Renku - Stationary Fireworks

 Renku - Stationary Fireworks

Renku is a form of collaborative Japanese poetry, and it eventually gave birth to the haiku form. This poem is a series of haikus posted by members of my family on our GroupMe conversation, inspired by a picture my dad posted of our backyard in fall using the words “stationary fireworks” to describe it. The phrase itself sounds poetic, and once we noticed it had 7 syllables (the length of the middle line of a haiku), the rest was inevitable. 

 

October colors bring

Stationary fireworks

My heart and eyes sing.

Midwest autumn is

stationary fireworks.

Celebrating what?

Slowly exploding 

Stationary fireworks

Ignite the water. 

Colors bang loudly!

Stationary fireworks 

Only I can hear.

Forest sprites light off

Stationary fireworks. 

One final hurrah. 

4th of November. 

Stationary fireworks. 

Liberty then death. 

Fall freely feels fun!

Stationary fireworks

Make my spirit run.

Crisp, frozen colors -

Stationary fireworks.

Who arranged it all?

What is this for, these

Stationary fireworks?

Where’s the barbecue?

Alone, I'm entranced.

Stationary fireworks 

Set my heart ablaze.

I must away now.

Stationary fireworks -

Stay to play again?

A cavalcade of

Stationary fireworks - 

A bulwark of joy. 

What does one eat with

Stationary fireworks?

Turkey barbecue.

Quiet explosions.

Stationary Fireworks.

A symphony observed.

Whenever you shoot

Stationary fireworks,

Keep a pond nearby. 

Vacuuming light from

stationary fireworks

with my lawnmower.

Beauty in the sky.

Stationary fireworks -

Blurred reality

God put in motion 

Stationary fireworks

For a day like this.

I watch the forest -

Stationary fireworks.

And so Fall begins!

Backyard magic glows.

Stationary fireworks - 

What a Godly gift

Imagining home,

Stationary fireworks

Send warm winds my way.

Fireflies' glow ends.

Stationary fireworks -

A new light begins.

Delight is fleeting.

Stationary fireworks

Last a bit longer.

Country living perks:

Stationary fireworks -

One of Nature's quirks.

The Clothesline

A childhood friend shared with me he'd bought roof-top solar panels.

My wife informed me that we'd bought a clothesline.

"They won't pay for themselves until someone else owns the house,"

he told me,

"but that's okay - it's the principle that matters."

"With 3 kids and 1 in cloth diapers,"

my wife told me,

"it'll more than pay for itself soon,

so we can put more down on the house's principal

and focus on other financial matters."

When I briefed my friend on how we were also using solar power,

he admitted his solar-panel-o-meter shifted 

from showing a surplus 

to relying on the grid

whenever he ran the dryer.

"With 2 kids in sports and 1 in Pampers,"

he shrugged,

"it's just too much work to dry all their clothes on a line."

I nodded knowingly.

I'm glad that the people I know

keep me apprised

of so many meanings of

and methods for

"going green,"

though I am reminded

by some of them

of a Rube Goldberg Machine

as I picture the manufacture

and installation of solar panels

to absorb the sun's energy

and convert it to electricity

in order to run a dryer

while the Amish

go direct from sun to clothes.

Perhaps it's us

who are amiss,

and they are

ahead of our time. 

Of course, the panels power

more than the dryer,

but will they end up

in the same place

as the Pampers?

And is that better or worse

than the coal burning somewhere

to power my washer?

These debates, pro- and con-,

about renewable energy

leave me feeling

hung out to dry,

particularly when both sides 

become more entrenched in their positions than 

the engine oil stain that won't come out of my high school drama sweatshirt,

and especially when my clothesline

wasn't accompanied by a government subsidy.

But 

as I watch my underwear

wafting in the wind with the cloth diapers,

waving at my neighbors walking by,

I feel my worries, 

with the water,

evaporate

into clouds

that I guess

will block the sun for both

the panels

and the clothesline,

as we all get swept along

together

with the Tide.

Verda Farnes

 

My great grandmother

croons her cabbages, couched in

C-major sunshine.

Four diminutive

Wyoming elves lean on spades,

hide near, parched to hear.

The Fireflies

The fireflies ascend
and flash together,
by some magical
yet natural
process.

Setting the undersides of trees
and tips of grass
and random spheres of space
aglow
with a soft green-yellow fire.

We catch them
not with nets
but with gently placed palms
beneath wherever they are hovering,
gently raising our hands
till they land and say,
"Oh, okay. I'll take a rest, then."

And we feel the pulse,
the urge to shine in time
with a rhythm we cannot fathom
and a synchronicity we can't explain,
as shocks of lighting pass through us -

conductors, resistors, transformers
on an endless circuit -
axons, synapses dendrites
in an infinite mind -
atria, ventricles, aorta
within a many-chambered heart,

keeping our feet grounded
while lost in thought,
defibrillated into feeling.

The Sound of (Wind in the) Music

Whenever I play certain songs

on the piano,

I hear wind
moving through trees

and feel it moving through
lungs,
blowing always from the right,
leaning me left.

This phenomenon does not occur
because the piano is 

next to the front bay window that
looks out on three 80-foot silver maples.

And, no, the rustling of those
imagined leaves
does not coincide with the
music's crescendos and decrescendos.

It just

comes,
as if I were a limb
of some larger thing
being moved.