Art: “Heavy Rain” by Joe Papagoda
FIELD NOTES
Winter morning. The living room. My daughter, home for a couple of weeks. Me, full of unspoken questions about her life elsewhere. Suddenly, we hear something slam into the picture window. My daughter rushes outside to rescue a downy woodpecker lying in the snow. I watch her hold the bird close. I watch myself feel the rapid beat of its heart against her cupped palms in hands I hold against my chest.
tumble-down fence
a nail rusting through
the boundary line
Not touching, touching, I finger my daughter’s wings.
About the author:
Michele Root-Bernstein, late-blooming haiku poet, appears in major haiku journals as well as A New Resonance 6, Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku; the Two Autumns Reading chapbook for 2016, Scent of the Past…Imperfect; and numerous year-end anthologies. Three of her poems are engraved on rocks along a haiku walk in Ohio. Michele recently served as associate editor of Frogpond, the journal of the Haiku Society of America. At present, she facilitates the Evergreen Haiku Study Group at the Center for Poetry, Michigan State University (MSU).
As an independent scholar, Michele also researches and writes about the creative imagination across all walks of life. She is author of Inventing Imaginary Worlds: From Childhood Play to Adult Creativity and, with Robert Root-Bernstein, co-author of Sparks of Genius, The Thirteen Thinking Tools of the World’s Most Creative People. Together they have written numerous articles and lectured widely on the wellsprings of creative culture.
Links:
https://inventingimaginaryworlds.com/
Art:
Myth Series: “Heavy Rain” by Joe Papagoda, North Haven, Connecticut, @papagoda.
