“Night Fire Road”…..

D’versepoets.com : This Thursday is Open Link Night.  Come and read some great poetry!

(Watercolor done by JKB to illustrate “Night Fire Road”)

 

NIGHT FIRE ROAD

Sharp right into mystery,

Down black macadam churning

The guts and apprehension,

Pot-holed surface falling

Either side into waterlogged ditches.

Hurtling towards a tunnel

Of dark, smothering trees,

Deep in the mountain.

–

This is Night Fire Road

Spiraling down and up

Like the dark flames of its name.

Tires dumped in the tar of night

Maybe a car or two

Stolen, torched,

Liquor bottles christening the

Games of drunken fools.

–

Maybe it was meant

To be named for foxfire—

Bioluminescence come down from

The borders of Heaven

A gleaming fool’s gold

Only appearing at night

To tease greed and imagination.

–

Or perhaps it was named

For the illicit meetings

Of furtive lovers

Who shun daylight

And go enflame passion on

Night Fire Road.

–

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2017

“The Goblin Spider” a very short story.

 

 

It’s Autumn, the season of darkness at 8pm!  I noticed that last night. I used to scare my son into the house by telling him ‘die Nacht’ had fallen and the wolves were sniffing around.  It’s the perfect time, with  Samhain and Halloween approaching to draw up to the woodstove and read a scary tale.  The Japanese do it well. 

Lady Nyo

 

THE GOBLIN-SPIDER

 

In very ancient books it is said  there used to be many goblin-spiders in Japan. Some folks declare there are still some goblin-spiders. During the daytime they look just like common spiders; but very late at night, when everybody is asleep, and there is no sound, they become very, very big, and do awful things.

Goblin-spiders are supposed also to have the magical power of taking human shape, so as to deceive people. And there is a famous Japanese story about such a spider.

There was once, in some lonely part of the country, a haunted temple. No one could live in the building because of the goblins that had taken possession of it. Many brave samurai went to that place at various times for the purpose of killing the goblins. But they were never heard of again after they had entered the temple.

At last one who was famous for his courage and his prudence, went to the temple to watch during the night. And he said to those who accompanied him there: “If in the morning I am still alive, I shall drum upon the drum of the temple.” Then he was left alone, to watch by the light of a lamp.

As the night advanced he crouched down under the altar, which supported a dusty image of Buddha. He saw nothing strange and heard no sound till after midnight. Then there came a goblin, having but half a body and one eye, and said: “Hitokusai!” [“There is the smell of a man”.] But the samurai did not move. The goblin went away.

Then there came a priest and played upon a samisen so wonderfully that the samurai felt sure it was not the playing of a man. So he leaped up with his sword drawn. The priest, seeing him, burst out laughing, and said: “So you thought I was a goblin? Oh no! I am only the priest of this temple; but I have to play to keep off the goblins. Does not this samisen sound well? Please play a little.” And he offered the instrument to the samurai who grasped it very cautiously with his left hand.

Instantly the samisen changed into a monstrous spider web, and the priest into a goblin and the warrior found himself caught fast in the web by the left hand. He struggled bravely, and struck at the spider with his sword, and wounded it; but he soon became entangled still more in the net, and could not move.

However, the wounded spider crawled away, and the sun rose, in a little while the people came and found the samurai in the horrible web, and freed him. They saw tracks of blood upon the floor, and followed the tracks out of the temple …

from:  Kwaidan: Weird Tales From Japan, by Lafcadio Hearn. 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2017

 

 

“Mountain Road”, a poem of Autumn.

( A Kappa….certainly a monster.)

It feels a bit like fall with the rains and cooler weather.   Imaginary Gardens  with Real Toads has a prompt about ‘Monsters’, either symbolic or …..

This is my offering.  I find Nature sometimes monstrous.  People, too.

Lady Nyo

—

MOUNTAIN POEM

 

It is almost Halloween.

The early dark of dusk

Creeps in before finishing

With the day–

 

Strange imaginings

Cause shadows to rustle,

Briars entangle

And nothing seems exactly –right.

 

In the mountains

Clouds dip low

Smothering the landscape.

Only the moan of winds

Round eaves shaking the skeleton hambones

Hiding in attic corners

Breaks the silence—

A strange cacophony.

 

Monstrous, ghost trees

Wedged together in

Stumbling rows,

Indian Snake arms

Wave warnings to

At all daring to approach

Their Joseph’s –coat-of- many colors

Tattered by

Blasts of Autumn winds

Tearing around the mountain.

The hoot of the owl

Drives on dis-ease until dawn.

 

 

Roads dip and swell

In a frenzied, jagged run

Straight into the heart of danger.

Nerves uneasy,

There is too much mystery in this night!

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2017

 

 

Autumn Closes

Marsh Geese, watercolor, Jane Kohut-Bartels, 200–

—

 

This waning Autumn season,

That bursts upon the mindscape

Through the vehicle of landscape

And mingles dazzling elements

Of color, odors, tangled undergrowth,

Where things are lost in each other

And plausible limits vanish,

And with the passage of days,

(Or  a violent rainstorm—)

The Earth is transformed in scarcity,

A stretching silence

Insulated by hoar frost and later snow,

Where color is corralled

Like old black and white horses

Barely moving against bitter grey of day.

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2015

 

“Autumn Dusk” and “Mourning Dove”, a poem and a tanka.

“Night Fire Road”, janekohut-bartels, watercolor, 2010

–

Photo to the east

–

Watercolor, 2006, Jane Kohut-Bartels, “Dawn”

–

 

Stuttering winds blow across

Clouds tinted by the failing sun.

Brittle air softens,

Now a faded blue–

Shade of an old man’s watery eyes.

–

A late flock of Sandhill cranes lift off,

Pale bodies blending in the

Twilight with legs

Flowing dark streamers,

Their celestial cries fall to

Earth–

A harsh, chiding rain.

–

The trees in the valley

Are massed in darkness

As waning light leaches

Color from nature,

Creeps from field to hillock

And all below prepares for the

Rising of the Corn Moon.

–

Even frogs in the pond

Listen between croaks

For the intention of the night.

–

–

–

Barn Owl, J. Kohut-Bartels, 1999, watercolor

–

A mourning dove cries

It is such a mournful sound

Perhaps a fierce owl

Has made it a widow.

Oh! It breaks my heart, her cry.

–

Chessie coming through a flower bed of zinnias. 2000- Oct. 13, 2014. We miss you, Chessie.

–

–

–

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2015, from “White Cranes of Heaven”, Lulu.com, 2011.

–

Some Tanka…..inspired by the Beauty of Autumn

Tanka, as many readers know, is an ancient form of Japanese poetry.  Originally called waka, it is a predominant form in Japanese literature, along with the 17th century haiku.

Tanka is much earlier than haiku, with anthologies of tanka being produced in the 8th and 9th centuries, as in the great Man’yoshu.  Basically tanka is a vehicle for  emotional verse.  In some cases, it’s deeply erotic, in other examples it celebrates nature, seasons, etc.

People who read tanka wonder:  Why so short, and why only 31 syllables? One theory is that the rhythm possesses magical power: the poems are spells. I like that.  Certainly such poems (tanka) have been used as spells, for bringing down a deity, etc. and to this day are still found embedded in the tough loam of Tantric Buddhist rites. Another practical theory is that they are formed in such a way that they can be recited in two breaths.  These poems after all, are also called songs.

I am no expert, having stumbled upon  tanka  about 7 years ago, but I have fallen in love with the form.  It is a short and powerful  vehicle for poetic thought.  And perhaps, after all, to compose them as ‘spells’ isn’t far from their historical mark.

I have found tanka to be a refuge.  Perhaps of scoundrels, but certainly a living, breathing poetry form.  I won’t go into the mechanics of tanka here, but I do have a two part essay “Short Introduction to Tanka and Classical Examples” that I was asked to present by OneShot Poetry group a few years ago.  I will post that soon.

Below are some of my tanka, though I still struggle with the form.  It is not to be confused with freeverse in the classical sense of tanka, but then again, poetry and these forms do evolve. Also, most tanka in Japan is written without punctuation.  Most English writers of tanka are more comfortable with some punctuation.  Some of my tanka have punctuation, and some don’t.

Autumn is so beautiful, even with most of the leaves gone. There is something magical in this short season that pulls at the heart. Perhaps a season of spells…..

Lady Nyo

—

The moon floats on wisps

Of clouds extending outward

Tendrils of white fire

Blanketing the universe

Gauzy ghosts of nothingness.

—

Cranes wheel in the sky

Chiding cries fall to hard earth

Warm mid winter day

A pale half moon calls the birds

To stroke her face with their wings.

—

The cat sits dozing

Beneath a thorny rosebush

No foot can reach him

His paws retract the sharp claws

A deep purr closes his eyes.

—

Give me a moment

To catch my breath and settle.

Give me some peace, please!

Stop kissing my hands, stop it!

What if someone is watching?

—-

Presence of Autumn

Burst of color radiates

From Earth-bound anchors

Sun grabs prismatic beauty

And tosses the spectrum wide!

—

Bolts of lightening flash!

The sky brightens like the day

too soon it darkens.

My eyes opened or closed see

the futility of love.

—

Had I not known life

I would have thought it all dreams

Who is to tell truth?

It comes at too sharp a price-

Better to bear flattery.

–

I look up at blue

Sky this morning, watch leaves fall-

Whirling, colored tears

Clip my face like dull razors

The strokings of memory.

–

Like the lithe bowing

Of a red maple sapling

My heart turns to you

Yearns for those nights long ago

When pale skin challenged the moon.

—

When Autumn enters

Inexplicable sadness-

Season fades to death.

Hunter’s moon sits in Heaven–

Garden spiders finish, die.

—

Autumn wind startles–

Lowered to an ominous

Key—Ah! Mournful sounds!

The fat mountain deer listen-

Add their bellowing sorrow.

–

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2014

“Autumn Dusk”….and Happy Thanksgiving!

 

 

It’s Hard To Tell what this photo above is, but the morning brought this weak storm front…and a dark cloud that stretched from the bottom of the horizon.  It transformed Atlanta to the east into a mountain range.  It reminded me of New Hampshire or Pennsylvania.  Quite a sight for the morning, and more spectacular outside my window than in the photo.  But!  A startling and welcome gift for the day before Thanksgiving.  I called around (at before 7am) to neighbors to look to the east outside their doors, and went down to one neighbor, Don to come out with me and gawk at the ‘mountain range’.  Don is a good sport and was as awed as I was.

Thanksgiving is a good time for enjoying the mysteries of Nature….and putting on Copeland’s  “Appalachian Spring”…the music that evokes an earlier, peaceful time when Thanksgiving wasn’t followed by Black Friday.

Peace to my nation in a time of outrageous turmoil, chaos, and Happy Thanksgiving for those of us who still give thanks.

Lady Nyo

And just for the fun of it, pix of my kitchen, and the sacrificial pumpkin from Halloween now to be a pumpkin pie.

By the way, it’s a ‘pink’ pumpkin, though it shows up darker in this photo.

.

.

 This Autumn, a fleeting, transitory season, has brought heavy snows and bone numbing cold across our country.  Too early for this, but here in the South, it was just record breaking temps and rain.

Yesterday we had heavy winds, rain across Georgia and some areas had tornados. When the rain finally stopped, I looked outside and a huge rainbow spanned the sky.  What a visual gift to lift the spirits!  Then the clouds broke apart, their bellies turned pink and a soft blue mingled with the clouds.  Only a scant few minutes before dark fell, but what a Gainsborough moment. 

All week I have listened to the migration of Sandhill cranes, not seeing them, too high up, but hearing their cries. It signals the Winter to come, the smell of wood smoke and a landscape that is swept of fertility, just waiting the Earth to pirouette again.

Lady Nyo

AUTUMN DUSK

.

Stuttering winds blow across

Clouds tinted by the failing sun.

Brittle air softens,

Now a faded blue–

Shade of an old man’s watery eyes.

.

A late flock of Sandhill cranes lift off,

Pale bodies blending in the

Twilight with legs

Flowing dark streamers,

Their celestial cries fall to

Earth–

A harsh, chiding rain.

.

The trees in the valley

Are massed in darkness

As waning light leaches

Color from nature,

Creeps from field to hillock

And all below prepares for the

Rising of the Corn Moon.

.

Even frogs in the pond

Listen between croaks

For the intention of the night.

.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2014,

“Autumn Dusk” originally published in “White Cranes of Heaven”, Lulu.com, 2011

“Autumn Tanka”…..Tanka for the morning.

Marsh Geese, watercolor, Jane Kohut-Bartels, 2007

Autumn wind startles–

Lowered to an ominous

Key—Ah! Mournful sounds!

The fat mountain deer listen-

Add their bellowing sorrow.

“North Carolina Stream”, watercolor, janekohut-bartels, 2008

It is just the beginning of the Autumn season here in the South.  Only the temps would tell of this seasonal change, but there is something definitely different.  Just a few short weeks ago, we had full-on summer, but now?

The smell of wood smoke, the crackle of fallen leaves, but still little color  in Atlanta. The dogwoods are a blaze and some other trees, like sumac, but these huge oaks and pecans that surround our house and street are hanging on for dear life.  Our red maple is still green with only a few outside branches in red and rust display.

Tanka is my favorite poetry form of all.  It’s something I fell into about 8 years ago, and wrote a lot of it before I actually began a study of the inner guts of this ancient form. There are definite classical rules that one should learn before one dismisses these things. I need to go back to this study because I’ve forgotten a lot.  It is unfortunate that many poets think they are writing tanka but they are just writing freeverse and dare to call it tanka.  I did this, too, but am trying not to do this now.  I find tanka the best medium for observation, expression and sentiment.  Being  allowed only 31 syllables culls a lot of verbosity and that can be only to the good for poetry.

And…..tanka takes your mind to a very different level. It’s not just a simplification, a clarification in the verse but something that instills a sense of  peace and satisfaction.  Worth plumbing the depths of this ancient form.

Lady Nyo

–

Autumn Tanka

– 

I look up at blue

Sky this morning, watch leaves fall-

Whirling, colored tears.

Clip my face like dull razors,

The stroking of memory.

–

Is the whistling

Of the wind- a train, a plane?

Nature plays fiddle

And our senses are confused.

We dwell in chicanery!

–

Shooting star crosses

Upended bowl of blue night

Imagination-

Fires up with excited gaze!

A moment– and all is gone.

–

This grim November,

The month of my father’s death

Always bittersweet.

My memories float, weak ghosts-

Haunting in the fog of life.

 –

So lonely am I

My soul like a floating weed

Severed at the roots

Drifting upon cold waters

No pillow for further dreams.

 –

A late Summer moon

Floats above the conifers.

Autumn is coming.

Do pines know the season turns?

Their leaves don’t fall; do they care?

 –

Come into my arms.

Bury under the warm quilt.

Your scent makes me drunk

Like the wine we gulped last night.

Too much lust and drink to think.

–

When Autumn enters

Inexplicable sadness.

Season fades to death.

Hunter’s moon sits in Heaven–

Garden spiders finish, die.

–

Out with the gold fish,

The bullfrogs croak their sorrow.

Summer is passing

Autumn brings sharp, brittle winds

But Winter is the cruelest.

–

Like the lithe bowing

Of a red maple sapling

My heart turns to you,

Yearns for those nights long ago

When pale skin challenged the moon.

–

Overhead, the cranes,

Sandhills, swirl in board circles.

Broken GPS?

No matter, their cries fall down

Celestial chiding rain.

–

To end this  with a simple poem, not a tanka.

 

Autumn night winds

Hiss over the land

Round corners

And pulse under eaves.

Clashing wind chimes add sharp discord

As bare branches answer with a grating groan.

Above all,

The moon casts a feeble light

Too thin to fatten the road. 

–

(this poem from “White Cranes of Heaven”, published by Lulu.com, 2011)

–

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2011-2014

 

Autumn Tanka…..

“North Carolina Stream”, watercolor, janekohut-bartels, 2008

Autumn colors from my bathroom window today

 

Barn Owl, J. Kohut-Bartels, 1999, watercolor

It’s just beginning to be Autumn here in the southern US, and I can’t resist the season.  It’s one of my favorite and there is something different in the air, the smell of wood smoke already, though the temps don’t make sense for this.  Perhaps some homeowner is clearing a plot of land, but the smell makes me dizzy with anticipation.  The wind chimes have been ajangle over the past few nights, and the north winds are becoming more active.  Every so often, there are whirlpools of leaves, gathered up in the street and dancing like dervishes.  The real fall will come, with soggy rains and denuded trees but perhaps this season makes us feel alive: there is so much natural activity after a slow and sullen summer.  The miracle of the trees changing, the clouds overhead, gray leaden expanses that turn golden underneath at dusk, the cast of light so different from the season before. Yesterday I  saw two  low flying Canada geeze go honking right over my head and they startled me.  Soon we will see the formations of Sandhill Cranes as they migrate south.  You hear them a long time before you see them far up in the moddled sky.

In the midst of posting chapters from “Tin Hinan” I came across some fall tankas I had included in “White Cranes of Heaven”.  This, with what was going on outside, was enough to change course on this blog right now.  I’ll get back to the next chapter of “Tin Hinan” but right now there is a squirrel in the bird feeder and I saw a yellow fox in the dying kudzu out back.  Last night I heard two very mournful owls in the trees behind the house.  Enough to turn my thoughts to a favorite season.

Lady Nyo

–

I look up at blue

Sky this morning, watch leaves fall-

Whirling, colored tears.

Clip my face like dull razors,

The strokings of memory.

–

Is the whistling

Of the wind- a train, a plane?

Nature plays fiddle

And our senses are confused,

We dwell in chicanery!

–

Shooting star crosses

Upended bowl of blue night

Imagination-

Fires up with excited gaze!

A moment– and all is gone.

–

This grim November,

The month of my father’s death

Always bittersweet.

My memories float, weak ghosts-

Haunting in the fog of life.

 –

So lonely am I

My soul like a floating weed

Severed at the roots

Drifting upon cold waters

No pillow for further dreams.

 –

A late Summer moon

Floats above the conifers.

Autumn is coming.

Do pines know the season turns?

Their leaves don’t fall; do they care?

 –

Come into my arms.

Bury under the warm quilt.

Your scent makes me drunk

Like the wine we gulped last night.

Too much lust and drink to think.

–

When Autumn enters

Inexplicable sadness.

Season fades to death.

Hunter’s moon sits in Heaven–

Garden spiders finish, die.

–

Autumn wind startles–

Lowered to an ominous

Key—Ah! Mournful sounds!

The fat mountain deer listen-

Add their bellowing sorrow.

–

Out with the gold fish,

The bullfrogs croak their sorrow.

Summer is passing

Autumn brings sharp, brittle winds

But Winter is the cruelest.

–

Like the lithe bowing

Of a red maple sapling

My heart turns to you,

Yearns for those nights long ago

When pale skin challenged the moon.

–

Overhead, the cranes,

Sandhills, swirl in board circles.

Broken GPS?

No matter, their cries fall down

Celestial chiding rain.

 –

To end this  with a simple poem, not a tanka.

 

Autumn night winds

Hiss over the land

Round corners

And pulse under eaves.

Clashing wind chimes add sharp discord

As bare branches answer with a grating groan.

Above all,

The moon casts a feeble light

Too thin to fatten the road. 

–

(this poem from “White Cranes of Heaven”, published by Lulu.com, 2011)

–

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2011-2013

 

 

‘Samhain- A Celtic Winter Song’, from “White Cranes of Heaven”

 

Autumn colors from my bathroom window today

 

–

It’s the first day of October and it couldn’t be more beautiful.  The air is cool, and the sun out, but not the blazing sun of summer.  Autumn hasn’t really hit yet, but there are some small changes in the landscape.  the kudzu patch behind us looks withered, but not from frost. It’s that seasonal dying off, after the flowering and the jam making. I missed that, again, this year and love that jelly. Maybe next year.

Autumn is my favorite season, something clean,  with great expectations for the peace, calm and silence of winter.  Yesterday I talked to my 100 year old plus Aunt Jean, who has fallen silent, at least to the pen.  She also feels an energy in the earth with this season.  That is good to know.  Something to look forward to with old age.

I wrote this poem a few years ago, during a time of great introspection and internal change.  I try to post it every Autumn.  It still has meaning a pull on me.

Lady Nyo

–

Dark mysterious season,

when the light doesn’t

quite reach the ground,

the trees shadow puppets

moving against the gray of day.

 

I think over the past year

praying there has been a

kindling in my soul,

the heart opened, warmed

and the juiciness of life is

more than in the loins–

a stream of forgiveness

slow flowing through the tough fibers

not stopper’d with an underlying

bitterness

but softened with compassion.

 

This season of constrictions,

unusual emptiness,

brittle like dried twigs

desiccated by hoar frost

just to be endured.

 

I wrap myself in wool and

watch the migrations–

first tender song birds which harken

back to summer,

then Sandhill cranes,

legs thin banners

streaming behind white bodies,

lost against a snowy sky.

 

They lift off to a middling cosmos,

while I, earth-bound,

can only flap the wings of my shawl,

poor plumage for such a flight,

and wonder about my  own destination.

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2012, 2013