Two weeks ago today, we had to say goodbye to our sweet Evie.
She loved to ride in the car…
…and lie in the sun…
…and on the couch…
…and on the floor…
…and she is missed most terribly.
The shock has finally worn off enough that today I was able to rejoin LexPoMo:
https://lexpomo.com/poem/presence-in-absence/
2025 really ate my lunch, and here we are, almost halfway through 2026, and I’m still recovering. The ills that befell me directly were minimal, but the ills that befell people close to me were staggering: terminal diagnoses, chemotherapy, radiation, hospice, deaths, evictions, relocations, and more.
My intentions for 2025 got lost in this sea of troubles, and I never really set any intentions for 2026. But the beginning of Lexington Poetry Month invites me to move the compass needle a little more in a direction of my choosing, so here goes: https://lexpomo.com/poem/unprepared/
Here’s to better days, a better month…and please, dear Muse, better poetry!
Periodical cicada Brood XIV has just about concluded its above-ground affairs in my neck of the woods. Most of the adults who emerged over the last several weeks have fulfilled their multi-fold purpose, and their small, lifeless bodies are everywhere. The grass and sidewalk glitter with crystalline wings, as if an army of molting fairies has passed through.
For me, the cicadas have been rather like fairies: mysterious and magical, strange and beautiful, deeply connected with the natural world but wholly unconcerned with the human world. They appear at regular and oddly spaced intervals, conduct their business without regard for anything else, and then disappear.
After weeks of deafening song, the neighborhood is strangely quiet. Already I miss them: the friendly chirr and click of individuals; the power of the full chorus, waves of sound rippling through a wall of vibration that is almost unbearable. It reminded me of the visions of Old Testament prophets, where winged beings fly through the heavens in dizzying numbers and cause the foundations to shake with their unceasing voices.
With the help of audio files on the University of Connecticut’s excellent information pages, I’ve determined that ours were/are (and will be when they again emerge) Magicicada cassini. You can hear what they sound like here: https://cicadas.uconn.edu/species/m_cassini/.
I have a final sweet cicada story to share. Yesterday I was in another part of town where the cicadapalooza is waning but not altogether finished. Before leaving, I stood in the shade of some trees to enjoy the chorus for several minutes. As I opened the car door and started to get in, a loud chirring sound, quite close, made me pause and look at my reflection in the car window. A cicada had landed on my shoulder. After saying hello, I offered a finger for it to climb onto; it obliged, and I transferred it to a nearby tree branch and took my leave.
Once in the car and up on the highway, I glanced down and saw another cicada on my sleeve. I said hello and asked it not to do anything crazy, or we’d both be in a pickle. It calmly walked up my arm and perched on my hand, looking out the windshield as I drove along. I used the first exit and found a gas station next to a wooded area. I got out of the car and left my would-be copilot on the branch of a tree, bidding it a fond farewell.
Lastly, I tried to capture something of my cicada experience in another poem:
Winding down
still they sing
on the sidewalk, in the grass
as they lie dying
cadence of whirs and clicks
ever slower
tiny, intricate, clockwork
musicians
(an earlier version of this appeared on the LexPoMo web site: https://lexpomo.com/poem/winding-down/)
Posted in Poetry
Tagged arthropods, cicadas, Lexington Poetry Month, LexPoMo, periodical cicadas
Happy Lexington Poetry Month! I have signed up once more for the LexPoMo challenge, a wonderful community of people who gather online to write and share poetry for this brief month. Here’s a link to my first poem: https://lexpomo.com/poem/cicada-on-my-shoulder/
I wrote the poem (and am writing now) from our back porch, where the cicada singing is averaging 85.2 dB. I’m wearing earplugs, as prolonged exposure above 70 dB inflicts hearing loss. I don’t want to go overboard out of deference to the arthropod-squeamish, so here are just a few recent photos:
Signing off from Cicada Central…
Thanks once again to Lisa Hase-Jackson for the prompt that led to today’s poem. I didn’t exactly follow the directions, but poetry likes to break the rules.
Here is the thing: feathers
make me sneeze, bless my soul,
and tunes without words
make no sense at all
to me, unless heard
a thousand times, so they storm
my senses like flocking birds
or a swarm
of locusts upon the land.
Yet, when I feel utterly at sea
like that, in my extremity
I am so much more than ever me.
https://zingarapoet.net/2025/04/21/a-focused-free-writing-poetry-prompt/
…and here are the last of the tulips, going out with a bang.
Thanks to Lisa Hase-Jackson’s prompt (and a little free time) I have a poem to post today!
Skirting the subject
Salad is the currency of assumption, an affair
we don’t bother to unpack. Disaster is a pie
we warm in the microwave, topped with trouble
and crushed dreams. Ask Sir Isaac to explain
the physics of it all, or the professor who groped
you in the rear of the science lab during a quiz.
https://zingarapoet.net/2025/04/19/random-word-prompt/
And in honor of Earth Day, here are some of my favorite daffodils from the yard. (The name escapes me at the moment.)
Posted in Poetry
Tagged NaPoMo, NaPoWriMo, National Poetry Month, National Poetry Writing Month, poetry practice, prompted poetry
Dandelion don’t care where she grow
edge of the road, edge of the rose bed
deep in the middle of a thick green lawn
with sprinkler system (she like that)
sidewalk crack or fancy bed
she sink her toes, stretch her arms
wide, lift her burning face
to the sky, tiny sun
here on the ground
Posted in Poetry
Tagged dandelions, NaPoMo, NaPoWriMo, National Poetry Month, National Poetry Writing Month
One of the most wonderful and humbling things that can happen for me as an artist is for my work to inspire someone else’s art.
My friend Liz is a fabulously talented fiber artist. Today she surprised me with a gift of her latest design:
She even wrote a poem of her own for the back:
Things like this remind me that life is good. Friends are good. Art is good. Poetry is good.
Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission I has completed the scientific portion of its mission, but its cultural mission as repository for a portion of the Lunar Codex is just beginning. The lander’s payload includes The Polaris Trilogy: Poems for the Moon, which will also journey to the moon’s south polar region aboard Astrobotic’s Griffin lander in 2026.
I am deeply honored to have a poem in Volume 2 of the collection, whose theme was Stars, Sun, Moon. I share the poem here, first published in The Polaris Trilogy: Poems for the Moon (Brick Street Poetry, Inc., 2023), in hopes it will encourage you to find a copy of the book and read all the amazing poems it contains from people around the world.
Without even getting out of bed
I cannot be bored with so much
world at hand: day slides in and out
of night; stars make room for moon
who yields to sun; clouds and other shadows
play through leaves, over the counterpane.
What more awaits me when I rise?
Posted in Poetry
Tagged Blue Ghost, Firefly Aerospace, moon, moon poetry, The Polaris Trilogy
June is Lexington Poetry Month, and I’m late to the party (as usual) but not by too much. My first poem is posted here: https://lexpomo.com/poem/broken-things/
The last three quarters of 2023 pretty much ate my lunch, and I’ve spent what amounts to the first half of 2024 recovering. I’ll skip the tedious details but give a few highlights: relocation of an adult child and an elder parent; four surgeries on same parent; two respiratory illnesses (mine); one very scary medication reaction (also mine).
I managed to write between major life events and even posted a few poems during Lexington Poetry Month, which can be found here: https://lexpomo.com/poet/2023/jennifer-barricklow-2023/
The Daily Compost 