Here is the Poem of the Week for October 25, 2024, a classic Elizabethan sonnet for a week when we need a long historical perspective.

The next ten days will be the most decisive in recorded human history, many believe, more than any battle or single invention, as democracy and the climate hang in the balance–and the amazing thing is, we get to have a part in it! This should energize us and give us joy even as we face fierce opposition and have to spend everything we have, because we can be the heroes of this time in the same line as all the heroes of the past we revere.

And everything–everything–depends on our staying positive and strong and in the light, and using our voice in every way we can.

So here is a poem for this week, first the video and then the text:

They want to make us crazy—fear and hate.
They win if we forget our loving care.
They lose each time we quiet, meditate
or turn to nature to dispel despair.
They win when we feel hopeless, paralyzed,
as if our love’s cause is already lost.
They lose when we keep eyes on all we prized,
and keep on fighting at whatever cost.
And when they lose, the earth and Spirit win—
as smog of lies lifts, inner eyes can see
true oneness where all sacred ways begin.
Sanity. Joy. Win these and we break free.
So when they throw their crazy bait, don’t bite.
Reject the shadow side and choose the light.

10/21/24
Thank you!

Here is Poem of the Week, a hai-net–seven loosely connected syllabically correct haiku type poems that work something like a sonnet. It’s partly about the sources we choose to turn to for our perspectives, and how they shape what we value, love and promote–and therefore how they shape our voice. Please use your voice loud and clear in every way you can in these crucial days you have left to shape our future!

Here’s the poem’s text (and you can see more at https://thomascarykind… )

coyotes live here
where ghosts of long lost hill farms
walk their mossed stone walls

four owls screech and hoot
coyote howls and crickets
one bowl many realms

human ugliness
jets roar diesels growl and whine
erosion tree scars

thoreau muir berry
old chinese poets chose deep
nature spirit realm

barred owls call mid-day
connect across the bowl once
war jets thunder hours

two feet crunch acorns
and dry leaves on foot-worn paths
stream clearer each step

value and protect
wild and quiet lives for love
and you have my vote

10/14/24

This Poem of the Week is under the influence of both great beauty and two great threats–the threat of winter coming and catching me unprepared, and the threat of the results of the election plunging our nation into a terrible winter. We each have our own preparations of the homestead or apartment or heart for nature’s winter, and we each have our own way of working on the election. If you do nothing else, please make a donation right now at https://movement.vote/

This poem is another hainet, a series of seven haiku that act like a sonnet in some ways. I usually revise poems fifty times or more, but these poems of the week are raw. I have done a little tweaking to the poem and to the video, but it’s mostly a first take. I will print the text of the poem below, and I will include what I wrote at the top of the page about this strange and wondrous new form I’ve invented:

These hainets are teaching me as I go. Sometimes they are ladders, and sometimes they are fall leaves drifting down going a little this way and then back and then a little that way and then back before coming gently to rest, and sometimes they are like a fall leaf swirling in a gentle whirlpool in a stream, circling back to the beginning before floating off and dropping to the bottom, and sometimes they are like all of those at once…

nasturtiums crane necks
geese fly south high overhead
ears cup like blossoms

huge basswood leaves fall
yikes platters slide off high shelves
gentle angels catch

so many colors
red purple orange yellow
eyes flit like fall birds

old man wakes fall days
alarmed and turns young and strong
to stack winter wood

dark purple asters
preach wisdom from the good book
urge we stop and look

what will make winter
good is not just shed wood filled
but heart fall light filled

nasturtiums open
wide mouths turned to last warm light
to drink and to praise

10/1/24

Here is my poem of the week for September 27, 2024. I wrote three sonnets and four of these sets of seven haiku that I call hai-nets, but was a hard week for me personally. I led a memorial service for a 65 year old woman I dearly loved who had many things she still wanted to do.

Some of my poems were about it being too late, and most of them reflected not only grief but stress and lack of sleep–I was also trying to get my winter firewood work done. Then the long stretch of dry weather ended with two days of rain, and this hai-net came out of it.

The loosely related haiku are about many things, but one theme is that it’s not too late. As I say on the video, though, as of November 6th it WILL be too late for what may be the most important world event in our lifetimes, so please do not let yourself wake up that morning feeling sick that you didn’t do all you could.

Please use your voice, and please send the biggest donation you’ve ever made to support the youth and BIPOC grassroots groups that are fighting for their lives in swing states right now, going door to door. They are way underfunded, and they could make all the difference. Here’s how to support them: https://movement.vote/

The text of the poem is below the video:

first fall rain brings 
joy
eases drought eases hard work
invites needed naps

no frost yet 
so rain
keeps late garden growth going
tomatoes beans blooms

fall rain 
feels better
when the wood is in the shed
than when it is not

growth comes to the 
old
monk who uses rainy days 
for meditation

shelter from cold rain
fire to cook and sit beside
candles 
need the dark

welcome 
rock bottom
that hardest pain where we land
in that darkest fall

welcome cold hard dark
welcome this late chance to grow
joy 
it’s not too late

9/25/24