Poets Salon: Having a Heart

POETS SALON

– 06/22/22

Hosted by Kathabela Wilson

the bomb that blasted
through the hedge
leaves a heart
the open space i fill
with love

~ Kathabela

Ο Ο Ο

Nest (Photo – Tom Clausen)

Jackie Chou

dream of Oz
knitting a heart
for my tin lover

crepuscular rays
in the dawn sky
I search for a slot
in your black heart
where light may shine

pebbles in a stream
easier to move mountains
then this stony heart

morning stroll
in the churchyard
new hopes sprout
from the cracks
of a heart-shaped rock

Ο Ο Ο

Having a Heart (Photo – Tom Clausen)

Tom Clausen

another loss…
this year’s flowers remind me
of last year’s

the rise and fall
of the cicada’s song,
my own heart quietly
recording
what it can

walking
to sleep, sleeping
to walk
when is enough
enough

passing through
the battlefield
now a rest area.

evening star-
she sleeps with the lion’s tail
in her little hand

just off the path
in the heart of the woods
trillium

Ο

A wall in Itahca (Photo – Tom Clausen)

Having a Heart: Notes and Credits

Jackie Chou is a poet in Pico Rivera who participates in the Southern California Haiku Study Group, Tanka Society of America and Poets on Site.

Tom Clausen, a poet inhabiting the Ithaca woods, loves nature and curates a daily online haiku feature at Mann Library, Cornell University, where he worked for 35 years.

> You will love to visit with Sigrid Saradunn, Lynne Jambor and Meher McArthur, the beauty of our related salon in 2019, “Finding Your Heart on a Walk.”

Submission Guidelines

Suggest your own theme. or write Kathabela for a theme suggestion. We publish every two weeks. Send short poems, free verse, haiku, senryu, tanka, cherita, haibun, tanka prose, short prose poems, etc., or your own unique approach, to Kathabela by text message or (click here to email her directly). We can feature your work again after five months. Multiple Submissions can be saved to appear later:

1. Send a short bio, with comments on your theme.
2. Send photos or artwork by you, or friends.
3. Put your poems directly in the email.
4. No attachments except photos.

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