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
In case you need to hear this right now. Please don’t give up. Hope.
It Is Okay to Hope By Michelle Garren-Flye
It is okay to hope in the middle of the night; to whisper a prayer to the gods that be, and believe they can make everything right. You want to? That’s all right with me.
It is okay to try to find joy in your life, to look for the positive, to feel happy. Enjoy a sunset, forget all the strife. Watch the moonrise and get a little sappy.
Refuse to live your life in fear! Banish dismay, doubt, and despair! Hope will help keep your eyes clear even when all the world seems unfair.
Do what you need to find your own way; just remember hope is always okay.
Photo and poem copyright 2025 Michelle Garren-Flye
They’ve been predicting snow, but I didn’t really believe it might happen until I walked my dog this morning. I walked outside and the clamor of the birds in the trees greeted me. So I wrote a villanelle about it. It’s still kind of rough, but thought I would share it.
the day before it snowed by Michelle Garren-Flye
walking, the day before the snow the world hushed, except the birds singing songs of cold with gusto
the treetops housed their show and I stopped to hear their words sung the day before the snow
what wisdom do they know these creatures making records, singing songs of cold with gusto
Nature whispers pianissimo, Her voice lower than the birds, “‘tis the day before the snow”
the wind may breeze and blow but won’t cut their sound by thirds as they sing of cold with gusto
oh, hear the song of the sparrow for they are the wisest of the birds listen, the day before the snow as they sing songs of cold with gusto
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.
Yesterday I posted a semi-free verse poem based on a Tarot reading. It got some good feedback. For some reason, recently, I’ve been fascinated with poetic form and transforming poetry to different forms. Today I was reading sonnets (classic stuff, not mine), and it occurred to me that yesterday’s free verse would read really well as a sonnet.
Or does it?
You can judge. Here’s yesterday’s post. Let me know in the comments!
On Receiving a Tarot Warning of You By Michelle Garren-Flye
Just for today, promise me the world, even if it’s just a pack of cards. I’ll dance about, my wings unfurled, cavort until the fall of the stars. Judge me harshly, naked and cold, standing alone in my own grave. Wash me away in the coming flood! New beginnings are only for the brave. The dark man glowers, my love he denies, promises made in Cupid’s embrace. I will bare my heart, my soul to your cries, but our abstract romance never takes place. Through sunset’s blood, Death sweeps and star’s life out of the pitcher leaks.
Photo and Poem copyright 2024 Michelle Garren-Flye
On Receiving a Tarot Warning of You By Michelle Garren-Flye
Which numbers more, the chirp of crickets or the sparkle of the stars?
Today you promise me the world but it’s a pack of cards. Dance! Let your wings unfurl before we all fall down.
Oh, will the judgment be enough or leave us standing naked and cold in our own graves surrounded by the flood? Rejoice in new beginnings and your past will reward you.
I fear the dark, glowering man on the throne, his staff held casually, bruisingly on a booted leg. When will he leave me, let me be alone? Can I knock the crown from his head?
I search for the promised love, bare my soul and body before Cupid’s embrace, but romance still seems far away and likely to avoid me—or lay me low.
Death’s scythe continues its sweep, cutting back excessive joy of life, Distant sunset blood does creep and brings along fear of living only in strife.
Only promise me the song of the stars, and pour out your life to the babbling river.
Photo and Poem Copyright 2024 Michelle Garren-Flye
I enjoy illustrating poems. I mostly use old pictures of my kids or animals or flowers or even myself as models/guides for my illustrations. Sometimes I combine pictures. This is a good example of that. I took an old picture of my daughter, put her on a picture of my current neighborhood and traded her hair for curlier hair because that’s how I pictured the child in my poem. The hardest part of this picture? Getting the flesh tone right.
Joy is By Michelle Garren-Flye
Joy is an unruly child
she belongs to one of the neighbors I know not which but she pops in unexpectedly then disappears for months on end just as I get used to having her around
she has a mop of golden curls like an angel’s halo she’s loud and boisterous for a while then tiptoes out and I don’t realize she’s gone until I miss her
I wish I knew to whom she belonged and I’d be able to seek her out when light and sparkle have dulled and I want someone to sing me a song
but instead I just have to sit and wait as evening shadows creep up on me hoping the next step on the walk will be the dancing one I recognize
Illustration and poem copyright 2024 Michelle Garren-Flye
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
BREATHE: Michelle Garren-Flye 