Try It Now (Day 508)

How many tones ring 

in your ears when 

you silence Them?

When you uninvite 

Them from the daily

celebration that is 

your morning coffee?

When you mute Their 

urgent, insincere pleading 

and fearmongering?

Do you suddenly 

hear papery leaves

—mere buds, last time 

you noticed them—

rustling in the whisper 

of a breeze?

How many heartbeats, 

before eternity settles 

back into your center?

Until the exquisite 

smallness of the everyday 

smooths the lines of

tension from your brow? 

Try it now, and 

count yourself 

among the blessed.

(c) 2018, by Hannah Six

Image: Winslow Homer, Girl in a Hammock, 1873

Oil on canvas, Colby Museum of Art (via Wikimedia Commons)

Winter Cafe (Day 314)

The table where we used to sit is empty, 

bare but for a handful of citrus-hued leaves, 

uncomfortable chairs that never supported 

our backs or, frankly, our behinds, have been 

turned upside down, stacked one on the other 

and chained together like escaped convicts 

in an old movie--in it together until they are 

killed, recaptured, or freed by a stranger 

with an axe. You may have noticed, I am not 

being terribly romantic. There were days when 

seeing our favorite place this desolate would 

have depressed me. Perhaps, I would think 

of a simile, about how the sidewalk cafe was 

like our life together, unloved, abandoned, 

or some such. But today, looking at the bereft, 

rain-spattered tables, feeling the damp chill 

creep from the sidewalk into my toes, I think 

only this: I am different now. And I am glad.

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Image via Pixabay

Gingko (Day 249)

Xanthous gingko quilt

Fetid swathe of silken fans

Unfurled overnight

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Image: TeamGrayDuck

From the Left (Day 247)

Today slanted  golden  from the left 

throwing shade 

       on the world  unseen 

since yesterday   one step closer 

to completely abolished 

to silence 

to the barely audible 

hiss of snowfall and wind 

       like blades of blue 

           steel cutting deeply 

where sap surges and tingles 

soon turning 

crimson and flame   pushing life 

upward  throwing verdant foliage into 

relief  knowing that after 

the fall 

    the winter 

        the spring 

dazzling  two steps forward  to the right  

again  almost before it begins.

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Image: tzevena

I Am Cold Weather (Day 223)

Today I am cold weather   damp 

and wind-chimes   after that picturesque 

and uninteresting summer

     What can I say

     Outside cars read the street like Braille 

     running wet fingertips

     over the night she was buried 

and I climbed into my mother's lap 

and she held me 

and I cried

and then she dipped my fingers 

and toes in warm honey

and brought me upstairs 

and tucked me in to bed again

     Gone now   like summer 

and I am wearing thick woolen sweaters 

and socks to warm  

and I'm in bed

     —warm cat cool sheets—

and I miss the days when everything 

     seemed like it would be all right 

     for a while

and we were so happy 

and wet 

and windblown 

     into that narrow restaurant

     in a gust of leaves

and umbrellas insufficient for 

     an oncoming hurricane

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Photo: Roman Boed

Late Pears (Day 221)

Late pears drop through 

branches and leaves  landing 

with muffled plops on 

overgrown grasses  rotting in 

the sun  drawing bees and 

hornets to sip delicately at 

trickles of hot syrup  

soon leaves slip off trees and 

ships rock  creaking with truth 

and frustrated eagerness  

slickly filtered through a veil 

of midnight smiles.

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six 

Image: KRiemer

Autumn Haiku (Day 209)

Autumn trickles in.

Light shifts, leaves rattle in wind.

Still, summer lingers.

(c) 2017, by Hannah Six

Photo source unknown