Poets Salon: Simple Beauty

POETS SALON

– 7/31/19

Hosted by Kath Abela Wilson

Some of us are so fortunate to be born poets. It is our secret power. My father. His father. Her grandmother.
His grandmother. Storytellers. Lyric poets all. They live in us. We are everything they ever wanted.

…pools at twilight
my silver streams come early
over the hill*

*(From a poem by my father)

~ Kath Abela

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Out to dry (Photo – Tom Clausen)

Matsukaze

washing clothes
out on the back porch
the smooth smoke-stack black skin
of my grandmother,
a bantu griot

stumbled across a black n white photo
of grandma…
the vivid whiteness
of her nurses uniform

recalling past evenings
when mama’s mamma would come
take me away…
oh the liberty!

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Watercolor painting, sketch by Michele L. Harvey

M. Kei

a clothesline
in the open air—
how I like to hang
the laundry with
breezes in my sleeves

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Watercolor painting by Kath Abela Wilson

Marlene Hitt

floating on Black Pond
heavy clouds press low
standing here
rain will wash my hair
before teatime

full moon in clouds
its brother in the pond
nods…
two moons
meet silenly

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Full Moon (Photo – Sharon Hawley)

Tom Bilicke

tranquil and sublime
above the busy traffic
the winter moon

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Miso soup (Photo – Lynne Jambor)

Lynne Jambor

in a bowl
of miso soup
sun and moon

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Simple Beauty (Photo – Sharon Hawley)

Simple Beauty: Quotes and Credits

Matsukaze (Orrin Tyrell): “Bantu people are the speakers of Bantu languages, comprising several hundred indigenous ethnic groups in sub-Saharan Africa, spread over a vast area from Central Africa across the African Great Lakes to Southern Africa. A Griot is a storyteller in its simplest meaning, however. Griots were the keepers of the collective and individual history of the tribe and individuals within a tribe. they were also musicians, diplomats, advisors, teachers, and what we know as medicine women/men.” Matsukaze enjoys the immediacy of Japanese short poetry forms in English. He currently lives in Dallas, TX.

M.Kei is a renowned scholar of Asia short forms who has published thousands of poets in his anthologies and journals. Kei is a tall ship sailor and award-winning poet who lives on Maryland’s Eastern shore. He is the editor of Atlas Poetica: A Journal of World Tanka, and Stacking Stones, An Anthology of Short Tanka Sequences (Sept 2018). His most recent collection of poetry is January, A Tanka Diary. He is also the author of the award-winning gay Age of Sail adventure novels, Pirates of the Narrow Seas. We are honored to have his inspiration for SImple Beauty with his tanka here, His extensive website is transitioning right now and will reappear with an even better format. We will update. Find his books and journals on Amazon.

Marlene Hitt was recently honored, along with her husband Lloyd, for their decades of service to the Sunland-Tujunga poetic and historical community. Working as hosts and volunteer docents at Bolton Hall Museum there they host Village Poets and the Poet Laureate program. Marlene, an accomplished poet, tells me “I love to learn.” Her tanka in our Simple Beauty Salon are new. Inspired when I introduced tanka at Bolton Hall, a few months ago, her unique voice, so sensitive to detail, shines through like the moon through clouds. In her interview with Kath Abela, in 2015, she tells the story of her grandmother who was a fine poet. She called Marlene, as a child, “The Sunland Rose.” She recognized Marlene’s poetic talent speaking her “inner voices” aloud. Marlene went on from there, inspired to be a poet. She has published in anthologies and journals and her recently published book Clocks and Water Drops, published by Moonrise Press, is available on Amazon.

Tom Bilicke lives in Glendale, CA: “I used to live nearby as a young boy. My parents left me alone to myself much of the time, so my senses of seeing and hearing took in everything. As I grew into a young adult, I found others who wrote in the small poetry press, and we corresponded. When one friend’s magazine folded, I stepped in with one of my own, Front Window.” Tom’s haiku can often be found in the Southern California Haiku Study Group’s yearly anthologies, and some publications by Poets on Site.

After two trips to Japan, Lynne Jambor is heading there again in 2020. The simplicity of particularly more rural life is very appealing to her, to follow in the footsteps of zen practitioners and others, doing small simple everyday tasks mindfully continues to be a challenge. Lynne has been writing haiku and related forms for almost six years. She has been greatly influenced by extensive encouragement of the supportive haiku community. She is published in various anthologies, including Haiku Society of America, Seabeck, and The Portland, Arbutus (Victoria), and Vancouver Groups. Lynne is executive secretary of ‘Haiku Canada’ and a member of the HC Archive committee. She has also been a coordinator of ‘Haiku House’ for the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Sakura Days Japan Fair.

Artist Notes

Tom Clausen is an inspiring photographer and poet who documents the simple beauties of life wherever he goes. He lives in Ithaca, New York.

Michele L. Harvey, of Hamilton, New York, is an accomplished, award winning painter and
poet.

Sharon Hawley is an adventurer, poet and photographer. See links to more of her amazing trips, blogs and and photos in her interview on Colorado Boulevard.net with Kath Abela.

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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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