OK, now it's *really* done! I finished the last of 50 poems for "The Wings of Winter" tonight. A short poem opens each chapter. They are primarily haiku-like, some tanka, some cinquains. I think they represent the minimalist feel I had hoped to get across--almost like a chinese brush painting in style. Each poem resonates with the chapter text, though it doesn't retell the story, or tell any story for that matter. More like haibun, a Japanese form marrying prose to haiku.
A sample of the set of 50, below.
6.
Ice skins the lake.
Shadows shift beneath
its crystalline shell.
Talons shatter
the complacency
of drowsing fish.
10
It hunts--
a lone martin
slips inside the hollow
log, thick with musk where voles have claimed
their home.
20
gray on gray--
against thickening clouds
sillouette of wings
22
Twilight
smudges the sky;
all color fades. The pulse
of distant stars, pallid winter
fireflies.
23
A branch groans
under the snow's weight.
Flames snarl at dried wood,
barter
death for life.
24
two wrens argue
their voices trapped
in the thicket
28
Fox kits
curl nose to tail
in the darkness. Outside
the den, driving snow, the north wind
sighing.
39
Crows rise.
The bare branches
of birch and knotted pine
relinquish a flight of feathers--
black leaves.
42
Sunlight stabs
through a rift in the sky
trees shed shadows
their branches glitter
with captive stars
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