I have been experimenting with haiku and sonnets. I have written sonnets based on haiku and haiku based on sonnets. I should probably make a note about which is which. I will eventually publish all of them (or all that are worthwhile, anyway), but of course, I can’t wait for that. Here’s my most recent attempt.
winter’s mossy wrap cannot hold back spring blossoms riotous reform
Spring Scheming
Winter’s moss won’t hold me back! No, in spring I’ll bloom anyway. When the night is less black and winds make new leaves sway.
Patchy growths won’t take me over. When the sun shines yellow and warm and bees buzz among the clover, our schemes begin to take form.
You see my buds emerge today and tomorrow they’ll only grow. Moss can’t hurt me; I won’t decay. Beauty is my power to bestow.
The world will soon be full of color; just wait, we’re staging a takeover.
Photo and poem copyright 2025 Michelle Garren-Flye
I’m exploring a connection between haiku and sonnets again. I did it once before with a haiku by Matsuo Basho. I like the way that one turned out, and as I’m either at an impasse with my novel or at least a long hesitation, I thought I’d try to break out of it by writing a haiku and turning it into a sonnet.
It’s not the most cheerful of poems. In fact, as I wrote the sonnet, I began thinking about how we all try to hang onto our youth and how that can appear. I used to think I’d prefer to age gracefully, now I’m working out daily, trying things I’ve never tried before, dying my hair pink…it all feels right, but maybe it’s not?
Then again, if you never had a chance to bloom in spring, maybe you take the opportunity when you find it.
fall shadows don’t flatter your rosy vernal blossoms it’s too late for you
Out of Season By Michelle Garren-Flye
What are you doing here, little pink bloom? It’s obvious to all your time is long past and putting off death just creates gloom. Your beauty offends, you weren’t meant to last.
You weren’t meant for this kind of shadow when even the sunlight is just a tad too gold casting bare limbs in an unearthly glow as a wind shivers by, leaving you cold.
I’ll have to bury you in the dry, brown leaves. Remember how they looked in your youth? That’s when your beauty was sure to please! Now I’m afraid, it seems uncouth.
Stay buried please, accept what’s been done; for flurries and frigid winds, the time has come.
Photo and poem copyright 2024 Michelle Garren-Flye
Winter Solstice was my second book, published in 2011 by Lyrical Press, now part of Kensington Press. It was a fun story to write and I was thrilled to have two books published by Lyrical Press, but Winter Solstice, unlike Secrets of the Lotus, was never published as a paperback. So I’ve never had it at my store, so it really feels new!
I was super hesitant to republish Winter Solstice because I actually got a lot of great feedback on the cover, lol. Everybody liked the bare-chested man on it, and the model (yes, he really exists) actually contacted me for information about my book way back (his name is Jason Aaron Baca and if you google him, you’ll find out he’s been on the covers of 500+ romance novels—look out Fabio!). He offered to post the cover on his web page, and if you want to see his other novel covers check it out here. Of course, the cover of Winter Solstice is long since crowded out by the others that have come since then, but I’m sure it’s still there somewhere.
Jason, if you’re still out there somewhere, I had to say goodbye to my old cover in order to republish my book, but still appreciate my little brush with celebrity. 🙂
My new cover probably won’t get that kind of attention, but I did design it myself. Thanks to Canva, I’ve gotten pretty handy at the cover design thing, and it saves money, which, as a bookstore owner and indie author I definitely appreciate!
Below, you’ll find the new cover and blurb for Winter Solstice: Author’s Edition. I hope you enjoy. I’ll have copies in my store next week!
Is it a one-night stand or a lifetime romance?
Becky Gray, newest public relations guru for Buncombe County Hospital in Asheville, N.C., does not do one-night stands. Until she meets sexy ER doc John Grant. He’s got a reputation as a womanizer, and Becky tries to stay away, but she finds herself inevitably drawn to him. It doesn’t help that her first assignment involves writing a blog about John and the hospital’s award-winning Emergency Department. For his part, John finds Becky unique combination of strength and vulnerability intriguing. When the two are thrown together in the crisis situations of the Emergency Room, they can’t help but find comfort in their mutual attraction.
Becky never meant for it to be more than one night. John never even meant for it to happen. Where do they go from here?
Today I did something kind of fun. I have a book of Matsuo Basho’s haiku on my desk that I often read when I’m experiencing writer’s block. It’s a beautiful book even though now it’s a bit beat up and coffee-stained. But the pages are full of haiku by the master of haiku. Sometimes when I read them, I feel like I can picture him on his travels, taking inspiration from the simplest of things, writing his verses even in discomfort, possibly hungry, cold, stuck in bad weather, probably tired.
And then I wonder how on earth I can claim any adversity at all.
At any rate, today I was reading some Matsuo Basho and I found this one:
snow on snow
this night in December
a full moon
—Matsuo Basho
I’m currently editing my book Winter Solstice for republishing so this little haiku caught my attention, especially when I read the backstory of it. Basho wrote it for two fellow poets who were arguing, hoping by pointing out the beauty of the moon’s glow on the snow, he could defuse the fight.
I don’t know if it worked for them, but it gave me something to think about. I wondered what it would be like to write a sonnet with the same idea. So I did.
For Basho By Michelle Garren-Flye
Why persist in impatience and strife? When yonder field full of starflowers reflects the moon’s light into our life, how can this world of war be ours?
Sit here beside me, give me your cares. Worries, bad habits, and visions begone! Along with all the stuff of your nightmares— the ones that sometimes linger on.
This world is full of beauty, you know: meadows turned into a galaxy of stars by nothing more than the moon’s glow concealing all of our cuts and scars
Take heart! Come with me and dance in soft grass among stars and planets.
It’s hard to remember sometimes that our world has been through a lot and survived. Sometimes the news makes it seem we are on the brink of all the disasters. Politicians make money off our fears, the media churns out new ones every day. But today I saw a Monarch on a bunch of pink lemonade lantana, and it made me happy.
Photo and poem copyright 2024 Michelle Garren-Flye
I still remember the first day I actually identified as a poet. September 11, 2020. I had entered a local poetry contest and there was a reading. Still wearing a mask to keep the dreaded COVID-19 at bay, I attended with my then husband. The poem I read that night was prophetic, but the sticker the organization gave me to wear with my name badge was even more so.
It said, quite simply: “Poet”.
And when I put it on, I didn’t feel like an impostor.
I’ve read a lot of my poems in public since then. I’ve read other people’s poems in public, too. No matter what I do, I know I am a poet. Maybe we are all poets at heart, so maybe I’m not that special, but I have fully embraced being a poet.
Today is National Poets’ Day. It seems an appropriate day to share the news of my latest poetry book, Unwelcome Souvenirs. I’m very proud of this book. It has more than ninety poems in it, including many of the fortune cookie poems I wrote last April for National Poetry Month.
As a very important aside, my daughter also published her first poetry book this week. This was not planned. We finished them close to the same time, and when she told me hers was ready, I thought about how we used to get hiccups at the same time when she was a baby.
Just so you know I am not an impostor poet, I will share the last poem from the “Broken Things” portion of my book:
Just the Heart By Michelle Garren-Flye
just the heart that's all that's left after all the acid rain and all the cleansing pain washed everything else away
just the heart left on a simple pedestal i let the rest of it go (not without a fight though.) I'll plant it now, see what grows.
Copies of my daughter’s book next to mine on the shelf at my store. Photo and poem copyright 2024 Michelle Garren-Flye
So, yesterday, when I might or might not have preferred to be watching anime, I mowed the lawn. My lawn hadn’t been mowed in about two weeks, and it had, in the meantime, been watered well by the rains of a tropical storm. It was thick, lush, quite tall, and inhabited by many crickets, spiders, moths, mosquitoes, and some very pretty green bugs with lacy wings.
It was an entire habitat.
Needless to say, in my little urban neighborhood, said habitat had to go. Not to mention that it also probably housed roaches, mice, and other pests that I’d prefer not to encounter when I take my dog out at night.
To alleviate my guilt, I imagined myself as an anime villain, mowing down everything in my path, laughing evilly as the innocent bugs tried to escape. And that got me writing this poem in my head. I originally thought it was a villanelle. Not sure what it ended up as, but I do like the rhyme scheme, and the evil tone that grows more seductive through the poem is a little chilling, even to me.
Call Me Destructor By Michelle Garren-Flye
Call me Destructor; watch me lay waste. I cannot hear your cry, but you will not escape.
Luxuries can’t make me poor; destruction is my only taste. My use of power I justify; just watch me lay waste.
I feel the rush in my core… Victims stuck in my mindscape— watch them flitter and fly! I laugh as they try to escape.
Never enough, I always want more. Your dreams I will reshape— raze it all, the only way to satisfy this desire I have to rape.
You want what you know is in store; your desires were never chaste. I know this you cannot deny. Are you sure you desire escape?
Photo and poem copyright 2024 Michelle Garren-Flye.
It’s an excellent question. The truth is, I’ve been traveling with family, but I’ve also been lost in other worlds of my own making. I’m working on another poetry book (with my fortune cookie poetry included), and I’ve started a new novel, but don’t hold your breath on that one lol. It’s coming along, but right now I’m really just getting to know the characters. It’s a romantic fantasy adventure. Probably a standalone, but possibly the beginning of a new series.
And to top it off, it’s poetry contest season. Not wanting to pull any of the poems I’d already decided to put into my books, I had to write some fresh poetry. Plus, one of the competitions is an ekphrastic poetry contest I enter every year (never won it though). For those who don’t know, ekphrastic poetry is where you write poetry based on a work of art. I love it.
This year I had a lot of fun with it, too. I chose one painting and wrote three different poems (villanelle, sonnet, and tanka) about it. I loved all of them, so I submitted all of them lol. It might be fun if one of them wins!
In the meantime, though I don’t have a poem to share with you today, I did think I might share some of the artwork I’ve been creating for Unwelcome Souvenirs, my next poetry book.
In Celebration of the Furniture Year By Michelle Garren-Flye
On that morning twenty-nine years ago, I wanted to be a princess so much I shouted my beliefs loud enough to drown lingering doubts
and stormy weather that took the helium right out of the balloons, so the wind sounded like Daffy Duck and my pink and yellow and blue spheres hung flaccid
by the sign announcing our nuptials, and it was too late for real daffodils, so I made do with false ones, mixed with daisies and mournful white roses
and still I have no regrets because for at least twenty-five of those years I did believe I was a princess, or at least as good as a mom of three who lost her figure in the war can be,
and I have been awarded all these badges for my courage, and my ambition now is to deserve them, which I do, much more than I did on that morning twenty-nine years ago.
Photo and poem copyright 2024 Michelle Garren-Flye
BREATHE: Michelle Garren-Flye 