A New Source for Lani's Writing: Poetry, Fiction, Non-fiction March 30, 2021

Hi, Friends old and (I hope) new.  Welcome to my latest and presumably final blog:  Lani's Tales and Poems.  I set up this blog to share my writings old and new, which for the most part, I will no longer submit to print or online journals.  My thinking is that since my goal is to get the pieces read, not to become rich or famous, a blog is as good a publishing venue as any other.

 I will share fiction, travel notes, probably the odd essay (in every sense of the word), and poems long and short.  Some things may be topical to the date or current zeitgeist, and others will just reflect the darker or strangers or more fanciful corners of my imaginary life.

Of course I would love feedback, when and if I'm successful in setting that up.  The main idea of the blog is to share my work, and if you have something that ties in, I'd love to read it.  

The poem below is one I wrote last Spring after a walk through Los Osos' Elfin Forest.  They are nice enough to post the names of native plants.

The picture,  is not the plant in the poem, but possibly related.

Fuschia Flowering Gooseberry

Blossoms

deep red like your blood,

sprinkled across green leaves,

drawing you into my dotted

dance of wind-fed joy.

 

Watch the thorns, they

pull your blood from you

to dance on the wind.

Maybe it’s good to donate

to mother earth, after all

we’ve taken from her.

 

I am fuschia-flowering

gooseberry, my beauty

fierce and dangerous,

unlike my stumbling name

 

Thus does Nature ever

fool us. Reaching for sweetness,

we pay with blood.

 

Worth it, I say.

Worth it.