Butterflies and Parties

When you see something like a snow-white butterfly tree, it stays with you. Or it can. Taking things down in pastel is one way I've begun keeping startling visual experiences. Setting them into poems is another...

"On Belleview Avenue"

Serpentine tree,
Japanese, I suspect,
as in split maple, as in
it takes a hundred years to
snake these arms to such breadth;
anyway, it seems everything
must have been leading to this juncture—
droughts, floods, springs coming
too late and winters too early,
everything conspired towards this:
snow, like white butterflies, laid
over old curves, dead leaves, intersections,
now ready to soft wing
the empty night.

____

Being on-line has brought my poetic side to life; writing poems is something I seem to do better in Community. That's the way my other kinds of writing work too. So why did I think poetry should be any different?

One of my absolute favorite ways of writing poetry in Community has begun to happen on Twitter. About every other week, we have hour-long parties hosted by tspoetry. Wild things happen— things I'm grateful for, as they open my creativity.

Though many people stop by the Twitter parties (sometimes accidentally, sometimes as the result of a friendly kidnapping (sorry Bonnie!)), there are a few "regulars" I've come to count on as the life of the parties...

— sweet-spirited Monica who, as I recall, started a blog just so she could participate in Random Acts of Poetry at HighCallingBlogs and who now surprises me with her brief, incisive poems on Twitter

— thoughtful and artistic Kelly (you MUST check out her awesome photography)

— art-loving Maureen, whose poems rarely fail to silence me (particularly the ones she writes on-the-spot at our parties... she's got a gift for quick thinking!)

— delightfully amusing when she's not being deep or making wine nAncY (oh, and her art spans the whimsical to the beautifully arresting)

— speech-writing businessman Glynn, who began writing poetry seriously for the first time this summer (and his poetry is really growing... what joy!)

Thanks, Twitter-Poet Friends, for sharing your lives and words with me. I'm delighted to celebrate you during our 12 Days of Community...




Snowy Forest art by Gail Nadeau. Used with permission.

THE 12 DAYS:
1. Mary's Advent
2. Laura in the Moss
3. Social Media Guys
4. Snow-White Butterfly Tree
5. Butterflies and Parties (this post)

POETRY FRIDAY:
Kelly’s Un-Conversation
Monica’s White and Made Known to Me
Maureen’s A Three-Part Christmas Story and Art Lecture 101
Cindy’s In the purifying flames…
Fred’s The Past Presents the Future
Glynn’s Shadows of Dawn, Like Smoke
Diane Walker’s It was an offensive apology (scroll down in the comment box at Seedlings)
Erica's Heat