the bully: winter by Linda Crate

the hand of winter stretched out
his grey gloves and poured snow
out of his pitcher it fell upon the
world in cold numbing waves it
washed away all the colors of fall €”

it beat back my favorite lilies into
the hand of white dust like people
are prone to beat one another into
the dust for a sense of self worth. I
don’t understand why winter thinks

he needs to be such a bully he beats
his cold fiercely upon the land blasts
his wailing banshee winds upon the
zephyr and rips remaining leaf missives
from trees with such force they yelp.

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To read more of Linda’s verse on WIZ, go here and here.

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Winter haiku

[Post edited 12/17.]   Since this haiku chain launched itself before I had a chance to lay groundwork, I thought I’d backtrack and provide some perhaps useful information.

A haiku is a classical Japanese poetical form, usually 17 syllables all in a single line in Japanese, but I understand that there are longer and shorter forms.   In English, haiku usually take the form of one short line of 5 syllables, a long line of 7 syllables, and a short line of 5 syllables.   I’ve misplaced all my haiku notes, but you can find out more here or here.

Here’s my beginning haiku:

Colorful beads drape
Desert grasses–frost parsing
Light’s long white sentence.

Ornaments

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, my husband and I made a dash to Moab, over an hour away, to pick up ingredients for my special needs daughter’s designer formula.   Moab has a health food store, Moonflower Market, which sells several of the ingredients we use in her special blend.   This tourist town also sports a large City Market that carries the varieties of yogurt we add to the mixture €”higher-quality brands that our local grocery refuses to stock. (We asked; they said €œNo. €)