Tuesday, July 05, 2011

Tuesday Poetry Stretch - Fireworks

So yesterday was a holiday, and as you can see, I took that quite literally. I love those days when the pj's don't come off until noon! We saw fireworks on Saturday, which was fortuitous since they were rained out last night.

I haven't been able to stop thinking about fireworks since the weekend, in large part because the display we saw was once of the nicest I've seen in a while. So let's write about fireworks, the ones in the sky or the ones in your heart. Leave me a note about your poem and I'll post the results here later this week.

Until I see you back here, here's a short poem.
Starburst
colors galore
dancing before the sky
launched heavenward to fall again
KABOOM!

10 comments:

  1. I've got nothing here!

    Jane

    ReplyDelete
  2. I wrote this a long time ago and called it "Tenth Year Paradelle," but it's neither a paradelle nor a villanelle. On the occasion of my TWENTIETH anniversary, let's rename it:

    Tenth Year Villadelle

    We leaned into the hill as the night exploded toward us.
    The grass grew high and green and thick.
    Into the thick the high the hill exploded as grass
    Night leaned toward green and we and us grew


    Thunder worked a fire in the star-shattered air.
    The noise engulfed the breathing throng.
    Breathing athunder the star-throng engulfed
    The noise shattered the fire worked in air


    Only you and I, fingers touching, stood alight,
    A current holding us to the ground.
    Fingers alight you the only ground I stood
    A current touching holding us to and—


    Hm.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Fireworks

    The sky has always wanted to do this,
    to throw itself burning
    across the ponderous face of night,
    to shatter lightning, to splinter sunlight.

    --Kate Coombs, 2011, all rights reserved

    ReplyDelete
  4. Finally, a little something:

    FIREWORKS

    Fire works this way,
    a spark, a sparkle,
    then the dark unfolds
    like a Chinese box,
    opening little by little
    to the light.

    ©2011 Jane Yolen, all rights reserved

    ReplyDelete
  5. Debby-Downer has her claws in me. I hope she lets go soon.

    July 4, 2011

    Music begins. A pop! Together
    chins and eyes travel heavenward.
    Oooo...Boom! Pfft, pfft, pfft. Ahhh...
    All aglow with patriotism Americans
    willing to Oooo and Ah in unison over
    sparkling things, fleeting and out of
    reach, refuse to speak to one another of
    the threats to our terrestrial existence,
    namely, our own power and greed.

    © Diane Mayr, all rights reserved

    Last year I wrote a more uplifting one.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Heidi -- that's a gorgeous poem! Mine's in blank verse.

    Farmers’ Fireworks Display
    By Steven Withrow


    We stall the car and climb the roadside hillock
    To the field, as the bugs hum down for our blood,
    And at the second flash—the first entrapped us
    With its bright and bursting spontaneity—
    You coo and ooh as though you’ve seen a dragon
    Or an arrow fletched with phoenix-feathers falling
    In a slowly effervescing arc of colors—
    Redwhitebluegreengold—before concussing
    Like a thunderclap from Odin’s son.
    Or maybe your imagination’s twined
    To a world less mythological than mine,
    And sky to you, although it gleams with flame,
    Is merely airy molecules at play
    With dusk’s near-summer-solstice looming light.

    ©2011 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved

    ReplyDelete
  7. The Pyrotechnician

    It’s his life
    his art
    this pouring of powders
    this mixing and fixing
    of potassium perchlorate
    sodium benzoate
    all magicked into packages
    shot into the sky.

    A whole year
    he works for this night
    on placement and pacing
    orchestrating
    for maximum amazement
    the dazzle and flash
    and thundering crash
    of color colliding
    with sound.

    For twenty minutes
    the sky is his canvas
    a backdrop for pinwheels
    for flashfalls and gerbs
    all imprinting his vision
    of fusion and fission
    on the memories of those
    who watch his dream burn.

    ~~Barbara J. Turner

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  8. Hope

    Late one night
    fourth of July
    a firefly stared
    at a starburst sky.

    As fireworks
    blossomed
    I heard her sigh -
    I can do it if I try.

    © Amy Ludwig VanDerwater

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  9. These are all so interesting! I especially liked the inside view of the pyrotechnician. I can so picture an anthology on this most common of shared experiences...

    ReplyDelete
  10. FIREWORKS

    Chinese New Year
    Fourth of July
    Man made lightning
    Sparkles our sky.

    (c) Charles Waters 2011

    ReplyDelete