Formation

Under a goldenrod eye,
armies of cloud-men strut by
flanked by a blue damselfly
streamers of flags in the sky.

Note: This was my third attempt (the first two were hideously trite) at a tanaga, a four-line Filipino poetic form that traditionally had an A-A-A-A rhyme scheme and a syllable count of 7-7-7-7.

Photo credit: sahua d, via flickr //CC BY 2.0

Happy Poem in Your Pocket Day!

April 29th is Poem in Your Pocket Day. To celebrate, I participated in the "Envelope Project", where you take the first line of a famous poem and use it as a springboard to write your own poem. This year, the first lines were all taken from Emily Dickinson's work.

I chose "The Murmur of a bee." You can see the sentence in it's original context here. My poem is below.

The Murmur of a Bee

The murmur of a bee
as he talks to the flower,
he softly strokes her petaled face
before the coming shower.

Then, damp and dewy, he flies home
buzzing loudly in his haste,
with her pollen on his mind
her memory, his to taste.

[Update: This poem was honored by Poem in Your Pocket Day NYC as an "outstanding poem."]


Photo credit: Christine, via flickr // CC BY 2.0