“Spring Orgy” for dversepoets.com

(O.L. Weeks Rose, non fragrant)

Sarah over at dversepoets.com is hosting today, poems about the meanings of flowers.  This is my take.  I have 60 some rose bushes here on the property, some 40 years old and older.  Many just planted this spring.  Husband dragged home 11 rose bushes from a movie set they were throwing away.  All lived.

Lady Nyo

Spring Orgy

 

The roses are having an orgy.

They haven’t the decency to wait for the dark,

But ply their lust in the soft, morning light.

 

Randy Graham Thomas is leering.

Madame Carriere is blushing.

Her pink silk-petal gown flutters

As she twists coyly to avoid his embrace.

 

By 10am the sun warms their scents and foreplay is over.

The wind at 11am entwines the two.

Pistils and stamens are seriously ‘at it’

Brushing languorously over parts

An hour ago were covered discreetly.

 

At high noon in the heat of the day

Pollen is floating all over the air

And even the wide-eyed cats

Sitting under tender foliage are blushing.

 

The garden gnome is licking his lips

While a concrete hand creeps to his crotch.

 

This fall there will be rose-hips aplenty.

Red nipples packed with tiny seeds,

Evidence of a spring-time lust.

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2018

“Food Chain”

To the East at morning

OLN  (Open Link Night) at dversepoets.com is always an interesting read of poetry.  No prompts, the poets pick what they will post there. That’s Thursday, after 3pm.

 

FOOD CHAIN

Are we really
At the top of the food chain
Or is this the conceit
Of humanity
Hit over the head with theology
And the further conceit
That Mankind has
Dominion- Over- the- Earth?

I see a bit of a food chain,
But it blurs when reality comes close.

Yesterday, the Coroner dragged a body bag
Out of the woods and over the rocks.
A homeless man died in those woods
The fox and worms and unknown things
Had at him.

He was light as a feather,
Inconsequential, probably never more
In the eyes of most while he breathed.

He must have been.
It took only one man to drag
Him like so much garbage
To the van in the street,
Bumping him over the pavement,

knocking his bones against the curb.

So….the food chain
Gets blurred, confused
In the light of actual life.
And those who say that we are the wisest
The most intelligent–
Still allow their species to die in the cold,
To rot yards from their warm houses
To be fed upon by wildlife
Who are waiting for our stupidity
To reveal the real food chain that exists
Under our noses.

Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2018

 

 

 

“Easter Morning”

It’s OLN at dversepoets.com.  Come over and read some great poetry.

–

EASTER MORNING

The wind chimes are fierce
This Easter morning.
We thought of church where we would be aliens
Unknown and suspect, sitting on hard wooden pews; trespassers.

The music of the spheres
Is not out in the black of night
Does not pass from  star to star
As tones of energy or an ocean of harmony
But is carried by the wind from the east
That tallies majesty
With the music of wind chimes
More glorious than any carillon this morning.

I am soothed by a spirit
Random and precise,
Almost tangible blustering
piercing my heart
As it jangles the simple vehicle of
Hollow metal pipes
And awakes me to life.

–

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted 2018

 

“A Winter Poem Outside My Window”

 

Don’t know who is hosting dversepoets.com tonight, (it’s Bjorn!) but it’s Open Link Night where you can post ONE poem of your choosing.  It’s my favorite time of the month.

(Watercolor, Untitled, Jane Kohut-Bartels, 2008)

 

The soil has lost its excellence.
The worms have gone deep into
The sullen earth and hide
I imagine curled up,
Embracing worm castings
And each other,
Desiccated former selves
Pale little ghosts
Awaiting the fertility of spring
The watering of a constant rain.

I squandered the bloom months,
Thinking paper and pen
Would bring its own blossoming
Scarcely noticing the vitality outside
My window,
Allowing cabbage moths and beetles
To dominate what I believed to be
My nod to farming,
To self-sufficiency,
My tithe to the earth.

Ah, the soil is hardened
By the sins of the season.
Sharp winds make
Their own furrows
The cold buries down,
Deep down
Torments any life
That would show its feckless head.
Especially those hopeful worms
Now bundled in worm-sleep.

The words, verse,
I chose to cultivate
Over cabbage, collards
Failed to bloom.
Better I had plied the hoe
And bucket to that
Than a fevered pen
To paper.

It is now winter
And the fallow earth
Plays a waiting game
Knows I have failed
In paper and soil
And mocks me with a barrenness
I feel inside and out.

Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2016

(This poem first published in “Pitcher of Moon”, Amazon.com 2014)

 

“Owls, babies….

 

 

 

(unfinished painting of baby owls by the author)

Haibun posted for dversepoets.com

Almost every evening we hear owls…hoot owls, barred owls, who know what lurks out there.  Spring is when you hear the symphony of warble.

I remember years ago , when I first heard an owl very near the chicken coop.  I grabbed a rake and ran into the  coop with the hens.  I had no idea what monster lurked outside in the trees.  Turns out it was a hoot owl…6 inches high.  I stood guard for an hour.

In the spring you look for the songbirds, sitting on tender branches with tight little buds, unfurled yet, but soon to be colorful and scented.

The season of rebirth, the season of hope is contained in each bud.  It brings expectation to the heart.

 

–

Wildlife creeps in

Coyotes bark, owls hoot

We share the landscape

 

 

 

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2018

“Plum Blossom Snow”

 

Peach blossoms in the back yard. Spring

OLN (Open Link Night) over at dversepoets where you can post one poem of your choosing.  Come read some wonderful poetry there.

Lady Nyo

–

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.

 

This week I finally finished “Kimono”, a novel I have been writing for eleven years. This above poem comes from that novel.  “Kimono” will be published in a few months on Amazon.com.

 
Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2018

“Glissando of Silver”

 

Dversepoets.com is open tonight to OLN (One Link Night) where you can post any one poem.  Come read the wonderful verse over there.

Lady Nyo

–

I can still hear the music
Coming over the valley,
A glissando of silver sound
My father’s French horn
All phantoms now,
The adagio of Mahler’s Fifth-
Heartbreaking, haunting  dreams,
The allegro of a Mozart something,
What I never knew
But quickening  the heart.

The Aurora Borealis
Dipped her chariot too low
Over our hemisphere
And a glissading curtain
Of celestial green
Ribboned the ink black sky.

My father saluted it
With a cadenza of Wagner
And a Music of the Spheres,
Drawn out in lyrical passages
Floated up to those green ribbons,
A celestial duet
With the Cosmos on one side
And a determined humanity on the other.

I can still hear the music
Coming over that valley
A haunting horn fading away
The man, too,
Both the essence of phantoms now
Into the territory of dreams.

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2018

 

“A Dish of Skylarks”

 

To the East….

Paul Scribbles over at Poetics — dversepoets.com.  What does ‘grace’ mean to you?  I can think of numerous things, but chose this poem below.

Lady Nyo

 

A DISH OF SKYLARKS

–

A dish of skylarks

Fell from the blue

into my lap,

And I, ravenous with

A multitude of hungers-

Ate them.

 

Between burps

one did escape,

shook himself,

Bowed,

And offered a feather.

 

I thought it gracious

Considering what I had done

To his neighbors.

—

The grace of life

Elegant, sublime, stirring

Come into my soul.

–

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2018

“One Reason for the Season”

A Pretty RedTail Hawk, NOT a Skylark….nor a Cooper’s Hawk.  janekohutbartels, wc, 2006

Dversepoets.com is taking a holiday and OLN (Open Link Night) is tonight where we are allowed to post one poem  of your choosing.  Come read for a year’s end selection of some great poems.

Lady Nyo

 —

I saw the Cooper’s hawk this morning. She landed on the chimney pot, probably looking for my miniature hen, Grayson.  Eight years ago she was a starving fledgling who mantled over while I fed her cold chicken.  She’s back this holiday, my spirits lifting. A good Christmas present.

In the middle of the commercialization of Christmas, Nature closes the gap.  I have noticed squirrels with pecans leaping the trees, hawks hunting low over now-bare woods, unknown song birds sitting on fences, heard the migration of Sandhill cranes as they honk in formation. You hear their cacophony well before they appear.  Their chiding cries float down to our upturned faces.

There is brightness to the holly, washed by our late autumn rains and the orange of the nandina berries has turned crimson. Smell of wood smoke in the air and the crispness of mornings means the earth is going to sleep. We humans should reclaim our past and join the slumber party of our brother bears.

Jingle Bells will fade and our tension with it. Looking towards deep winter when the Earth is again silent will restore our balance and calm nerves with a blanket of Peace.

 

Winter’s seasoning:

Bitter winds, branch of holly

Haunts in the attic.

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2017

“I feel the rain”….

(Wintered Geese, watercolor, 2009,  Jane Kohut-Bartels)

OPEN LINK NIGHT over at dversepoets.com.  Come read some marvelous poetry. Tonight is hosted by my dear friend, Kanzen Sakura, (AKA Toni Spenser).  AND! It’s her Birthday!!!!!

 

—

I feel the rain waiting to be born.

I hear the banshee wind

Race around eaves,

Scaring the haunts in the attic,

Making hambone frenzy with

hollow, powdery limbs.

 

Trees now tilting whirligigs

Ancient pin, water oaks

Dancing St. Germaine’s dance–

Frenzy below amongst quilted colors

Ruffling the feathers of nature

Tossing the spectrum wide.

 

I smell the mossy rain finally born,

Hear the clatter on a tin roof

Wind howling down rainspouts

Smell again the musty fog

Born of a sullen, moaning stream

And head for bed under the eaves,

Shared with a Banshee zephyr

And a ham-bone frenzy

serenading ’til dawn.

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2017