Plum in the water garden
Plum Blossom Snow
—
The present snowstorm of
White plum blossoms
Blinds me to sorrow.
—
They cascade over cheeks
Like perfumed, satin tears,
Too warm with the promise of life
To chill flesh.
—
Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2010
—
RUDE SPRING
—
Sharp brittle wind
Sails like clipper glass
Cuts the skin razor thin,
And flays off winter.
—-
This spring can’t wait.
It lies,
Promises comforting warmth
Yet delivers a numbing cold-
Too much in love with winter still.
—
I hear the laughter in the pines.
They moan or echo an evil chuckle.
—-
No matter.
This argument will be over
Once the earth
Pirouettes on point.
—-
Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2010
Tags: "White Cranes of Heaven", Plums, poetry, Spring
Lady Nyo's Weblog 
March 24, 2010 at 4:27 pm
i like the upfront way in which you wrote these poems
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March 24, 2010 at 4:35 pm
You know what?
I think that is an ‘avenue of approach’ to poems….LOL!…
But probably not the only one.
In rereading these two, I was surprised at the ‘upfront way’ (good words!)….They are like a dialogue or a feud with Nature….
In a way, this both personalizes a ‘meeting’ with Nature, and sees Nature as a contactable entity. There’s a word for this, but I can’t think of it right now.
Thank you for reading and your comments. They helped reveal the relationships in the poems.
Lady Nyo
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March 24, 2010 at 5:24 pm
Ah, pink plum blossoms. Across the fence from our back yard is a sort of wilderness where a white and a pink cherry tree grow within a couple yards of each other. The contrast (white and pink petals, then green and red leaves intermingling) is a joy to watch unfold.
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March 24, 2010 at 6:17 pm
How beautiful…the promises of Spring.
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March 25, 2010 at 11:41 pm
Inspired by your poems of coming Spring, I wrote a poem in my own style about one of our lovely autumn days. Signs of the coming winter won’t be seen here for another month, when the first frosts are expecxted.
This is where I really envy you your readership – earned by your own work and creativity – for I am one of those who read your blog every day. I don’t think anybody reads mine, and paraphrasing Shakespeare, I have to say “the fault is not in our blogs, but in ourselves”.
Anyhow, I’ll put the poem on my blog, and maybe send it to ERWA as ‘Free Verse’ this Sunday.
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March 26, 2010 at 2:54 am
Hi Malcolm.
First, thank you for reading and your comments. This blog has been up for almost two years…this June actually. It takes a while for readership to develop it seems. I don’t know any particular ‘secrets’ but I think that perhaps if our work resonates in the life experiences of others….readers out there…closely…..then they read. I know that I find wonderful blogs all over the internet and then wonder why I couldn’t have thought those wonderful entries up! LOL~!
I will start reading yours. Promise. You know I’m off ERWA completely, so I don’t see any messages anymore now. So send me the address of your poetry blog.
I envy you the Freeverse Sundays…those were my favorite, along with the tankas…but there seems to be a new crop of poets now there…or people who are struggling to write poetry…much like us both a few years and decades ago.
I don’t know, but I think a dialogue between blog owner and readers is very important. I have learned a lot from readers, their comments here…and privately. I hope what I write will feed into their own imaginations and creativity. After all, what are we anyway? There shouldn’t be any Chinese walls between the creative folks in all cultures.
I do know that some were very impatient with my writings on various sites….but I got to not care about that. It took a while, but that I think is maturing into your own voice and style. I have a long way to go, but writing carries me where I want.
Today I spent a lot of time on research for “The Kimono”. God Bless the Internet! LOL!. I had some questions with the issue of ‘books’ in 16th century Japan…did they have them?? Amazingly, the great Shogun, Tokugawa leyasu , the shogun I have been writing about….introduced movable type…though wooden characters… and oversaw the development of 100,000 individual characters when he became Shogun. This was a great leap forward for printing in Japan, and Tokugawa was the first shogun to push literacy amongst the urban residents. Literacy developed very fast in Japan after that.
However, they fell back on woodprints as pages…makes sense actually, because they could reproduce fast and bind into books…which they did.
My question was scrolls versus books….and when. Turns out that a lot of erotic literature…with pictures!!! were able to be printed and distributed to those who were literate. These were both the movable wooden characters and also the woodblock prints.
So, I love to use my blog for discoveries like this, because…well, it might be of no interest to anyone else but a few writers, but it amazes me what is possible to learn now from the internet.
And I have heard from a few readers that what I post challenges them to research more. That is great. If what I write does this, perhaps that is why the readership is growing??
I have no concrete answers, but just write what interests me and hopefully it does others.
Thanks again, and send me your blog address.
Lady Nyo
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March 27, 2010 at 11:13 pm
Love the picture, Lady Nyo!
“Plum Blossom Snow” sounds wonderful right now.
This winter’s been fairly rude, for sure.
It’s finally over. Yeah! Hello, UT
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March 27, 2010 at 11:43 pm
Helloooo Uncle Tree!
It’s over and it was a long and harsh one. Very rude.
Cherry blossoms are popping out all over…
Lady Nyo
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