(Free No.5) Playing with Poetry - All people are born poets

Autumn Evening
By Mark Christianson

Crickets ringing in the trees
Brilliant moon
Silence unbroken

Note: I've been jogging at night recently, usually through the ICU campus, and it is an unbelievably beautiful experience to jog in cool, night air under a full moon while the only sound you can hear is 360 degree surround sound of crickets singing like little bells ringing in the trees. It is a beautiful...silence.

Sports Day
By Mark Christianson

Start guns crack
Screams echo
Leaves dance on a cloudless sky

Note: I took some rough notes in my writer's notebook at undokai yesterday:
falling leaves...beautiful blue sky...excitement...lots of people...screams yells...crack of start gun...obento time...boring sometimes...same every year, but still a joy to attend

The 

Mei
By Mark Christianson












Bouncing, bubbling
Daddy...DADDY!
Look at me
Look at me
Mitete mitete!

Sprinting, spinning
Daddy...DADDY!
Are you looking at me?
Are you REALLY looking?

Watch me all the time, Daddy
ALL THE TIME!

Note: My four year old says "look at me" "watch me" a million times a day! The "Are you really looking?" is one of her favorite lines along with "Watch me all the time". This is just Mei as she is.

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I. What is poetry?
"the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings"
  -Wordsworth
"an imaginative awareness of experience"
  -Mark Flanagan, researcher at ICU!

 
A Poem Is A Little Path
A poem is a little path
That leads you through the trees.
It takes you to the cliffs and shores,
To anywhere you please.
Follow it and trust your way
With mind and heart as one,
And when the journey's over,
You'll find you've just begun.
From The 20th Century Children's Poetry Treasury, Knopf, 1999, © Charles Ghigna (from this link for Poetry Teachers)




II. Learning from the masters

Invictus 
by W. E. Henley, 1875
Read by Morgan Freedman, as Nelson Mandela in the movie Invictus (2009)

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.



III. Song lyrics as poetry

Like a Bridge Over Troubled Water 
by Simon and Garfunkle, 1970

When you're weary
Feeling small
When tears are in your eyes
I will dry them all

I'm on your side
When times get rough
And friends just can't be found
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down

When you're down and out
When you're on the street
When evening falls so hard
I will comfort you

I'll take your part
When darkness comes
And pain is all around
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down

Sail on Silver Girl,
Sail on by
Your time has come to shine
All your dreams are on their way

See how they shine
If you need a friend
I'm sailing right behind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind



IV. Why not publish?

1. Contest
https://aspara.asahi.com/column/matsuyama/entry/7XQ30Wc1mZ


2. Biweekly in Asahi News
http://www.asahi.com/english/haiku/


3.

The next issue of the Asahi Haikuist Network appears October 21. Readers are invited to send haiku about how each day is getting darker on a postcard to David McMurray at the International University of Kagoshima, Sakanoue 8-34-1, Kagoshima, 891-0197, Japan, or e-mail to (mcmurray@fka.att.ne.jp).