Heron Spirit

Coming soon, from Spartan Press to bookshelves and your hands… Heron Spirit, a poetry collection that explores a lifelong relationship with nature.

Quench This Thirst

Give me a forest trail
beneath radiant amber leaves
that dance playfully in sunlight,
past stony outcrops that speak
of history embraced in layers of time
that seeps to form rivulets of life
that feed streams great and small.
Take me to the banks of those rivers
where the forest’s roots reach to the water.
Just as their thirst is quenched,
let mine be so, that I may know
the beauty of leaves, of water, and of sky.

“Ken Gierke’s new poetry collection, Heron Spirit, is a
conversation with the natural world. The poems take us
from playing in leaves to lines that paddle in unison with the
waves of metaphors, the lines that stretch into the endless
horizon of an endless river. Nature holds bold, tall titans,
sentinel eagles, and a graceful heron that transforms into the
Maid of the Mist. Gierke’s poems observe and reflect “in
true silence”. Maneuvering in the waters teaches us how to
solve problems and gain new perspectives. The poems fill the
silence not just between each paddle but between bird calls.
That is, the poems breathe with the flow of the river and bird
songs. Through stunning imagery and use of meter, Gierke
shows us that the forces of nature are the true constant for
our future generations and “beckon us all” to enter the sacred
realm of the heron spirit.”

-Barbara Harris Leonhard, Author, Three-Penny
Memories: A Poetic Memoir (EIF-Experiments
in Fiction, 2022)

Ken G.

Shared with OpenLinkNight at dVerse ~ Poets Pub

Post Na/GloPoWriMo 2024

It’s a new month, and it’s not April. National/Global Poetry Writing Month 2024 ended yesterday, and May is upon us. I posted a poem each day for the month of April to share with napowrimo.net, but I only met twelve of the prompts provided by Maureen Thorsen (two more than last year), starting with the early bird prompt on March 31. Five more were responses to prompt from dVerse ~ Poets Pub, and the remaining fourteen were poems I wrote as the month proceeded.

The styles of my poem were as follows:
    15 free verse, one of which was a quadrille
     9 senryū
     2 sijo
     2 simple rhyme
     1 prose poem
     1 haiku
     1 haibun

I wrote at least one other poem that does not appear on my blog, so it’s safe to say I wrote more than 30 poems during the month of April. I was able to complete the challenge, even though six of the days were spent on the road. I started this blog in 2014, so that’s eleven consecutive years of meeting the challenge. Thank you to all who read my poetry this past month and especially to all who commented. Here’s to 2025.

 

Ken Gierke

 

Reading & the Road

Last week, I was featured at two readings – Vinyl & Verses at Daredevil Records in Niagara Falls, NY, and Mac’s Backs – Books on Coventry in Cleveland Heights, OH. I had a great time at both events and was able to meet quite a few fellow poets.

In two weeks, I’ll be on the road again, to Casper, Wyoming, but not for poetry. This is our third trip there since March 2023, and should be the final phase in settling the estate of my sister-in-law. Unfortunately, it’s a week in the middle of April, so this may be the first year since starting my blog in April 2014 that I won’t write a-poem-a-day for National Poetry Writing Month. I guess I’ll see how this pans out.

Photo taken at Mac’s Backs by John Burroughs, National Beat Poet Laureate 2022-2023

Crossing Rivers at Origami Poems Project

My micro-chapbook, Crossing Rivers, is available as a free PDF download at Origami Poems Project. All poems are printed on one sheet of paper that when folded, following these instructions, creates a palm-sized chapbook. This collection features five poems.

It’s an honor to have my poetry placed with the many fine poets who can be found at Origami Poems Project by hovering over the “Poets” tab and clicking “Find a Poet.” My page will also give you access to my earlier micro-chapbook, Art as Complement. In fact, this page shows both collections without inverting any text (part of the origami process).

Many thanks to Editor Jan Keough for accepting my poems and creating this micro-chapbook.

Arts Rolla Recognition

My poem, Fresh Air Walk During a Pandemic, was awarded Second Place
in the 14th Arts Rolla Writing Competition. In addition, a second poem,
Raindrop Syncopation, received Honorable Mention.

Fresh Air Walk During a Pandemic

A light rain that would not touch me was
followed by sunlight that surrounded me
from a respectful distance.

Pollen seemed deferential. Skirting
the edge of the trail with shared concern,
passing hikers offered a simple hello.

Birds treated it like any other day,
their distance a product of instinct,
mine a matter of discretion.

A fox watched warily from grass
taller than both of us, as if to acknowledge
we’d never really meet face-to-face.

Cedar branches swayed in the breeze,
flinging leftover rain droplets,
a reminder that things could be normal again.

The same but different, when different
means an awareness of droplets
and we find new ways to mask our concerns.

raindrop syncopation

impromptu
underlying bass
from thunder

random wail
as a wind whistles
punctuates

tree branch sways
washboard staccato
gutter beat

overflowed
each raindrop succinct
in puddle

reflection
in syncopation
lightning arcs

Ken G.