Poets Salon: Life’s Journey

POETS SALON

– 5/15/19

Hosted by Kath Abela Wilson

With my mother, on life’s journey, all those years. We told time like squirrels. Where we had buried what. What we remembered and forgot. Forget-me-nots and morning glories of our lives.

bluebirds of happiness
how we fed them
before she flew

~ Kath Abela

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The Voice of Silence, a painting on silk by Erzsebet Zsombor (Photographed by Taura Scott)

Réka Nyitrai

losing my dream
in a raven’s cry…
this ache of
not kissing him
goodbye

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Dawn chorus

Finally he was able to see her. See her with his heart. Her head resting on his pillow, facing the rising sun.

sparrow chirps —
in her dimples
early spring

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fragile
in her mother’s skin…
drooping tulips

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Path through Bearpark woods (Photo – Steve Wilkinson)

Steve Wilkinson

In four years I will be sixty. As I look at that word I sigh. Where did the time go? Who stole it? Who hit the fast forward button when I was twenty five? There are many metaphors for our travel through life. A meandering river, a winding path, a bird flying into the blueness of sky. I like to think of it simply as a journey, a walk in the woods where we are never certain what lies around the next bend. Perhaps that’s why Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” has always held a special place in my heart. As I lie awake at night I contemplate my travels this far and ask myself “how would my journey have turned out if I had taken that other road?”

insomnia

I repeat
the same mantra

over to myself
a whispered hope
like a song in the night

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the old city

shrouded in mist
and moonlight

A late night train
for Edinburgh
separates past from present

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last time we walked

this forest trail
we walked it with ease

now my legs
feel the weight
of a thousand pines

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My brain, a mushroom (Photo – Janice Garvey)

Janice Garey

Walking life’s familiar pathways and finding the unexpected pushes my creative button. First, a question begins. Then an answer or another question forms. Recording those thoughts in tanka form with a photo of what prompted the thought process may be helpful to another person puzzling over problems in their life. Sharing such moments equates to caring for others.

I walked in the yard
and saw my brain on the ground
how did that happen
I wondered and realized
it is a mushroom I think

imagine the awe
if caterpillars could view
their death while hanging from limbs
assuming all is a loss
then butterfly unfolds wings

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Grounds surrounding Blair Castle, near Village of Blair, in Perthshire, Scotland (Photo – Bill Skiles)

Dorothy Skiles

Portland sunset
we dined on deck
sister’s chemo ends
together we watch
a new sunrise

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Freemont bridge
tips of swaying
pines, firs, maples
peak above its tied arch
I sway in the wind too

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Three forks in the road-
Left, right, and straight,
Which one will I choose? *

*This verse by Dorothy appears in Skiles’ 2013 Family Calendar along with the Photo Grounds surrounding Blair Castle…

Caterpillar (Photo – Janice Garey)

Life’s Journey: Quotes and Credits

Réka Nyitrai lives in Bucharest, Romania. She was born in Transylvania, a land that she truly considers magic. She studied communication and political marketing. She always felt attracted to poetry, especially to short forms, however she only started writing haiku since 2018, early spring. She writes haiku, tanka and cherita. Her work has been published in Under the Basho, Failed Haiku, FemkuMag, Otata, weird laburnum, Fresh Out: An Arts and Poetry Collective, The cherita, your storybook journal and The Asahi Shimbun.

Steve Wilkinson has been writing short form poetry for about 20 years and has had poems published in various print and online journals. He publishes “The Bamboo Hut”, a tanshi journal. He lives just outside historic Durham City in England.

Janice Garey lives in the metro Atlanta, Georgia are, USA. Her life’s journey has involved watching the ever expanding buildings, roads, and population of the city bring the global community to her. She searches out bits of nature within the metro area to photograph and share with others who are not able to be out in nature as much as they would like.

Since 1973, Dorothy Skiles has made her home in Sunland-Tujunga, California, and raised a family. Since 1996, she’s been active in the Foothill poetry community, including planning and hosting monthly poetry readings as a member of the Village Poets of Sunland-Tujunga since 2010. She served as Sunland-Tujunga’s Poet Laureate 2012-2014. She was also one of Altadena Poetry Review Anthology’s 2017 Pushcart Nominees. Writing poetry is a journey with many paths that twist and turn and where one’s outside world and one’s interior-self are explored.

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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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