Showing posts with label iris. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iris. Show all posts

Thursday, May 24, 2018

Poetry Friday -- The Scent of Iris


THE SCENT OF IRIS

The iris I took
from Mom's garden
are blooming now.

Their heady scent
keeps me company
as I weed and plant in my own garden.

Mom left behind iris
that grow and bloom far away
from their original garden

and she left behind me
growing and blooming far away
from my original home

breathing in the scent of iris
with tears running down my face
as I weed and plant in my own garden.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2018



Thank you to Margaret Simon for organizing a photo/poem swap for today, and thank you to Joyce Ray for the iris photo. I can't wait to see what she does with the one I sent her!

You can see all the photo/poem swaps at Margaret's Reflections on the Teche, because she has the roundup this week!



Friday, May 12, 2017

Poetry Friday -- Mother by Ted Kooser



Mother
by Ted Kooser

Mid April already, and the wild plums
bloom at the roadside, a lacy white
against the exuberant, jubilant green
of new grass an the dusty, fading black
of burned-out ditches. No leaves, not yet,
only the delicate, star-petaled
blossoms, sweet with their timeless perfume.

You have been gone a month today
and have missed three rains and one nightlong
watch for tornadoes. I sat in the cellar
from six to eight while fat spring clouds
went somersaulting, rumbling east. Then it poured,
a storm that walked on legs of lightning,
dragging its shaggy belly over the fields.

The meadowlarks are back, and the finches
are turning from green to gold. Those same
two geese have come to the pond again this year,
honking in over the trees and splashing down.
They never nest, but stay a week or two
then leave. The peonies are up, the red sprouts
burning in circles like birthday candles,

for this is the month of my birth, as you know,
the best month to be born in, thanks to you,
everything ready to burst with living.
There will be no more new flannel nightshirts
sewn on your old black Singer, no birthday card
addressed in a shaky but businesslike hand.
You asked me if I would be sad when it happened

and I am sad. But the iris I moved from your house
now hold in the dusty dry fists of their roots
green knives and forks as if waiting for dinner,
as if spring were a feast. I thank you for that.
Were it not for the way you taught me to look
at the world, to see the life at play in everything,
I would have to be lonely forever.



Tara has the Poetry Friday roundup this week at A Teaching Life.


Monday, April 23, 2012

Wacko - a haiku



Iris in April?
Should be Memorial Day --
Seasons are wacko.

© Mary Lee Hahn, 2012



Poem #23, National Poetry Month 2012

Truth in advertising -- this is neither an iris from my garden, nor is it an iris that's blooming right now (it's name is Fire and Ice, and it's from Mom's garden last June). 

But I  really did do a complete double-take last week when I saw whole beds of iris blooming in Denver. Some are blooming here, too. What's up with THAT?!?! Iris bloom at the end of May so that you can cut them and take them to the cemetery to lay on the graves on Memorial Day. Used to be, at least. Can't tell me nothing's wacko about the weather and/or the seasons...




Cathy, at Merely Day By Day, is joining me in a poem a day this month. Other daily poem writers include Amy at The Poem Farm, Linda at TeacherDance, Donna at Mainely Write, Laura at Writing the World for Kids (daily haiku), Liz at Liz in Ink (daily haiku), Sara at Read Write Believe (daily haiku), Jone at Deo Writer (daily haiku)...and YOU?