This is a workshop poem that came out of Tom Hirons’ Feral Angels Poetry Cafe on Sunday 26 Feb 2023. It is an exercise, but maybe interesting for that. Other participants’ poems were far wilder! This poem is highly domesticated. The exercise suggested a Japanese haiku kind of style: highly refined. The lines below are all five or seven syllables, but they are not in a pattern like a haiku or a tanka.
a family home
(my own wilderness)
father tell me how to be
(I saw and I said)
your long enduring teacher
(I saw and I said)
who will make worlds in the strong
mind (create literally)
crack solid oak beams
(metaphorically) bend
light destroy wildness in fire
(literally and…)
unselfconscious (I am) in
“flow” and balance, observant
the hawk, the donkey (moving)
teacher, child (grandiose, small)
(three lines of stillness)
a practice of counting time
the gifts of our ancestors
falling into the pleasure
(I will) of the family
(I will blessed be)
rWorld2 