Reflections on the Teche

Poetry Friday is at Linda’s site: Teacher Dance

Sometimes I sign up for things and then forget about them.  So I was pleasantly surprised when I got some poetry mail this week.  A while back, Jone MacCulloch asked us blogging poets to sign up for a new year postcard exchange.  I signed up and ordered my postcards.

I was so pleasantly surprised this week when I received 3 postcards.  I hope there are more coming.

My postcards from VistaPrint haven’t arrived yet, so if you’d like to receive one, send me your address (margaretsmn at gmail).  I have the list of 10 that Jone sent me, but I’m happy to send more.

Diane Mayr does a new year postcard every year in the tradition of Nengajo, a Japanese tradition of sending a postcard including a haiku.  She writes that this year’s card includes the Year of the Rooster, a reference to fire, and the word first.  The background is “Yawning Apprentice” by Mihaly Munkacsy (circa 1869).  She will be posting the digital version on her blog today.  Here is my camera image.

In the same batch of mail, all the way from Hawaii, Joy Acey blessed me with a lovely original painting and poem.  She is such a dear person whom I have never met.  Some day I will fly to Hawaii to see her in her garden. Even her sweet note is poetic.

Margaret,

I was lying in bed this morning listening to the blasting rain hit the exterior of my bedroom wall and windows–these are the windows that face east so I could watch the cloud covered Sleeping Giant and the sunrise.

I’m thinking about selecting one word for a guide in the new year and I’m thinking about our poetry postcard exchange for the new year and this haiku appeared with your name written all over it.

painting and poem by Joy Acey

The third card of joyful words came from Irene Latham.  She tweeted recently that she had her postcards ready, and I was secretly crossing my fingers that I would get one.  The card looks like an old postcard from Germany, a gift in itself, but it was accompanied by this beautiful verse:

The Coming of Light

And here is the secret
to everything:
when you let the light it,
a river
you thought dried up
or frozen
will begin to sing.

–Irene Latham

Bruckmanns Bildkarte NR

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