scattered ashes

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not home yet —
closing the curtain
closing the crescent

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I sit alone
with my legs dangling
over the fence —
mom’s scream from her bedroom
becomes louder and darker

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rainbow flowers in the night sky
behind the barbed wire children’s faces

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simmering heat…
the boy unfolds a letter
from a laborer
overseas for years
whom he should call father

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Roads to Travel (Photo – Debbiie Strange)

Debbie Strange

Broken things in nature often renew themselves with a change in seasons, much in the same way that human interactions can be mended by spending time in nature, and in deeper communication with each other, with the world, and with ourselves.

nightly news…
a beaver changes
our world view

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refugees
cross the border
in search
of better lives…
we open our arms

Though we may long for home, sometimes there are physical or emotional barriers to overcome before we take that first step…

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Fences to tear down (Photo – Debbie Strange)

Nikolay Grankin

My dream was to get to my mother’s homeland. And finally I managed to get there. In my trip I had a lot of different impressions. But one of the big events was picking wild strawberries. Picking them I thought that I touched the heart of this terrain. And at this moment, I’m sure my mom was nearby…

silence
all over the sky
one small cloud

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ancient fortress
the wild poppies
on the ruins

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wild geese in the sky
humming an old
blues song

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sunlit rain
the wildflowers on the path
to my house

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Dandelion field (Photo – Nikolay Grankin)

Finding our Way Home: Quotes and Credits

All the poets in our Wild Salon, including your host, were among the winners in the first International Morioka Haiku Contest in Japan. (Scroll down, past the Japanese characters to see the English.) Others will be featured in upcoming weeks.

Chen-ou Liu lives in Ajax, Ontario, Canada. He’s the author of five books, including Following the Moon to the Maple Land (First Prize, 2011 Haiku Pix Chapbook Contest) and A Life in Transition and Translation (Honorable Mention, 2014 Turtle Light Press Biennial Haiku Chapbook Competition). His tanka and haiku have been honored with many awards.

Debbie Strange has a deep reverence for nature, and her images and words often reflect that affinity. Her daily practice of writing and creating art brings solace, meditation, and healing to a life that is impacted by physical limitations. Poetry of place also features in much of her work…”And where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts. The chain may lengthen, but it never parts.” (Oliver Wendell Holmes).

Nikolay Grankin was born September 27, 1964 in Tuapse, Krasnodar region, Russia, where he still makes his home. Nikolay has a wife, two children, a daughter, son, and grandson. He has been writing haiku for about ten years, two of them in English. His haiku have appeared in some online and print journals in both Russian and English.

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♣ We welcome and encourage your response, especially in the form of a short poem, by leaving a comment below.

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