Love

In the Beginning ~ haibun

/ rivrvlogr / 38 Comments

The prompt for Haibun Monday 30/03/2020: Snapshots of Our Lives, from Kim at dVerse Poets Pub, is to write a haibun that tells the story behind a poem from our personal archives. This is the story behind How I Knew I was a Poet, my video poem from 2017.

In the Beginning

I first visited YouTube in 2006, and it wasn’t long before I was making videos of my own, including video poetry. As time went on, I joined other video sharing sites. In 2010, one of the vloggers I followed was planning to travel from Chicago to Boston on his motorcycle, and he asked those along his route about meeting up for coffee. I took him to see Niagara Falls, and offered a room and a bed for the night. He told me to visit him any time, offering the use of his spare room.

The following year, we planned a meetup that included four other vloggers. Two of them also were from Chicago, one was from Washington state, and the fourth was from Missouri. Over several days, we visited a blues club, took a boat tour of Chicago’s architecture along the Chicago River, and visited the Green Mill Jazz Club (the home of slam poetry) and The Poetry Foundation. Everyone had a good time, and I had some interesting conversations about poetry at The Poetry Foundation with, little did I know, the woman who would one day be my wife.

I moved to Missouri in 2012.

whispering verses
witnessed by poets
in the beginning


Image: The Poetry Foundation, in Chicago

A Day Like Any Other

/ rivrvlogr / 26 Comments

A Day Like Any Other

With like minds, we scorn this greeting card holiday,
yet my mind still turns to you, a turn made
nearly every moment since that first turn
on the path that brought our hearts together,
since the first words I wrote for you, words
I would write on any day, even this.

My un-Valentine’s Day poem.

And more words of LOVE.

Notes, while driving with a love supreme

/ rivrvlogr / 11 Comments

 

Notes, while driving with a love supreme
    (random riffs recorded on the road)

Layer upon layer of clouds holding
a snow that never materialized
deliver a gray light,
but there’s joyful anticipation at the start
of this long drive home like a pulse
of contentment. A love supreme.

Piano pulls me forward with resolve,
when Coltrane comes in
pursuing that love
as drums urge me onward.

Like a psalm rolling through me,
clouds give way to blue sky,
the hint of home drawing me closer
on this long cold drive.

 

Words of Love

/ rivrvlogr / 32 Comments

Words of Love

Witness two lovers, sharing their vows.
There is no instantaneous transformation.
Their love is as true before, as it is after,
yet that moment stands frozen in time,
the depth of their love in the words they choose.
Their truth is a song, and no song
that a bird might sing to its mate
could make this more clear to the world.

In Meet the Bar – Metaphorically Speaking, Björn at dVerse asks us to use metaphor
to expand on something to create something entirely new and unique.

Image source: The Guardian