Just a glimpse (Day 407)

Once a smooth 

emerald-velvet breast

—where silver lights 

played and twigs rattled, 

concrete crackled, 
and sometimes,
sweetness sang
—deserts now splinter 

into angry glass, newly 

mown sand transformed 

by a blast of blazing 

heat such as the world 

has seldom known.

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: Sand dunes in Rub' al Khali, Arabia's "empty quarter". 
Acquired by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission 
and Reflection Radiometer, or ASTER, aboard 
NASA's Terra Earth-orbiting satellite.

Haiku for Day 380

bourbon-amber world tilts

sliding down that coffee-sweet glass

in crestfallen octaves

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: Roger Peterson, US Forest Service

Angel (Day 359)

Hands flower heat expands

Mist annoints an oatmeal angel

One poised dewdrop succeeds

Sirens call joy children pout

Suddenly brown petals play

Torn committees flutter

Green shadows tax the humid wind

Nearby frogs are chiding

(c) 2018 by Hannah Six 

Image: pixel2013/Pixabay

Conscious Planet (Day 306)

raw and ugly   sawed blankly through 

the black green hillside of tumbledown 

trees presaging landslides to come   

slipping and slumming down on every 

gambler who packs his ivory-colored heart 

on the back of a public flirtation or 

a private-jet barter for a smallish blue planet 

careening through emptiness without 

a driver   its liquid center sloshing and 

splashing like a fringe-festival flask in 

the governor’s pocket   tender and aquatic   

fragile and pliant   she will rise to her full 

height one day and exact her molten revenge

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Image: Jim D Griggs, US Geological Survey 

Wanderings (Day 296)

rain soaked wanderings and clear 

soft mistakes  summer traced 

familiar playground paths where 

flooded streams of shade spread 

in a flood  returning sleep suggests 

once steady worlds of gardens cooled 

by the familiar fluttering moon 

(c) 2017 by Hannah Six

Image: PatMorgan

Secret Roads (Day 288)

Trickling valleys slide

toward the water, dark 
as cedars standing 

sentinel, concealing 

secret roads 
and urgent passageways, 
branches 

calming the nervous, 

fog-brightened night.

Here, joy turns 
to wonder, grief 
to contemplation. 

New growth, a tender 
haze of green, emerges
before the forest’s 
detached gaze, 
in stillness,
ancient consolations.

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Image: StockSnap

Sea-swept (Day 279)

they danced at midnight

on a sea-swept isle  all coral 

haze and lagging rhythms

less than one day’s sail beyond

the bounds of measurable time

into the early morning 

hours like embers glow 

their rolling hues diffused against 

the crumbled walls of a secret 

beach embraced by headlands 

and a jealous sky   they unwrapped 

the gifts they carried  unfolding 

tales half by half  attentive 

to the rushing surf  

each listening  awestruck  to the sea

hushed and tender  whispering 

from deep inside the chambered shell

of the other’s upturned heart

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Free image via Pexels

Against a Buttery Sky (Day 276)

Above the orchard, tall 

trees against a buttery

sky, sating my spirit’s

deep hunger, portending 

umber flanks 

of gourd-round hills,

a pasture dotted 

Heaven, northern dusk 

fog-sheltered need, 

won as we cried for more, 

but by dawn, still and

you should see 

where, small and fragile, 

it lives on in me.

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Image: racorvese

Solace of Trees (Day 275)

We long to open 

doors, and breathe 

a freshening breeze, 

to leave 

our gates unlocked, 

accept the solace

of trees whose 

constellation of greens 

shimmer overhead, 

to step into the middle, 

soft as sleep, 

and forage among 

the refuse of our day, 

to sigh, to laugh, 

to weep outright 

for what we had 

to leave along the road, 

with so little time to choose, 

voices raised in protest: 

Let us stay! And yet, 

both sides refuse, 

both sides refuse

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Image: Toward Los Angeles, CA 1937, by Dorothea Lange 

via US Library of Congress