洞月亮 Cave Moon Press, January 2020

FEATURED POET:  Holly J. Hughes is the author of Hold Fast, Passings, and Sailing by
Ravens, co-author of The Pen and The Bell: Mindful Writing in a Busy World, and editor of the award-winning anthology, Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose about Alzheimer’s Disease. Her chapbook Passings received an American Book Award in 2017. Her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart prize, were featured in An
American Life in Poetry, have appeared in many anthologies, most recently, Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems, and have been set to music by Minneapolis composer Edie Hill. After teaching writing at the college level for several decades, she now lives on the Olympic peninsula, where she leads writing and
mindfulness workshops in Alaska and the Northwest and consults as a writing coach. Check out what she’s up to at hollyjhughes.com

Bittersweet,

my mother called it, filling the back
of the station wagon with tangled branches,

the only way she knew to bring what’s wild
inside the tidy rooms of her colonial.

How could I know it would trail me
all these years with its bright eyes?

Sweetbitter, Sappho called it,
knew too well the heart’s grammar—

that the tang of cherries lingers
longer than the sweet—

that the ripe fig sweetens as
its skin begins to pucker.

It is just they are so intertwined
we can’t greet one without the other:

one’s bright twin, one’s lengthening shadow. 

Reconsidering Desire

Today the trees barely move, sky a study in grey.
But above the horizon, a blue opening that just now

closes. Give up desire, said the Buddha. Surely, that’s
not what he meant. Yes, a dewdrop world.

But the bowl of lemons, tart cherries, pomegranate, too?
And what about that ruby glint in winter’s drowsy sleep?

Even happy as you think you surely must be,
you can’t help imagine that path vanishing

into dark firs where sunlight shatters,
glints, bright shards at your feet.


WRITE YOUR POEM!

Notice the wonderful play on senses.  The colorful fruits include colors and sour tastes.  Beyond that is the interplay of what gives us the nature of our desire.  Does temporary pain create pleasure?  Does temporary pleasure leave pain?  Holly leaves us with a tightly woven enigma and wraps it up with a pivot word in "glint"

One "glint" gives us a warm nap.
One "glint" gives us shards that could cut.

So what is it you desire?  How would you represent them in a poem.  Winter for a nap?  Winter for shards of ice?
Thanks Holly.  How do we include ambiguity and balance in the same few words.  Pick a verb.  Try to pivot the lines for pleasure and pain.  Write your poem!