HAIKU: Response to One Deep Breath's Prompt of 12/27/06

Sunrise, Liquid Sculpture

winter wind
blows the old gate shut
rust shower

The prompt this week is about the process of aging and weathering. Please visit One Deep Breath to read the full prompt and enjoy others' responses.

Blush! I'm embarrassed to admit it, but this happens with our front fence gate. I've been trying for years to get our landlord to pay to have the entire fence and gate painted (it's chain link, and will need to be scraped, too, before painting). Although he's quite wonderful about repairs and upkeep about everything else around the building, he's resistant to this for some reason I cannot fathom. Then there's also trying to get my apartment building mates to close the dang gate when they leave or enter. Sigh. I got home just in time with my loaded shopping cart a couple days ago to see the gate slam shut in the wind and shower the walk with rust flakes. Less to scrape, I guess, once I talk the landlord into doing something about it all. LOL!

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‘til next time, keep dreaming,

Roswila
[aka: Patricia Kelly]
****If you wish to copy or use any of my writing or poems, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”)****My other blog: ROSWILA’S TAROT GALLERY & JOURNAL.

THE DREAM TREE (A Poem)

Geneva Point Center, Lake Winnepesaukee, N.H.,
sketched July 1978 by Patricia Kelly

The above tree stunned me when I approached her. My sketch does no real justice to the tree. (The poem below comes closer, though it's not about the tree in the drawing.) I was delighted when the owners of the camp turned two of my tree drawings into greetings cards that they then sold in their on-site store. I had been at the camp offering creative writing classes. At the time the camp center was owned by The National Council of Churches in New York City, where I worked as a secretary and led a daily poetry workshop on lunch break.

Not only do I love trees in waking life, but they are companions in my dreams. As in the below poem, based on a dream I had in May of 1997:

THE DREAM TREE

I have no roots. No stories
of the Old World from the Polish
grandmother who scrubbed floors
to feed and educate her daughter,
her history held in a proud
compensating silence.

I have no roots but those I steal.
No cradling web of stories about
the mother dead as I turned ten,
my family's silence more final
than her dying.

I have no roots but those I steal
in dreams of the Irish father
and grandmother, the grandfather
and great-grandparents, who struggled
in vaudeville and commerce,
the Great Depression and two World Wars,
yet dropped only the rare fact
in the same few oft repeated stories,
leaving me to milk my dark intuitions
for sustenance.

I have no roots but those I steal
in dreams from trees:

My father, doubly transformed
by death and dream, guides me
to a clearing in the wood
where grows an enormous
softly glowing tree, at which
he gestures saying
"Look to your Mother."

Deeply awed, I inhale gratefully
of Her timeless silence.

* * * *

‘til next time, keep dreaming,

Roswila
[aka: Patricia Kelly]
****If you wish to copy or use any of my writing or poems, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”)****My other blog: ROSWILA’S TAROT GALLERY & JOURNAL.