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
There’s nothing like a mountain fog. It’s hard to put it into words. I remember when I was a kid growing up in Brevard, N.C., I loved foggy mornings. Waiting at the bus stop, I felt like the sky had fallen on me, soft and cool and protective. Later, as a grown-up navigating mountain roads in the fog, I still felt that mystical sense of otherworldliness.
For the past few days, I’ve spent a lot of time poring over pictures of flattened, flooded towns and videos of raging, red rivers full of debris. It’s hard for me to believe this is what’s left of some of the beautiful mountains where I grew up. I’ve lived on the eastern side of the state long enough to know there’s probably more saltwater in my veins than the red clay of the mountains now, but at times like this, I know there’s no denying it.
The coast may have been my destiny, but the mountains are my origin.
I haven’t been back in nearly two years. My mother passed away in February 2023 and I went back for her funeral. After that, my father moved down to Charlotte to be with my uncle and my older brother, and my mountains were just two hours too far to go.
I wonder how it became this hard to take time to get somewhere that’s still important to me.
I heard today that Interstate 40 Westbound was closed at Statesville to stop people wanting to get into the mountains—searching for friends and family, most likely, but maybe just curious. Maybe people like me who suddenly realized that the mountains of their origin might not always be there. The towns we grew up in can be wiped off the earth’s slate.
I’ve heard that Brevard survived, for the most part, in spite of being walloped with 30 inches of rain. But I’ve seen nothing to support that. There’s a webcam in downtown Brevard that is currently offline. I check it daily, sometimes hourly. I know it will likely be days or weeks before it comes back online, if it even survived, but still. It would be reassuring to see.
So little communication is possible, even with my brother and his family who still live there. I’ve gotten a few texts. He managed one phone call to my father.
I feel like the entirety of the North Carolina mountains is shrouded in fog now, but unlike the fog of my childhood, this is not protective, it’s a reminder. Nothing is permanent. Everything can be damaged or taken away.
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 actually found today a challenge more because of distraction and tiredness than anything. When I first read the fortune, I wished I’d gotten it on the 30th, but I came up with something anyway. It’s a type of renga, although it was written all by me, and renga are traditionally written by multiple people.
Hope you enjoy!
Photo and poem copyright 2024 Michelle Garren-Flye
It is most gratifying when a goal is achieved through one’s efforts.
Goal! By Michelle Garren-Flye
plant the seed in spring and watch the leaves poke and spread lofty emergence
the farmer watches proudly life’s devotion gives returns
run hard down the court heart pounds as focus sharpens shoot the ball and score
player doubles over, bows content in success for now
poetry fills page an ache in each syllable captures dreams within
poets appreciate goals when wild dreams are at their heart
Welcome to Haiku Sunday! No matter what the fortune is, I must turn it into a haiku.
Not to downplay the difficulty of this one, but do you know the one famous haiku where the last line is “refrigerator”? Well, I sort of did that with this one because the first word that popped into my head was a five-syllable word. Procrastination.
The other two lines weren’t that easy, but I’m fairly happy with the result.
Hope you enjoy!
Photo and poem copyright 2024 Michelle Garren-Flye
Make serious decisions in the last few days of the month.
Seriously By Michelle Garren-Flye
opportune timing is everything this month procrastination
As soon as I read today’s fortune, I remembered one particular night. You see, I love to laugh, but sometimes I think I’ve forgotten how. Then I have a moment when laughter lights up my heart again. I know this fortune is true, but I don’t always know how to make it true for myself.
Maybe that’s how we all are, to a certain extent. Surviving day to day.
I can say that nine times out of ten, when I find myself in that warm light of laughter, it’s with my kids, the human beings I love most in this world. And that’s what this poem is about.
I chose to write it in haibun format, which was invented by Matsuo Basho, the master of the haiku. A haibun is a prose poem and a haiku smashed together. I’ve attempted them before. I think this one works, to a certain extent.
I hope you enjoy it, anyway!
Photo and poem copyright 2024 Michelle Garren-Flye
laughter shall fuel your spirit’s engine By Michelle Garren-Flye
They dragged you out, these children who have grown into friends. You’re usually bathed and in bed by now. Tomorrows are always full. You have to be ready. But they want to have fun. They want you to have fun, but fun is not something you practice. There are too many tomorrows ahead, too many yesterdays behind.
The golf place is full, but you have a reservation. They serve beer, so you have some, hoppy smells tickling your nose hairs. The lights are bright, and there is a heater nearby so even though you’re outside in January and there will be snow tomorrow, you take off your coat. Frustration mounts with every golf swing, until your oldest son misses the ball entirely and yells, “Fun!”
And there it is, bubbling around you, the energy needed to fuel your spirit, as first you and then your children who are now adults and friends—your yesterdays and your tomorrows—shout it together, hurl it into the night air with the white golf balls hailing onto the astroturf:
giggling bubbles burble in your life spirit laughter is your peace
Welcome to Haiku Sunday! I’ve decided as an extra challenge to designate Sundays for haiku. No matter what the fortune, I must write a haiku inspired by it. Today’s was very difficult but I finally settled on my double-edged sword idea. The idea being that you’re likely to judge yourself either more or less harshly than you’d judge another person.
This is not my best haiku…and it even has a little joke of an extra syllable. Definitely not my best effort.
Photo and poem copyright 2024 Michelle Garren-Flye.
It is much more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others.
Double-edged Sword By Michelle Garren-Flye
double-edged sword cuts for and against self-judgment you wilt ‘neath its edge…s
Poetry continues to be my main objective in spite of a couple of ideas I’ve had about novels. If I hear about a new form of poetry, I have to try it out. And then I have to stretch it. Remember Stretch Armstrong? How you would stretch and stretch him to see how far you could stretch him and he’d still go back to his original form…until he didn’t.
I sort of feel like I did that with haibun. Haibun is the combination of a haiku and a prose poem. Matsuo Basho wrote them. I discovered them relatively recently and decided to give them a try. And stretched the form a bit. What do you think? Is it still a haibun at its heart?
Silence
By Michelle Garren-Flye
it’s awkward, silence,
because it wants treasuring
and I reject it
laying too heavy on my ears in the dark, begging to be broken, shattered against the brick wall, revealing the death of sound ringing in my ears, spilling out like the yolk of an egg until the utter madness is stunned by a brief click in the wall behind the thermostat as the furnace breathes life into our emptiness…
don’t rejoice too soon
complete silence verges on
total perfection
you will seek it again, want to crawl into it, feel it envelop you in velvety warmth as if it can never break because it always always bends and that’s why you can never make friends with silence, why you can’t love it even if you want it, you will always seek release from it, but…
the birds will ghost you
the wind and waves will give up
leaving you…awkward
BREATHE: Michelle Garren-Flye 