Day 4: D is for Draw

Connect the Dots

Draw a line from moon
to sea and back to the place
where our two hearts meet.

Lisa Vihos

Day 3: C is for Case

Question

Let your journey start
today, in this wild, spring rain.
What is in your case?

Dictionary Hike

I got turned onto the idea of doing a "distionary hike" by a new friend, Amy Ludwig Vanderwater. Check out her fabulous blog, The Poem Farm. Each day during National Poetry Month, Amy is letting her finger fall on a word in the dictionary, and she is then creating a poem that must include that word. She has begun at A and will work her way to Z as each day goes by. Hence the "dictionary hike" concept. I caught the bug and have determined that whatever word she picks each day, I will use the same word in a haiku. After 26 days, between us we will have 52 poems. (Mine will generally be way shorter!)

We have thus far completed A and B. My first two haiku appear together here. To see Amy's poems, go here. I am very much looking forward to C tomorrow. Visit each day and see what we have created. Hey, that starts with C. Cool. Oh, so does that. Ciao...oy, this is contagious! Signing off now before I am covered in C-words...

April 1
Day 1: A is for Ancient

The ancient soul aches
for one more undoing or
doing of the heart.


April 2
Day 2: B is for Bluegrass

Mystery

Bluegrass, green-sky. Why?
Why not? I wonder as my
day turns up-under.

A Poem for April

Recipe for Calm

When you feel
out of sorts,
grab an onion,
clove of garlic,
sprig of parsley.
Chop, dice, slice,
and then, filet
a nice cut of meat.
Use carrots and lemons,
olives and almonds,
and don't forget
something sweet.
Sit down at your table
with a bottle of wine,
a sharp cheese,
and a friend.
Raise your glass.
Lift your fork.
Lean back at the end
and allow for a belch;
a calming measure
to mark your pleasure.

Lisa Vihos

A Poem for March

I Have No Qualms with Snail
(to my friend, who said he preferred not to order my chapbook online)

She glides through the garden
looking for recipients
of letters sent
the old-fashioned way.

I see her now,
wiping sweat from her brow,
hoisting her sack
at the end of the day.

Intrepid she is, our snail.
Remember those gems
of the daily mail?
That hand-written prose,

sacred through the ages?
The beloved’s mark
on ink-swept pages
that lit us, alive.

Escargot and email aside,
I have no qualms with snail.
I accept her glistering tidings,
grateful for her travail.

Lisa Vihos

Bonus Poem for February

Leap Day

Wake up!
Today is leap day!
Leap into this moment.
Today, the day
that only comes once
every four years;
the day that man made
to correct the slippage
in the cosmic clock.

Who figures these
things out, anyway?
When I can’t even
decide what to eat
for breakfast,
who can measure
and determine
what to do with time?

Who got the whole darn
world to recognize
leap year?
Let’s get that guy or gal
working on world peace
and the green house effect
today, right now.

Or is leap year
just another one of
those false constructs
that delude us
into thinking
we’ve mastered
the time-space continuum?

No matter.
I will leap today
and every day
because this moment
is here forever,
always new,
always the next breath.

Lisa Vihos

A Poem for February

3 a.m. Hot Flash

You know that oven?
The one where sometimes

they say there is a bun?
Without warning,

that oven door busts open
on its rusty hinge

to radiate a dying sun,
a nuclear explosion. Then,

hot needles prick me
along every extremity.

Am I getting a tattoo?
Spontaneous combustion?

Cauterizing heat seeps
and settles in the shoulders,

smolders in the chest,
a super nova of the soul.

An image etched
of an imploding star,

of red hot coals—
the kind you find

when you flip over
the last log in the fire pit,

its ashen underbelly
all aglow within. So pretty,

until that belly is in you.
Fortunately, it’s a dry heat.

There is no sweat, yet.
Maybe later, I’ll be drenched.

For now the burning is enough.
A brief, five-alarm fire storm.

Where are those damn firemen
with their ladders and hose?

Before they come,
the inferno goes, quickly as it came.

I toss the covers, red lava flows,
and I am left without my heat, alone,

extinguished on the bed sheet
seared, cold as burnished bone.

Lisa Vihos