Well, it seems I’ve been inspired by one of my favorite poets, Robert Okaji.
Spring Night
(after Wang Wei via Robert Okaji)
Dogwood petals sigh in spirals, blessing my recline.
Spring darkness rests on hollow muted hills
while moonlight strikes the owls awake,
their hoots slipstreaming through ravines.
Unlike Robert, I named the birds and took liberties with the tree petals. I’m writing a new rhyming picture book right now, so this detour was a welcome respite. Feeling a little spring-feverish. Ahhh—ahhh—Cheers!
Jilanne Hoffmann 
That’s lovely. So is the photo. Is it yours?
Thank you! No, the photo is not mine, sorry to say. It’s from a stock photo place where I get many of the images I use on the blog.
Love this! And am pleased to have sparked a welcome distraction. 🙂
Thank you, Robert! Sometimes distractions become more than wasting time.
For years poetry was the prime distraction in my life. Now it’s become a focus. Funny how that is…
Evolution. Survival of the most insistent.
That is lovely, Jilanne. I guess the restraint nd compaction the haiku imposes means every word has earned its place. I particularly liked the feel of the verbs in each line, they felt like the striking of a gong, reverberating through the line
Thank you, LF. I think I was missing the woods I used to hide in when I was a child. I’m trying to get better at saying more with less. 😀
Well, you said an awful lot with that less!
Very atmospheric, I enjoyed it, nothing beats a bit of twilight hooting.
On the island in Maine, we have Barred Owls. Their call is distinctive. It sounds like “who cooks for you?” Love hearing it at night. It can go on for hours.
Ooh, a rhyming PB. Lemme know if you want a beta reader.
I may take you up on that. Stay tuned!
Excellent.
hmmmm, dogwoods, grandma, forest, scent….
Triggers?
Great stuff Jilanne – I think your liberties caught the feel of the original even if you played a tiny bit with the words, and created something lovely. And I don’t see how a literal translation could ever work for poetry…
Thank you, FF! Yes, poetry was never meant to be ingested literally, was it?
Oh how lovely indeed. And I read this with my own dogwood in bloom, watching me from outside the window.
Thank you! I wish I had a dogwood blooming outside my window right now. Or maybe lying on the hillside of a ravine in the woods, listening. And breathing. 😀
Your poem brought a lot of memories to the surface, all of them pleasant. I love the dogwood petals sighing in spirals. Actually, it’s all savory. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks, Marsha. It’s just something that happened when I read Robert’s poem. Couldn’t help it.
That’s cool, now I’ll have to go read his poem! 🙂
He’s a wonderful poet. You may find yourself wandering around his site, enjoying poem after poem. 😀
I did like his site, so I will go back. I was working on an article about using photos to inspire poetry, but you used him, and he used a similar poem translated from Chinese, I think. Have you ever used a photo as an inspiration for poetry, or how do you get inspired most often?
I don’t use photos or images, usually. There’s a marvelous artist by the name of Marcy Erb who has a regular image-inspired-by-poem site. You should take a look at her work. I get inspired by reading poetry, news articles, nonfiction artifacts, trivia, etc. So many ways to get inspired, I can’t attribute my inspiration to any one thing. There’s also so much going on inside my head, things often just bubble to the surface.
Love it. I read several of Robert’s poems. They are very esoteric. I think I need a degree in English to understand many of the nuances. Maybe history and science as well. There is a lot of depth to the ones I read. 🙂
Yes, he’s really quite wonderful. I think poems can be “understood” on many levels. Sometimes people think there’s a “right” way to understand a poem, but they’re really floating out there to be “understood” in whatever way the reader understands them. If they evoke a response, you don’t really need to understand where the response is coming from. He wrote the origami crane poem for me without knowing that it was for my mother-in-law’s memorial. And it was perfect! It’s in my post about her memorial last year. But not every poet or poem speaks to everyone. Just like not every work of fiction speaks to everyone. I love cultures that understand how powerful poetry or the written world in general can be, how vital it is to the lifeblood of a society. Perhaps it springs forth most strongly from cultures that are oppressed. I am struck by how many writers have been jailed or killed for speaking out against regimes, via poetry or allegory or other forms of art. In the U.S., it seems that this aspect of art has been subsumed largely by pop culture.
Yes, and that has not always been the case in the United States. It’s only been in our lifetimes, I think. Your observation is so true about cultures, and even extends to pop culture. I remember a documentary of Paul McCartney’s visit to Russia, and the discussion of the profound effect he had on their culture, and on ours, really. And I remember the anti war songs during the 60s, and what emotions they aroused. But we have protection of free speech here, and even though it is not perfect, we can’t underestimate its effect on art.
Ah, yes, detours. I’ve grown rather fond of them! 😉 xoM
There’s always something to be gained from taking one, isn’t there? You don’t always know what’s gained at the beginning, but it’s there, waiting for you to figure it out. Welcome back!
Thanks, Jilanne! Feels good to be back! xoM
I love it! You mentioned Maine, are you there currently or are these reflections from an earlier time?
No, these are reflections brought on by Robert’s poem. Am currently in SF. Not going anywhere until mid-summer, although I really feel like heading to the woods and vegging right now.
Woods… and west coast oceans…I miss them both already! 😀
❤