Verse Wisconsin 105| Athena Kildegaard

Two Poems

Glosa on a Haiku by Basho

Can't sleep—my broken—
leg in a boot—
no comfortable position.
It's not like anything

I've known—the opposite
of sex—100% in
the body—no ecstasy.
They compare it to

luck. Idioms are fickle.
But the night is cool
and prone I can see
the summer moon.

Glosa on a Haiku by Issa

Wagonloads of clouds
hurry west—
the bonfire gutters.
Autumn evening:

neither here nor there.
We wear sweaters,
hunker closer,
knees in arms,

each word we speak
a flower
full of blessings,
like a saint.

—Athena Kildegaard, Morris, MN

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Athena Kildegaard

Athena Kildegaard lives in western Minnesota. Her books are Rare Momentum, a series of fibonaccis, and Bodies of Light (forthcoming), both from Red Dragonfly Press. In her first year of marriage she lived in southern Minnesota and her husband in Chicago, and they traveled many times across Wisconsin full of eagerness.

These are part of a growing series tentatively titled "An Ellipsis of Fireflies." The poems grow from a simultaneous awareness. Thanks to being a member of Wompo, the Women's Poetry Forum, I learned about the old Spanish form of the glosa. At about the same time I learned of the haiga, the Japanese form that combines haiku and ink drawing, thanks to an exhibit of haiga in St. Louis. An artist friend began painting his reinterpretations of haiga, using the haiku of Jack Kerouac. My wild mind put these together and thus my own curtal versions of glosa.