A Darkling Tableau

Where once grasses buzzed
with jazz of crickets
and loud grasshoppers,
cornfields have been razed
to stubble, and straw
ploughed in umber earth.

Herons stalk sodden
fields, through soggy stands
of russet bracken,
on towards winter,
in ancient rhythm,
still pulsing with life.

It’s the yawn of time,
when the hearth’s tongue
sets culture on fire,
to glow through the black
dome of night until
the coming of spring.

Winter’s a poet’s
dream inspiration,
a time when words fall
like leaves from the trees,
curling into verse
before rot sets in.

Kim M. Russell, 5th September 2024

Image by Ekaterina Grosheva on Unsplash

It’s Thursday and Laura is our host for Meeting the Bar at the dVerse Poets Pub with a Tableau for Sam Hamill. She begins by telling us how she came across the American poet Sam Hamill in The Literary Birthday Calendar, a list of writers by birth date. She explains that she had not read his work before, although he was highly lauded in his lifetime. I hadn’t either, but find it quite beautiful.

Laura says that “Hamill’s poetry is absent on rhyme and heavy on unadulterated lyricism. He talks his poetry to the page”, and gives as an example in ‘After Morning Rain’. Laura tells us that “Hamill was a poet both in the world and of the world…his poetry does not stray far from what he sees, feels and knows directly”, as in his autobiographical poem ‘Of Cascadia’. He was also immersed in classical Chinese and Japanese poetry, which she says “could only have added to his keen pictorial observations and mastery of the succinct”, as in his poem ‘After Pu Chi-I’.

Today we are writing in the The Tableau poetic form, which was created by Emily Romano in 2008, and which has one or more verses, with 6 lines per verse and 5 beats per line, with no rhyme scheme. The title should contain the word ‘tableau’ and the poem should aim to be pictorial. Laura hints that Hamill’s pictorials are vivid and we may want to write in his style; however, this is optional.

32 thoughts on “A Darkling Tableau”

  13. “It’s the yawn of time,
    when the hearth’s tongue
    sets culture on fire,”

    Yes, a beautiful time that invites us to swim inward. I like that. And when you say,

    “a time when words fall
    like leaves from the trees,
    curling into verse
    before rot sets in”

    I hope the words fall like that for me and all who find pleasure in words. Love your tableau. Thanks for sharing. Blessings.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

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