“Samhain, A Celtic Winter Song”

 

(Watercolor, “Dawn Ducks”, Jane Kohut-Bartels, 2004)

Posted for Open Link Night over at Dversepoets.com.  Come and read some great, non themed poetry!

—

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 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 black banners

streaming behind white bodies,

lost against a gunmetal 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, 2017

“Chicken Hawk Talk”

Young RedTail Hawk, Jane Kohut-Bartels, watercolor

 Bodhirose ( Gayle) is hosing Open Link Night over at d’versepoets.com, where you can post one poem of your desires.  No prompt.

Lady Nyo

Chicken Hawk!

Leave my chickens alone!

I have worked hard for them,

A handmaiden of fowl.

Collecting beautiful eggs

The gift of the species

Naturally dyed

Pink, brown, blue-green and white.

 

These colorful gems

Presented at Easter,

A symbol of the Lamb of God,

And the Spring of Life.

 

Leave my chickens alone, hawk.

I won’t even share.

 

I remember two short years ago,

When I saw you wheeling over the kudzu

Riding the thermals,

Not graced with the brick-colored tail of a proper Red Tail hawk–

 

And I gasped at your splendor, a winged god

From the cosmos, glittering white ash against a cobalt sky,

And you landed one day in my birdbath,

Trying to look like a stone sculpture,

And just the flicker of your 8x eyes

Looked over the songbirds for lunch.

 

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2016

“Autumn Dusk”

Sunset in a Violent Sky, copyrighted, 2007, janekohut-bartels, watercolor

Kim is hosting dversepoets tonight and the theme is Autumn.  Check out the wonderful poetry that will be on the site.  dversepoets.com.

 

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, 2017

 

“Rain”…..

At Dversepoets.com

tonight is Haibun night, and the prompt is ‘water’.  My attempt might be ‘anti-water’.  LOL!

Lady Nyo

 

 

Rain

I feel the rain waiting to be born.
A spectral haunting
Charming eyes and nose,
Rebirth in the torrent –
The waters of Heaven
Waiting to be born.

Bushes rattle leaves
Wait with eternal patience
The herald-winds start to howl,
A Saharan Miracle!
And the back of drought is broken
With this rain waiting to be born.

 

In the Saharan
Flowers iridescent
Five drops of water

 

This was written last week listening to Berber music. It ended, this torrent of musicality, with 5 measured beats.  This was the ‘rain waiting to be born.”  In the desert, the rains are awaited patiently and in some years are 5 years apart.  So, though not exactly following a haibun standard, I am hoping this pleases.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted 2017

 

 

 

“The Geisha”, Open Link Night at dversepoets.com

 

 

 

Moon sits low

above solemn pines.

The night is cold.

As dawn breaks

the geisha kneels, waiting.

 

Plum tea kimono wraps

her tightly-

white would be right

color of mourning,

color of death.

 

Her lover, disgraced

has embraced

Death-

blood the sacrifice

to wipe clean a

particular stain.

 

She to follow

Honor fulfilled,

death follows death

rigid path of decree.

 

A life mostly of sorrow.

 

Opening her gown,

she exposes white skin,

her maid, quietly weeps

slides back the shoji

exposing a winter landscape-

white snow on rocks

white snow like her skin

soft, soon to disappear,

one to melt,

one to white ash.

 

Yes, life mostly of sorrow.

 

Outside

winter is silent,

no wind at all,

snow falling like silken petals

Ah! She will never see spring

or cherry blossom time!

 

Floating over muted,

glassine air

comes the sound-

two monks

playing flutes

welcome the day.

Shakuhachi artists,

mournful sound,

sound that brings

peace to an anxious heart.

 

 

She bows her head,

picks up the tanto-

and opens the vein.

 

Blood of her line

answers to that

of another.

 

Life.

So full of sorrow.

 

—

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2015

A tanto is a short knife.  A woman would not cut her abdomen (seppuku), but would open the main vein in her neck. She would have tied together her legs at the knees, over her kimono, so she would face death with modesty.

“Spice Season”…..

(From my kitchen two years back, my only living pumpkin from the garden, the French Cinderella Pumpkin,  the carriage.)

Over at Dversepoets  tonight, Mish is hosting and giving a challenge of writing a Quadrille, with the theme “Spice”.  For those who have never heard of a Quadrille, I’m one with you.  Do know the dance term, but a Quadrille also can be a piece of writing exactly 44 words with title.  And there should be action, too.

Lady Nyo

 

Spice Season

 

It now nears Halloween

Pumpkins galore!

Smells of cinnamon, ginger

Pour from cupboards-

I grow fat with the bounty.

 

Apples baking,

Covered with nutmeg

Convicts treasure

Nutmeg seeds

For the illusions it brings.

 

If I ever become a convict

Smuggle nutmeg-

And Forget the file.

—

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2017

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Orpheus and Eurydice”, for Open Link Night at dversepoets.com

 

 

Hear my rendering of an oft-told tale

(mixed with a leavening of Bullfinch)

Composed in view of Orpheus’

Lyre in the Cosmos.

 

Orpheus, son of Apollo and Calliope

(I forget Eurydice’s heritage)

Was to be blessed by Hymen.

 

He brought no happy omens.

His torch smoked, drew tears.

Flowers wilted,

Gods and Goddesses coughed and sputtered.

 

Orpheus, master of the lyre,

Whose notes melted tiger’s hearts

Made trees uproot and creep near,

Rocks to soften-

Loved his Eurydice.

 

But Fate conspired with happiness.

Eurydice, chased by Aristaeus

Was raped.

She died a broken, bloody death

On the end of Aristaeus’…. sword.

 

Fast did Orpheus descend to those Stygian depths!

His tones pleaded for the return of his Eurydice.

 

Sisyphus sat on his rock to listen,

Ixion’s wheel stood still

And the Furies eyes now wet with tears.

 

Ah! The Underworld turned upside down.

 

Eurydice came,

Garbed in her winding shroud,

fresh with young death.

 

Here’s the deal. Walk out of Hell

And don’t look back.

 

Orpheus! You almost made it!

Eurydice, twice dead, disappears.

 

Sometimes,

In both love and death-

 It only takes one glance.

 

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2016

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Coppermine Road”, posted for Open Link Night, dversepoets.com

 

Coppermine Road

 

When I was a child

Sitting on a hill

In south-central Jersey,

I would watch the roiling thunderstorms

Shoot daggers of lightning

Across hills of the Sourland Mountains

Setting fires to forests,

Pastures–

Torching the barns.

 

The hand-cranked siren would yowl

And all men over 21

Would answer the call.

To lurk under jacked-up cars,

To pitch hay,

Run the combine

Or start the evening milking

Would get you the cold shoulder

Or worse…

In the local gin mill.

 

Coppermine Road had

A ton of fires,

This gateway to the Sourlands

Stretching miles into Dutch-elmed darkness

As we watched

First the lightning

Then smoke rise into the air,

And heard the howl of the siren

In the valley below.

 

Mined out, this Coppermine

Emptied before the Revolution

The sturdy Dutch taking their

Share from the earth,

Leaving little of worth, just the name,

The scars of digging plastered over in time.

 

Perhaps a grand conspiracy

Between storm clouds and copper deep down

A particular cosmic revenge,

Enough to torch the barns

Scare the milk out of cows

And bedevil the men.

—

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2017  (from “Pitcher of Moon”, Amazon.com 2015)

 

Haibun Monday: “Seasons Change”

Autumn colors from my bathroom window

Komorebi:  the Japanese word for  light filtering, that time between summer and autumn., seasons changing. It is more extensive than what I write here, so read what Kanzen Sakura over at dversepoets.com says.  She is hosting Haibun Monday and her prompt is this.    There are sure to be some marvelous haibun (short paragraphs that originally were travel notes….) ending with a  relating haiku.

Lady Nyo

 

Seasons Change

 

Autumn wind startles–
Lowered to an ominous
Key—Ah! Mournful sounds!
The fat mountain deer listen-
Add their bellowing sorrow.

 

 

The ginkgo filters  sunlight, the ground a crescent- printed cloth fit for a yukata.  It hits my hands and feet, creating white scars that do not burn.  I welcome the sun.  My bones grow thin.

This passage, from summer to fall, eternal movement of Universal  Design, counts down the years I have left.  There is so much more to savor.  Two lives would not be enough.

Tsuki, a beggar’s cup too thin to fatten the road, still shines with a golden brightness, unwavering in the chill aki wind. The Milky Way reigns over all.

 

Sharp moon cuts the sky

 Fierce wind howls from the mountains

Disturbs dragonflies.

 

–

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2017

 

 

Choka: “Grief”

My beautiful picture

Over at dversepoets pub, the challenge is one of writing a poem expressing expressionism.  We will see….this was a hard one for me.

Lady Nyo

 

 

 

 

 

Her lovely snow-flesh

 

the tracery of blue veins

 

upon long slim arms

 

like embracing filaments

 

fold themselves gently

 

cold, smooth marble her skin

 

water streams from eyes

 

looks upon such delicate

 

unearthly beauty, now still.

 

 

 

Grief, mine, stoppered up,

 

memories, glass-sharpened

 

cuts a shattered heart.

 

no hope for recovery,

 

life folded inward

 

her pain is over, done with,

 

mine, just beginning.

 

Each of grief’s ragged breath draws

 

out, to join in her silence.

 

 

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

 

Copyrighted, 2017