Groundhog Day – or Not

 

I don’t understand Groundhog Day, not being American. I thought, because of the movie, it meant the same things happening over and over: one day endlessly repeated. But Frank Tassone, using it as a poetry prompt at dVerse, tells us it’s the day when the behaviour of a groundhog is used to forecast either coming Spring or a return to Winter. 

Puzzling. Spring always arrives, doesn't it, sooner later? 

But then he connects it to the Christian holiday, Candlemass, which he tells us is about anticipating when to plant seeds. Aha! so the ‘sooner or later’ of Spring’s arrival is the point.

I look up Candlemass for more detail. Instead, Google takes me straight to an account of the Pagan festival of Imbolc. 

Ah yes, same date. Now I get it! (Sometimes one has to dive a little deeper.)

That, however, is not quite the end of the story. Not for me. Here in Australia we have just come out the other side of a heatwave – not the only one we’ll get this Summer, I fully expect. Here, we are six months away from Imbolc. We have been celebrating Lughnasadh (aka Lammas). Well, some of us have. For Pagans, it’s a time to be thankful for the bounty of nature and the gifts from agriculture.

If we were to have a Groundhog Day here, it couldn’t be now. 

late summer –

we celebrate with bread

the good harvest

Some tanka done wrong

(Breaking all sorts of purist rules.)

I must go down to 

the sea again! all I ask

is a tiny boat

with two paddles, sunlight on 

the waves, and thou beside me

(Apologies to John Masefield and Omar Khayyam)

Prompt 'boat' at Tanka Poets On Site (fb).

solitude –

the luxury of time

all alone

in my own roving mind’s

delicious freedom

Prompt 'solitude' at Tanka Poets On Site.

Also sharing these two at Poets and Storytellers United for FridayWritings #212: Luxury. Both describe (some of) my ideas of luxury, though only the second uses the word.

Unspoken

My friend, who folds in on herself,

does not say, ‘I am hurting too deep 

for words; I am protecting myself

with a mask and a cloak; I am hiding

in a deep cave of silence, leaving only 

my replica outside (acting and smiling).’

She doesn’t tell me: ‘I’m about to shatter.

If you touch me even lightly, even if 

your voice is soft with sympathy, that

will be more than I can bear. Please

pretend that I am normal. Pretend

that you notice nothing. Smile!’

One by one, I see processions of her

acting on a stage. Her lines are always

word-perfect. (Not, of course, her own.)

But I can barely hear them. They fail

in the clamour of the shrieks that she

is not uttering, which I hear too loud. 

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