Moving

I’m in the process of moving and for the past few weeks, my life has been completely interrupted.  I hope to begin posting again as soon as I get moved and settled in.

Important Update: Mar’s Haiku Contest

MAVEN Certificate of Participation

DO NOT send your haiku to the NPR.  Instead, send it to the official contest site at the MAVEN Mars project here.  Again, you have to take a few minutes to register before submitting your haiku.  After submitting, you can print out your very own certificate of participation (pictured above).  There are also two links: one for the student art contest (deadline closed) and one for the haiku contest.

NASA’s Haiku Project

Mars (photo by NASA)

You can submit a haiku to the NPR.  The first three top selections will be recorded on a DVD and stored on board the MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution spacecraft).  The names of all who submit will also be included on the DVD.  See the NPR article and rules here.  You have to register, and it takes several minutes to process before you can leave a comment. Submission deadline is July 1, 2013.

Fish Gotta Swim

Woodblock Print: Pacific Saury

Fish gotta swim and poets gotta make a living (somehow).  Check out NPR’s article on poets’ second jobs (“On Dissections to Depositions: Poets’ Second Jobs”) from research assistant in molecular biology (Katherine Larson, recent winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition), lawyer (Monica Youn), radiation oncologist (C. Dale Young), undertaker (Thomas P. Lynch), farmer (Wendell Berry) to Iraq war veteran (Brian Turner).

“Mt Parnassus”

Mt Parnassus

MT PARNASSUS
Bare-handed, with knuckles torn and bleeding,
Inch by inch, I scale the face of Mt Parnassus,
As the cold, bitter winds of despair howl about;
A single slip of hand or foot away from death.
No rope suspended to secure me,
No crowd below to cheer me on.
All strength and courage focused on this single task:
To reach the top to lay these bundled sheaves,
Upon which, in words, my heart’s blood has written,
As a humble offering on the altar of Poetry.

( “Mt Parnassus” © 2013.  All rights reserved. )

Poetry shops: poeticexpressions.etsy.com and poeticexpressions.fineartamerica.com

“L’Heure Bleue” (“The Blue Hour”)

“Eiffel Tower and Pont Alexandre at Night” ( photo: Getfunky Paris at Flickr )

L’HEURE BLEUE
( The Blue Hour )
As the day fades into evening dusk,
The sun-weary heliotropes,
In window-boxes, nod their drowsy heads;
Bathed in a shimmering haze of azure
That mingles with their subtle scent:
Musk and Rose de Bulgarie
With just a hint of jasmine’s sweet allure.

In this soft, still, quiet hour of blue
That separates the daylight from night’s darkness
And filters through the open, curtained windows,
Reflections in the mirrors primp and preen
In anticipation of the evening’s pleasures.

( “L’Heure Blue” © 2013.  All rights reserved. )

Poetry shops: poeticexpressions.etsy.com and poeticexpressions.fineartamerica.com

“Constancy”

Red Pine

CONSTANCY
Let this love possess the constancy of an evergreen
In summer’s blazing heat and winter’s bitter cold,
Be like an implacable mountain immoveable
Against the relentless onslaught of Time’s passage,
The ever-flowing river coursing between its banks,
The rising and setting of the sun, the phases of the moon,
The Pleiades and Orion shining in the sky at night,
The progression of the seasons from summer on through spring–
Constant and unchanging–enduring and eternal.

( “Constancy” © 2013.  All rights reserved. )