Greetings, Poetry Lovers! Oh, I've missed you so. I've been out of town and out of pocket much of the last couple of months. This time last year, I was quarantined and caring for family members with Covid, right after the death of my father-in-law. What a difference a year makes.
Since May, we've celebrated my sister's wedding in Florida; our son's graduation from grad school at Candler/Emory in Atlanta; a postponed-from-the-holidays family gathering on my husband's side in Georgia; and the wedding of a dear friend's daughter last weekend in Georgia. Also, on Mother's Day weekend, I made a crazy solo trip to the Upstate (the foothills and mountain-y part of South Carolina) to be the first person to see a house that was coming on the market, as we've been hunting a second home/retreat-type place closer to our kids for weekends and holidays and such. We bought it! And, yes, it was a crazy experience in a crazy market.
Then another trip over so my hubby Jeff could see what we were buying.... Then out of the blue I learned that rent for my downtown studio/shop space was going up by 70 percent(!). So I packed up seven years worth of artistic hoarding and clunkily moved it all to my house - still sorting it out here. Shhh. That was right after said son took much of his stuff out of the house post-graduation, to move with his girlfriend to the North Carolina high country. (His closet is now full of art and framing supplies and such.) Then came our house closing and moving a bunch of stuff there, and taking a week to set it up and take care of repairs and lots of little necessary things. [Jone, if you're reading this, you'll like that I've decorated it all with Celtic/Scottish, British, and Irish themes!]
And in the midst of all of this wonderful activity, I was invited to submit work to the Local Life Magazine here to be the featured poet for July, and the kind editors and staff chose several summer-friendly haiku to publish this month! The poems are accompanied by a stunning photograph from the month's featured photographer, Joan Edkhardt. What a treat and what an honor.
You've probably seen most of these before, but here are the poems included, followed by names of the journals in which they first appeared:
my small insights
a hummingbird
at the trumpet flower
night thunder
shaking the house
and the dog
hatchlings -
beyond orange tape
the sea
telling it slant
a ghost crab
slips into a hole
between
rounds of rain
rounds of treefrogs
(Haiku originally published in Modern Haiku, Prune Juice, Frogpond, Acorn, and bottle rockets. Poems ©Robyn Hood Black.)
Click here to peruse the entire issue of our local Local Life Magazine - my poems are almost at the end, and there is a lot of fun sizzle between the covers of the "hot" July issue!
For lots more summer and lots more poetry, visit our wonderful Molly at Nix the Comfort Zone! Thanks for hosting the Roundup, Molly, and Stay Cool, All.