Acceptance

I'm pleased to announce that The Innisfree Poetry Journal has accepted my rondeau, "Heartwood", for publication in its Fall 2012 issue.

The poem was inspired by a woman I saw at a nursing home in Pennsylvania. She was "parked" in the hallway and spent her days with a blanket over her head.

When the poem is published I'll post a link to it here.

SpokenVerse reading of "Oneironaut" -- I'm in good company !

Haiku

haru:

a bush warbler sings                                         

beside the snowmelt river                                             

through mist-muffled air                                    

natsu:

white shoes, handkerchiefs                               

first tea on the balcony             

an evening rainbow        

aki:

courtesy of FreeDigitialPhotos.net

river of heaven                                                 

stars flow out across the night                           

gathering lanterns                                    

           

fuyu:

in a withered field                                                         

she seeks forgotten flowers                                          

dreams of camellias                                

                                                      

© Catherine Chandler (2012)

The poet as cartonero, the cartonero as poet

Ragbag

In remembrance of Charles Beaudelaire

His is an art of foraging for rags,
for scrap and speck, for smithereen and shard,
for snippets gathered up in bales and bags
straining to hold what tidy lives discard.
He drags his pickings home, capotes, mégots,

an old écu, a button or a key;

then fashions sonnets and the odd rondeau,

master of a dubious alchemy.

So, blessed be the boy who banks, at best,
his smoldering fires of fancy with the fuel
of sensibility; and in his call
to be the city’s ragman, may his quest
permit a vision that transcends the pool
of vomit, to the flower in the wall.

( © Catherine Chandler. A different version was first published in Umbrella, Summer 2007, and nominated for "Best of the Net")

"In Nora's Garden"

Photographer: Jon Sullivan (public domain photograph)

A blog comment on my poem, "In Nora's Garden".   

I won't reveal what caused "Nora's" change of heart. Suffice it to say, her garden provides some semblance of order out of personal chaos, a hedge against what Emily Dickinson called "that White Sustenance — Despair".