Speaking of microsesons...have you read this book: Light Rains Sometimes Fall by Lev Parikian? The subheading is A British Year Through Japan's 72 Seasons. It's lovely!
I love to see you reinvesting in your art Kortney— what a healthy way to grow! I treated myself to an online poetry class this summer and gleaned, some helpful insight that changed the way I think about poetry. Specifically, I learned to respect poetry “fragments”—those wonderful phrases, bits and pieces that come to you but that aren’t yet ready to become a full poem. In the class, we collected them into a book which was a beautiful practice that I plan on continuing.
The moon herself! Tonight I closed my eyes and pointed at your most recent list of one word writing prompts and I landed on the word "wax". So here is my little free write inspired by wax and by tonight's lovely moon.
WAX
The moon has finished waxing. I've been watching her pink and orange face growing more and more full, gleaming cheerfully through the wildfire haze. She's now at her brightest and fullest. Shined up like a new quarter hanging above the black trees in the cricketful, frogful night.
Perhaps the patient mother bees have been at work filling her with honey, or making her chamber a queen's cell where the egg will hatch and the grub will grow, fed up with royal jelly until she is ready to soar and mate and return to lay her eggs and be cared for by her careful daughters.
Perhaps a little old woman has been tossed up in a basket with a handful of polishing cloths and a tinful of wax. Her small wrinkled hands are still strong and she rubs and she rubs, putting the shine on until the waxy coat gleams bright in the night sky.
Perhaps a small child will pluck her from the sky and pop her into his mouth like a round candy, sucking her honey smoothness and tonguing it into the hollow of his cheek like an everlasting gobstopper. Well that would stop anyone from chattering, wouldn't it, to have a mouthful of moonlight. Perhaps his mother whispered into his ear, planted the seed of the idea. And now that her progeny is quietly content sucking on his big moon sweetie, she can sit and listen to the cricket chorus in peace, watch the small swift bats in their darting and tumbling, and invite the frogs to join in and sing another round.
Oh! I love every inch of this, Melanie! So evocative.
My son is learning about beekeeping, and this Sunday we got to see honey supers be pulled from the hive. We didn't see the queen, but we did get to see a drone larva.
I love your old woman with her polishing cloths too.
I am so fascinated by beekeeping. The Museum of Science in Boston has an observation hive that we stared at so long on our last visit. And then my sister has a college friend who is a priest and a beekeeper. He visits and brings her communion and food when she's sick and I follow some of his beekeeping adventures via Facebook and those include attempts to catch swarms and identifying queens. And then I always think of the Easter Vigil Exultet, which is one of my favorite liturgical poems and the praise of the candle made of wax by the patient work of mother bees.
The old woman with polishing cloths is thanks to Charles Dickens' Bleak House, my favorite of his novels. There's a running conceit of Esther as the old woman of the nursery rhyme tossed up in a basket 17 times as high as the moon to brush the cobwebs out of the sky, but of course I had to have her trade the broom for polishing cloths so that she could be using a wax polish. Oh I guess that's also the memory of my parents having me polish the carved wooden furniture when I was a child. I can still smell the lemony scent of the Pledge polish and feel the texture of the old cloth diapers that I used. But of course in British novels furniture is polished with wax, not spray from a can.
I love the meme! I will never stop writing about the moon. Or tree branches. There are some images I keep coming back to as touchstones.
Speaking of microsesons...have you read this book: Light Rains Sometimes Fall by Lev Parikian? The subheading is A British Year Through Japan's 72 Seasons. It's lovely!
Aki writes an amazing newsletter about Japan’s 72 seasons!
https://open.substack.com/pub/72microseasons
What a treat!
Thanks for the suggestion! I didn't know.
Oh that book looks so good! Thanks for your support. It really does make things possible!
I love to see you reinvesting in your art Kortney— what a healthy way to grow! I treated myself to an online poetry class this summer and gleaned, some helpful insight that changed the way I think about poetry. Specifically, I learned to respect poetry “fragments”—those wonderful phrases, bits and pieces that come to you but that aren’t yet ready to become a full poem. In the class, we collected them into a book which was a beautiful practice that I plan on continuing.
Ohh! Were you taking Oceans with Holly Wren Spaulding?! Holly's mentoring is at the heart of my work.
Holly’s class was so good 😊
"What’s caught your eye on this full plum moon?"
The moon herself! Tonight I closed my eyes and pointed at your most recent list of one word writing prompts and I landed on the word "wax". So here is my little free write inspired by wax and by tonight's lovely moon.
WAX
The moon has finished waxing. I've been watching her pink and orange face growing more and more full, gleaming cheerfully through the wildfire haze. She's now at her brightest and fullest. Shined up like a new quarter hanging above the black trees in the cricketful, frogful night.
Perhaps the patient mother bees have been at work filling her with honey, or making her chamber a queen's cell where the egg will hatch and the grub will grow, fed up with royal jelly until she is ready to soar and mate and return to lay her eggs and be cared for by her careful daughters.
Perhaps a little old woman has been tossed up in a basket with a handful of polishing cloths and a tinful of wax. Her small wrinkled hands are still strong and she rubs and she rubs, putting the shine on until the waxy coat gleams bright in the night sky.
Perhaps a small child will pluck her from the sky and pop her into his mouth like a round candy, sucking her honey smoothness and tonguing it into the hollow of his cheek like an everlasting gobstopper. Well that would stop anyone from chattering, wouldn't it, to have a mouthful of moonlight. Perhaps his mother whispered into his ear, planted the seed of the idea. And now that her progeny is quietly content sucking on his big moon sweetie, she can sit and listen to the cricket chorus in peace, watch the small swift bats in their darting and tumbling, and invite the frogs to join in and sing another round.
Oh! I love every inch of this, Melanie! So evocative.
My son is learning about beekeeping, and this Sunday we got to see honey supers be pulled from the hive. We didn't see the queen, but we did get to see a drone larva.
I love your old woman with her polishing cloths too.
This made me smile: https://www.instagram.com/p/C-541VZOl3i/
I am so fascinated by beekeeping. The Museum of Science in Boston has an observation hive that we stared at so long on our last visit. And then my sister has a college friend who is a priest and a beekeeper. He visits and brings her communion and food when she's sick and I follow some of his beekeeping adventures via Facebook and those include attempts to catch swarms and identifying queens. And then I always think of the Easter Vigil Exultet, which is one of my favorite liturgical poems and the praise of the candle made of wax by the patient work of mother bees.
The old woman with polishing cloths is thanks to Charles Dickens' Bleak House, my favorite of his novels. There's a running conceit of Esther as the old woman of the nursery rhyme tossed up in a basket 17 times as high as the moon to brush the cobwebs out of the sky, but of course I had to have her trade the broom for polishing cloths so that she could be using a wax polish. Oh I guess that's also the memory of my parents having me polish the carved wooden furniture when I was a child. I can still smell the lemony scent of the Pledge polish and feel the texture of the old cloth diapers that I used. But of course in British novels furniture is polished with wax, not spray from a can.
I love the meme! I will never stop writing about the moon. Or tree branches. There are some images I keep coming back to as touchstones.