First Blossoms

 It has been off-and-on spring here.  Maybe it's the same with you. We've had 70 degrees and 25 degrees. We've had rain and sun, and the wind has been quite phenomenal.  A front came through yesterday and hit the house like a blast, and knocked over a recycling container. I was concerned for the guy who was taking down a tree at the end of our block. He as hanging from a giant crane, cutting branches from some old white pines. Fortunately he was done with that part of the job. 

Anyway, spring IS here and the early blossoms are nodding in the wind. Do the first bright flowers of spring give you a spark of delight? I tried to capture that feeling as I wrote this haiku.  

Holding my breath for

first flash of lightning - striking

yellow daffodils.

---draft Karen Eastlund

I was reading Diane Ackerman's poetry last night, and came across this lovely poem:

School Prayer Poem

In the name of the sun and its mirrors

and the day that embraces it

and the cloud veils drawn over it

and the uttermost night

and the male and the female

and the plants bursting with seed

and the crowning seasons

of the firefly and the apple,

I will honor all life

—wherever and in whatever form

it may dwell—on Earth my home,

and in the mansions of the stars.

Diane Ackerman   (read entire poem HERE.)

The forsythia are blooming now also. New Jersey has a lovely long spring. Today it feels like winter, temperature now is 28, but spring will be triumphant!

Have a wonderful week, and thanks for visiting. Say Hi! in the comments!

Find the rest of the Poetry Friday group at Rose Cappelli's Imagine the Possibilities. She has some lovely bird poems for us today.  Thanks for hosting, Rose!  Click HERE to read her post.

Dawn - A Poetry Friday post

 Welcome to Poetry Friday, a tradition started by Renee La Tulippe and explained HERE.  

Today I am sharing on the topic of dawn. A new year is dawning, and that's probably reason enough, but "dawn" kept popping up this week... if you'll excuse the pun... and I decided to write about it.

I'm a fan of Diane Ackerman's writing and had read two of three of her books before I came across Dawn Light: Dancing with Cranes and other ways to Start the Day. The title spoke to me because I'm fascinated by the in-betweens, when I can't tell day from night, or green from blue. Also, cranes are on my bucket list. So I ordered the book and read just one entry about a winter dawn before being hooked. Here she writes about a winter sky:

    An opalescent sky becomes the stinging blue of mosque tiles or stage scenery. It's an azure blue, from the ancient word for lapis lazuli, the intense blue mineral flecked with gold that has emblazoned church and palace walls since antiquity. Polished lapis gives soul to mosaic, including dawn's chimeras of jumbled outlines, blurred edges, and phantom forms. We bundle up but trees go naked in winter. I've always loved the way sky is captured in their bare limbs. Held by the delicate tracery of twigs, sky resembles light pouring through leaded stained-glass windows.

If you enjoy beautiful writing, especially nature writing, I highly recommend Diane Ackerman. I know I will love the rest of Dawn Light. It was my first dawning of the week.

The second dawn came from Margaret Simon, who shared a photo prompt by Mary C. Howard this week. It's actually a sunset photo, but I wrote about it as a sunrise... a dawn. My poem is below. 

Photo by Mary C. Howard, found on FB 

Dawn

Gray city

Gray mist

Gray beach

Gray clouds

Bold black steel

Frames the scene

A man in black walks

Toward a brilliant sunrise

Washing the low sky

Egg yolk yellow

Mango orange

Hibiscus red

A new day

Rises up

© Karen Eastlund

As if these two dawns weren't enough, a friend named Dawn contacted me and offered help for some town projects! It dawns on me that I am richly blessed.

Thanks to Marcie Flinchum Atkins for hosting today. You can find her blog and the links to other Poetry Friday friends HERE.

Wishing you all a good week.