Connect To Earth Reground Rebound: Free Verse
Christmas Globe Moon: Haiku
A giant Christmas
globe, hung from tree branches, lays
above cotton fog.
Daughter’s Micro-Trash Chastisement: Haiku
My daughter ripped me/
about my land’s micro-trash./
Now, pockets are filled.
Backstory: A few years ago, my daughter came to live at our house in NW Georgia. Our objective at Spirit Tree FarmsSpirit Tree Farms is to create a place of peace and healing, where folks can come and connect with Nature, tap into their God-inspired creativity, #FindNatureJoy.
One day, as she and I were walking in the woods and fields, she turned to me and basically called me out, saying something like: “This place is not what you’re trying to have it be. It’s not peaceful. There’s no Zen here.” Taken by surprise, I asked her, honestly, what she meant. She pointed around and said (I’m paraphrasing) :”You come out here and leave plastic bottles and pieces of paper and shreds of plastic bags. You say you’ll clean them up later, but you don’t. You’re trying to partner with the Earth, and have Earth and this land be a healing place, but there’s micro-garbage everywhere. It doesn’t work!”
I looked around and saw that she was right. Ribbons of torn plastic, busted milk jugs once used for watering native plants but now falling apart and useless, plastic bottle caps, pieces of paper, all were interwoven with the very plants, trees, grasses, and wildflowers we were trying to grow! I was not being authentic at all!
Since then, because of her ripping on me, I’ve been much more aware of micro-trash on our land and elsewhere. Does it still exist? Sure! It’s micro-trash, and despite my Boy Scout, nature observation and trash-pick-up training, I do miss things. (And having the neighbor’s dogs and local racoons and birds get into bags and boxes and shread and spread things doesn’t help!) But it’s a lot better than it was.
I used to come back from my nature observation and grounding walks in the woods and fields with bags of micro-trash. Now, it’s rare if I fill up my pockets with litter.
I hope my daughter is proud of my efforts. I’m certainly grateful for her example and chastisement! In fact, I sent her a text with this haiku, then said:
I’m always thankful every time I pick up a piece of micro-trash in my yard, for your chastisement and vital lesson. Thank you.
A grateful Dad
After all, if we expect Mother Earth to heal us, we have to be partners with her, and help heal her. And we can all, always, do better.
Late December Mosquito Squish: Haiku
Isaiah’s Christmas Peace Prayer: Haiku
I Need A New Pruning Hook: Peace Prayer Haiku
The Muse for this was a prose piece written by Kate Phillips on Facebook:
“There is no Christmas in Bethlehem this year.
The tours and pilgrimages have all been cancelled. The streets are bare, the shops empty.The Palestinian residents are in mourning. Celebrations have been replaced with a somber peace vigil and prayer service to mourn for the tens of thousands of people—mostly Gazans, mostly women and children—lost in the Israeli-Hamas conflict.The traditional nativity scene at the Evangelical Lutheran church depicts baby Jesus on a pile of rubble, rather than resting in a manger. Instead of gifts, the wise men carry burial shrouds.Ask anyone in Bethlehem this year what their Christmas wish is, the answer will be the same: they pray for peace.Whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, a follower of some other tradition (or no religion at all), may we join their prayers.May we affirm together that we are all worthy of dignity and love…That divinity makes it way to earth, hidden in human form…That the Kingdom of God yearns to flourish within each of us…And that the best gift we can ask for is the gift of peace for all.May we practice peace within ourselves…Within our families and communities…
And pray that, one day, we will beat swords into plowshares.”
My Christmas Gift: Give Peace Haiku
I must be always/
positive, and give peace on/
earth, good will to all.
— The backstory for this poem was my take on Longfellow’s poem “I heard the Bells”, and also a haiku inspired by a prose piece Kate Phillips wrote. You can read it here.
Longfellow Christmas Day Remake: Peace On Earth Poem and Video
Her Mother’s Life, Redux: Haiku Lament
Reading her Mama’s
life, I see why she fears. I’m
her Daddy, redux.
Marinate In God: Rhyming Haiku
When we feel God’s Grace
and Spirit, let’s marinate
in it a minute.
CyranoWriter’s Creativity blog started more than a decade ago. I heard a poet read at President Obama’s first inauguration. I thought: “I can do that!” And so I started.
Making a goal of writing and posting a poem or creative piece every day, I put my creative thoughts into a wordpress.com blog. More than 7400 creative pieces later, I moved that site over to CyranoWriter.com. If you followed me there, welcome back!
What is CyranoWriter’s Creativity?
Most of these pieces are short poems, which I try to make into Haiku (they are in the sense that they are 5/7/5). Some are longer. Some are free verse. Some are prose pieces. Some are silly. Most are serious and observational.
All of them feed my soul.
(Here is a great piece from Dead Poets Society / Robin Williams)
Most of the pieces are “romantic” in nature (single for more than a decade, I had a lot to say about the pathos of that state). Now that I’m married, the romantic writing continues, but with much more hope. Other pieces are observations of either nature or human nature. Many deal with the issues we all face daily. And still others are just thoughts and musings, prompted by my observations of what is happening around me. Some are augmented by my photography. Most are left for you, the reader, to visualise in your mind. All of these reflect how I see the world, and what living and observing and just being means to me.
My hope, my dream, is that people will read my work and “see new”. They’ll think about how they see or what they feel about the things I see and feel. And, most importantly, I hope my writing, day after day after day after day, will inspire others to simply see, to observe the amazingness happening around them, and to capture it in whatever form or style they choose.
People tell me “I used to write. I wish I could write more. I need to write more.” To them — to YOU — I say: “Do.” Because, 7 years ago, I heard another poet. And then, I did.
PS: My work is in chronological order, with the most recent writings immediately following this post. If you are looking for a particular subject or topic, type in some key works in the “Search” bar (above right), and it should bring up all my writing related to that topic.