rain, cold, and woodsmoke
a cottage in the deep green
homespun alchemy
Posts Tagged ‘creative writing’
Today’s 4,000
Posted in Creativity, Poetry, tagged creative writing, haiku, modern poetry, nature, novel writing, Poetry, quiet living, Seattle, Writing on 13 Nov 2025| Leave a Comment »
Extensions
Posted in Creativity, Poetry, tagged aging, creative writing, getting older, modern life, modern poetry, Poetry, quiet living, retirement, self-care, vignettes on 10 Nov 2025| Leave a Comment »
I do not recognize my hands, today,
hide-wrapped and rough,
fingers moving all as one, a unit lacking youth’s independence,
working like
a team of horses, fingers yoked in tandem,
brushing crumbs or combing hair,
reaching out
claw-like, deliberate, mechanical.
Gone is the fluidity
that typed like a piano etude,
that tested the strength of rain
fingers splayed, palm up to the lowering sky.
They seem, now, more like my father’s hands,
leathered, laced with welted scratches from thorn or cat,
thick fingers slightly curved, open,
as if holding the memories
of tools and wood and mugs and plates
and books and pens and paper
and forks and spoons
and a sweetheart’s hand.
They do not close as once they did,
so tightly that they could catch
my breath on winter days,
and when now they speak
in gesture they are
slow, brutish, leaving most
to context and implication.
And, of course, the pain they carry, that is new as well,
the constant reminder of dull aches,
the sharp-edged recriminations of grip and release.
I have always seen them, in many ways, as extensions of me,
strong and supple, quietly expressive,
nimble in deed and thought, switching with ease
from fountain pen
to computer keys,
from kitchen knife
to garden tool,
from dovetail jig
to a viola’s strings
to my true love’s hair.
This still is true, I suppose, as they and I both are
a good bit older, a dash more tired,
content to spend time in restful contemplation.
We still do all the things we used to, only
with a mindfulness that comes from
a slow paring down of life from what we need
to what we desire
to do, to feel, to create.
Perhaps I do not recognize them
because I do not know who I am,
in this time.
Perhaps they are teaching me.
Clever hands.
Let’s learn together.
To Persist, Resist
Posted in Poetry, Politics, tagged creative writing, modern poetry, no kings, Poetry, resist, Trump, Writing on 23 Oct 2025| Leave a Comment »
don’t give in to the maelstrom’s song
the downward spiral toward denial
of what your bones know is righteous or wrong
don’t let the harmonies that sing in your blood
go quiet and numb, muffled and choked
by the unfeeling actions of criminal hearts
there’s so much so much this onrushing tide
of gleeful cruelty and polished-brass venality that
to think of nothing to jettison hope can seem the softer path
but love dies when hearts go silent
and despair takes root when tears dry up
numbness saves no one not others not us
so let the feelings come seek them out
lean in and swim with the building wave
shout out rise up and take the beachhead
for this is a fight we dare not lose
With Paper Before Me
Posted in Poetry, tagged creative writing, modern poetry, nature, painting, Poetry, Serenity, travelogue, Writing on 09 Oct 2025| Leave a Comment »
with paper before me and
a pen in my hand
a cloud is
rising blooming billowing scudding
cumulus nimbus a thunderhead
dark foreboding airy bright
with paper before me and
a brush in my hand
a cloud is
gradients reflective limned
shadowed grey sunlit white
rounded flat-topped
with paper before me and
nothing in my hand
a cloud
is
Birthplace
Posted in Creativity, Poetry, tagged beach, creative writing, modern poetry, Pacific ocean, Poetry, Writing on 03 Oct 2025| 1 Comment »
I was born of Pacific waters
bathed in their colors of stone and sky
swam their frigid swells and troughs
to return awakens my heart’s connection
to walk the firm yet yielding sand
to wade knee-deep through the rip
to comb a fiver’s worth of unbroken dollars
to have my ankles caressed by sea foam
to greet the sunrise and kiss the sunset
to hear my father’s words echo
“Never turn your back on the ocean”
though I do, if only to see my world
as the ocean views it
a dark forbidding challenge
to its unparalleled power
the Pacific is the edge of my existence
it flows in my veins
it nourishes my soul
Scented Pathways
Posted in Seattle, Writing, tagged creative writing, Life, Memories, nature, Travel, vignette, walking, Writing on 17 Aug 2025| 1 Comment »
I took my nose on a walk, today, and let it lead me from one memory to the next. It was a cool overcast midsummer morning, the land still damp, leaves still plump from yesterday’s sudden rain. Flowers nodded heavily, leaning from tidy beds over paved walkways like old men rising from a heavy sleep. Birds sought ripening berries through branch and bramble, and dogs led their owners from spot to spot, following their own noses.
First I tramped uphill over needles and cones, a well-trod path winding beneath conifers that lost their heads in the lifting fog. The air was redolent with resin and bark, soft earth and dew-soft ferns, and my nose remembered my time as a student at music camp, days and nights spent tucked up amidst giant sequoias, so close, so tall, that their height could not be seen, and my mind echoed with the opening beats of Copland’s Fanfare, an unexpected reveille to wake teenage musicians and fashion a memory never to be lost.
I walked onward along the ridgeline as the morning cleared, the slanting light breaking through the southern sky, the avenue warming with the summer’s rising sun. The scent of August grass, dry and seed-heavy, a mixture of soil and wood and hay and warmth, took me back to the rolling hills of my youth, slick and golden, begging us to take our cardboard squares to their tops and slide down their gentle slopes.
Farther, I passed beneath a plum tree, the path beside it filled with fallen fruit. The air was thick with a sweet, sun-stewed aroma that filled my brain with scenes of kitchens and bushel baskets and Mason jars and food mills and sacks of sugar all at the ready, as the thick preserves bubbled quietly on the stove.
Heading home, I walked along the main boulevard, wide and now sun-drenched, busy with cars and trucks. I sniffed the scents of diesel exhaust and hot pavement mingled with dust and the wafting aroma of brewing coffee. I closed my eyes and was met with the image of Jerusalem streets as I walked to the bus stop on my way to morning classes. The only thing missing was the adhan, broadcast from minarets, blaring across the awakening city.
It was a wide-ranging journey, though found within but a few miles on foot, a surprising trip through time and distance.
To Old Friends
Posted in Creativity, Poetry, Writing, tagged aging, creative writing, friendship, getting older, modern poetry, Poetry, Writing on 25 Jul 2025| 1 Comment »
to these old eyes
we none of us have aged
and all are as when first we met
though days and years
and decades all
have trundled past our feast
though unforgiving fate
has called a few away
and left their seats unfilled
and loft-bound bitterness
and joy have played for us
their varied minstrel tunes
it’s just the failing candlelight
that limns us each
in haloed wisps of age
for if I squint I once again
can see us clear and bright
with vibrant youth
all straining ‘gainst the slips
and hungry soon
to master dreamed-of hopes
so charge your glass
and be upstanding so
that we may raise a toast
to all we’ve known
and all we’ve loved
and all that yet remains ahead
for life with all its sorrowed pain
is better lived than not
and better still
with friends beside
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 