the poetry of water

I have always found my way ...

to waters' poetry ... for I am drawn

by inspiration ... to brooks

and springs ... that I can step across with ease

I am drawn ...

to capricious creeks that vanish and return

to rivers-of-change ... as constant ...

as a mountain range ... though in winter ... shrouded ...

beneath ... ice and snow

I am drawn ...

to lakes and to lake ponds and to lagoons ...

to oceans ... to the deep abiding sea

I have always found my way ...

to waters' poetry ... and go there still ...

and often now

it comes to me

I close my eyes … remember … and it comes to me

in the purl and ripple of a phrase

in the crash and swirl that stirs expression 

in the ebb and flow of lapping waves

upon a jagged shore or sandy beach

along a stony bank or tall grass knoll

beside a crooked creek or vast blue sea

I close my eyes

and I am there ... in waters' poetry

Photo:  Twin Island Blue – M.S. Bourke

© 2019 Wendy Bourke 

Selected Tanka

I pressed his gift
of wildflowers
in the pages
of a heavy book . . .
that I could not get into
  
American Tanka: between cries, Issue 25, 2015 



winter rambling
I come upon snow angels
and bend
to give them halos –
she loved doing that 

Ribbons Selected Tanka, Tanka Society of America, Fall 2015


  
in the big community garden
he stares at tiny seeds
in his little hand
and whispers...
so small 

Tanka Café, Tanka Society of American, Fall 2015 



my father, the diviner –

strange title
I always thought
for a man who preferred
rum over water 

A Hundred Gourds, 5:2, March 2016 



I walk past

the street kid
holding out a dirty palm –
the gray day
begins spitting
  
Spent Blossoms Anthology, Tanka Society of America, Fall 2015 


photo:  Nitobe Japanese Garden, Vancouver - W. Bourke
  
© 2015/16 Wendy Bourke

indelible

it was a nasty day to be outside . . .
the kind of day, you wish away:
 

a gray gossamer curtain
of misty billows and fog –
rose on rain that drizzled
and spat in bursts and blasts

of wet, dank, clammy cold 

that oozed through bodies, to bones 

like just-thawed mud . . . and I thought:

if this day was set to music . . .
it would be a lament
 
if it was a painting,

people would be, barely there . . . in smudges  –
ageless, sexless, distant smudges

which made me ache to snuggle 

cozily into a splendid poem, with you 

where we would be . . . 

an indelible line of lovely poetry  . . . oft-repeated
  

note:  posted for Poets United.

photos:  Bridges across the Fraser River in New Westminster, BC (Skytrain and Pattullo – Mount Baker, in the mist) – W. Bourke

 

painting:  Gare St. Lazare, 1877 (public domain) – Claude Monet

  

© 2016 Wendy Bourke