Burned Cookies

[Barbara Jean]

Crashed pilot, thank you so much for reading some of these and I am so glad you and Dunc noticed the play on triolet.

Kristalyn, thanks for coming back to read. Last week to get through!


Dunc, thank you so much. Well, I will have to fake the virginal! Thank you for the generous comments which keep me going.

[Barbara Jean]

....

[Barbara Jean]

When there is nothing else, depend
on a chickadee. Notice how some always

wear a hat, dress in dapper black
and white. Serve them sunflower seeds

on fresh-baked trenchers. Watch the dainty
pick just one and dart back to their place

at the table. Perched on the trellis outside
my window, the Boreal write personal letters

posted between the asphodel and cherry
blossom. Will we pass into

fruit or is that Hades’ oar stuck between
flowering twigs? No one knows—

but if you close your eyes and sit quiet
with a handful of seeds as an offering,

a coin, a golden wing will cross your palm.

[Mimic_Octopus]

Hallo Barbara!

I love the fleeting moments - snapshots of the natural world - captured in each of these poems. Your NaPotoire is splendid!

What we owe the sparrow - I love the little intimacies in this poem, from "Sparrow and Sorrow / change places on the tongue" to the under-rib nesting and "mated pairs / shiver on the hands of blighted clocks". These tiny, tender acts of resistance and warmth are so powerful.

Picking Wild Flowers at the Beginning of Things - I love the title here, and the scattering of wild flowers plucked along the path of the poem. You have a knack for guiding the speed and rhythm of the read to reflect the action in the poem, and this is almost meditative. That lovely last line comes along like the sun through the clouds.

Nightfall - Another of those sweeping wing-like moments, so elegantly described. In this case life among the dead. I love the brevity of the owl's appearance, only to disappear, and the aftershock of seeing it.

[Jee Leong]

Barbara, Good advice in "Picking Wild Flowers." I like me a motley bouquet too. Especially when we keep hearing those flowers ringing and ringing. Your triolet puts the teacup right where it belongs. "Chickadee Augury" makes good sense to me. "Hades' oar" stands out, followed by the coin for the boatman. A good way to pass.

[Barbara Jean]

Jee, M/Kirsten, thank you so much. I am so glad you both liked Picking Wildflowers. M, I probably belong in another century with all my natural world! But thank you so much.

[Barbara Jean]

It is the songbird who devours the thistle seed,
the singer of night laments. It is song which breaks

into spiny husks as the feathery-white wing seeds
of the thistle emerge. Deep purple wraps meadows

in a cloak and, in a heavy rain, droplets light up as stars
against dark-flowered skies. Flocks of songbirds

rise as a chorus with full throated melody.
Morning doves, the plain sparrow and goldfinch

harmonize as the roots vibrate in the open field.
I remember thistles growing on the banks

of Osprey Lake. How a dragonfly buzzed above
your head as you swam. But then I remember

the hard thistles clustered at our feet, the unyielding
flowers of our past. Even so, as I watch songbirds

"................... among the thistles, I think of you
as a wayward seed plucked from air to song.

[Barbara Jean]

First light is a glacial business. The sun seems to stretch
forever across the mountains while the moon
clings—a lover who will not leave the bed, leave
this river where it still shines in afterglow.

When locked where there is neither light nor dark,
in a universal stand off, linger on a stream’s rocky bank
or pause by the sea and watch waves struggle in silver traps.

Between the force of stones on the shore, the water and grains
of sand, ice and fire have gone out of the world. Every gull
whose flight is caught in the hands of a great clock—by the slowed
motion—drifts into morning as a church bell sounds.

[Barbara Jean]

These are words of privilege. I can observe
day unfold. I can write about how green a bent
oak is outside my window.

This morning I walked down by the river and
I could think about its beauty. I have the words
of plenty tucked in beside

breakfast.

If they who hunger, who call to us
waking and sleeping,
awaken one day resplendent, can we give

sunset visions, aubades or quaint ditties? Break
this poem like bread. Break it until true

wheat sits on the tongues of our neighbour.
Ask them to tell us about forest
creatures and streams—the shining
fish—were they

edible and, did stars burn brightly enough
. for a good hunt?

[Scrow]

Hi,

Thistle is lovely, and something more than clever. The sonics are beautiful and operatic in how they affect the reader, the whole image/sonics working as a kind of concert of image/song, and then the narrator brings in a reflection which half-endorses the solid foundations of Opera, which also make the image/ the (in my reading) memories of a beloved become less effusive and more concrete, more tactile/prickly. So, for me, this reads as a quite extraordinary movement which takes us from romantic memory through to more concrete memory, contrasting the two without diminishing the power of either - letting both co-exist, enabling, in the end, ambiguity rather than binary.

When Morning Comes - using that moment between dawn and day and describing it in image as a liminal space - in moment as well as motion. Your work is hugely strong. I love the movement between domestic/love image and the close with the more abstract spiritual, with all that both signify.

Bread - I've only just read, so a quick and dirty response. But, in that, a good point made and made well. Maybe we write poems that share what is edible and what isn't? Poetry is, after all, a powerful form of information as well as reflection. Sorry, I haven't had much time with this and my default is prosiac. Your poem also sent me off to read Margaret Attwood.

Sarah

[Donner]

Hi, BJ,

"Triolet" - HA! Bet she's sorry she asked him to make himself useful. Very clever, good use of the form to show a change in mood in the span of eight lines.

"Nightfall" - It's masterful how you control the build-up of the mood that overtakes the poem. The sunset doesn't just fade, it's consumed; the oak leaves don't stop rustling, they're struck into silence; stolen candles aren't used; gravestones serve a harbinger; owls, associated with night, seek out the shadows.

"Coming soon" - Best. NaPo. Poem. Ever.

"Chickadee Augury" - I like how this goes from observation to meditation, using the chickadee as the vehicle. The coins offered replaced by sunflower seeds is just the right ending.

"Thistle" - All of the birds mentioned in this visit my feeders. Another observation of birds yields to a meditation on N's "prickly" relationship. You do that so well.

"When Morning Comes" and "Bread" - Two more wonderful pieces of writing. In "Morning", I love the picture of the moon clinging as long as possible, as a lover who will not leave the bed, and how morning unfolds. In "Bread", I love the comparison (which you do just about better than anyone) of bread to the act of taking communion.

Donna

[larryrap]

Hi Barbara Jean,

Thanks for the very serene trio of poems. Thistle has the sense of bucolic beauty which comes with a toughness and a threat. The middle maybe goes too soft and pretty but you recover the balance of prickly and beatific towards the end.
Morning is a very delicate balancing act which captures the in-between, evocative and expertly crafted.
Bread is a meditation and a prayer which feels very deep and earnetst, though I'd stress gratitude and recognition over what looks like a tilt towards guilt.

[Dunc]

Barbara

Chickadee Augury ─ Is a glorious paean to small creatures, effortlessly full of warmth and detail, a beautiful painting.

Thistle ─ A chain of recollections, set among thistles and the birds they attract, of "a wayward seed plucked from air to song".

When Morning Comes ─ in the further north, and the arriving sun defines the mean between "ice and fire" and the gulls slowly wheel into the day. Lyrical and gentle in the cold air.

Bread ─ and the memory, I take it, of the earlier inhabitants of the region, living a tougher life as a matter of course and no less our fellow humans for all that. Indeed, gens una sumus.

Much gold in this thread!

Regards / Dunc

[GreaterMandalaofUselessness]

Hi Barbara Jean,Sorry to get here so late. This thread is wonderful, packed with strong poems.

Swallowed by a whale - The dark night of the soul, and a hint of the 30 day NaPo journey to come -- or the lockdown. Love "the heart beats on xylophone" and the way "You are in the exhale" offers a distant rhyme with the title and suggests relief, relaxation, letting go.

Prosperos Mosquito, love this POV here, a letter from a mosquito, a small annoyance, who bugs Prospero. But the mosquito seems also to be an aspect of Prospero's self, his self-criticism and self-doubt. The (self) criticism is relatable too. A longing for the glory days, for youth, comparison with others who do better. The eternal, "tomorrow you (I) must do better".

Agnes street is a beautiful unrhymed sonnet, a love poem to Spring with a hint of sacred: the trees as cathedrals, the genuflection and confession. Love the nascent petals as a visual echo of the colours of the dawn sky. "And like a sonnet turn they burst to bloom" at the turn is clever and apt.

The room almost reads like a dream recounted, but could also be describing the mundane, I like that "I have a thumb / that can move the atomic world / from here to there" could be a dream super-power, or the TV remote control, and love "In this loneliness,/ a bookcase occupies the left ventricle / of my heart" -- comfort or blockage?

The History Poem. I love this one, and it may well be my favourite of your thread (and not just because I requested a King Alfred poem). It has a humorous, whimsical feel with an undertone of something stronger. I loved "at least a time you had Anglo Saxon missives / stuck to your refrigerator and your taps never dripped" which made me smile, the wisdom of "keep finding that Wessex is no different than Mercia" and the increasingly specific historically-grounded questions of S3.

Fraser River provides solace in dark times. I can't help reading the pandemic into, "Even when something has switched / off the lights" -- which is a great line -- though the poem seems much more widely applicable. Also loved, "Be dark and boiling for a time" and the promise of a "harvest of light". A reprise, it seems, of the long, dark night theme of Swallowed by Whale.

Ending with Flight. Love the opening instruction, and the poem's mixing of fairytale and shivering and fluttering eyelash, and the hint of violence in "Splay your hair / on a flat stone and beat it to a shine"

Hic Sunt Dragnoes also calls to mind the dark night theme, and the suggestion of prophecy (the ancient cartographers) and the collective "we" puts me more in mind of global disaster. The "air, closed and fetid" and the wondering "what may come from the swamps / beyond" suggest being enclosed and facing an uncertain future.

Trash Talk Walk to gives us darkness again, but here it transitions into light and hope via spring or nature. At first there's decay and garbage, "The world has lost is shine" but with the promise that if we "take a few more steps" we'll find life and growth, dandelions jumping and "fruit and furl playing in newly planted garden beds".

In What Comes to You we find the N waking and slowly regaining memory. I could read dementia here, but also that early morning fogginess as parts of the brain -- especially those in charge of finding proper nouns -- seem to lag behind the rest in the process of waking (that could just be me, brain fog being something I'm prone to). But more generally waking from sleep does seem to involve a process of coming back to oneself, putting oneself to together. Here the N seems foreign to herself at first. Looking for clues. Not quite being the someone who remembers she likes that cup and takes it with honey. As with the previous poem, this poem moves towards hope. Drink you tea, it will come to you.

Picking wild-flowers at the beginning of things. Love the way the many possible dark fates are entangled with and echoed by the various flowers and blossoms, and the very last-minute promise of salvation. Echoes of a herbalists of almanac here, matching plants with afflictions, but without -- barring the forget-me-nots -- the remedies.

Chickadee augery I loved Will we pass into / fruit" and the golden wing that seems to hint at the coins given to the boatman. However, not living where chicadees are native, I am left at a loss as to what to depend on.

Thistle love the interwining of songbird, song and thistle. The close makes me wonder if this an elegy, though it might, instead, be refer to redemption and transcendence.

I've really enjoyed reading your thead. You have a great crop of poems.

Just a few more poems to go now before the whale spits us out and we wake up in Ninevah.

-Matt

[Barbara Jean]

Scrow, Dunc, larryrap, Donna, Matt..., thank you so much for the generous incites on my poems. I will be around to visit everyone before the week is out. I am very lucky to still be working during these difficult times and am a behind today.

Matt I think you are the only one I have not visited yet either. Thank you for going through so many of my poems. Much appreciated.

But really everyone’s help has brought out better work and helped me focus. I think the middle of my thistle poem is on the O V T side. But always after Napo to work on.

Thank you!

P.S. Donna, I think “Coming Soon” belongs in Pick of the Litter. I know it is my best work!