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Saturday Share – Devendra K Mishra

May 16, 2026 by GriffinPoetry

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Saturday morning readers share:
[Devendra K Mishra]
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Walking with a Griffin
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Are you real
or a reverie plain
or a crop of fertile brain
 . 
In ancient, mediaeval
and modern thoughts–
trailing around the creative plots
 . 
Herodotus and Aeschylus
sang your songs
gold treasure in your arms
 . 
Rick Riorden, Harry Potter,
Dante, Milton, Brothers Grimm
you were in the Carroll’s dream
 . 
What made you
walking along the lake
watching falling the snowflake
 . 
As if in delirium
I asked him straight
but after a nerve-wracking wait
 . 
He read my mind
like a shot
but replied after much thought
 . 
No need to be afraid of
I am real, I am fake
all depend how do you take
 . 
I am from a trusted clan
a great fan of human gaze
since the ancient golden days
 . 
Loneliness struck me really hard
and brought me here for a walk
I am in need of a lovely talk
 . 
It’s a gift to human race
but getting eroded by digital rain
wounded under tremendous strain
 . 
You will trust your eyes ever
if you come out of reason’s door
welcoming imagination to your floor
 . 
Suddenly sun blazed
making the day difficult to bear
and he vanished into thin air
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Devendra K Mishra
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✿ ❀ ❁
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Devendra Mishra is the author of The Cursed Crow, Whenever I Feel, The Cara Coffee Bar, and The Colour of Forgotten Sounds. He is drawn to the classics and sees living poetry woven through the natural world. Following no creed but a quiet religion of humanity, he feels blessed, contented, and serene. He lives in India.
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✿ ❀ ❁
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Years ago, I came to know the Griffin while I was going through a mythological article. This wonderful allegorical character with an eagle part golden and a lion part white attracted me a great deal. 
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What will be the scene if he suddenly appears before me? I imagined it, and it made me realize how boring the world we live in today is with cognitive reasoning and digital life. It reconfirmed to me that a human life without imagination is bleak with profound loneliness, while imagination has the ability to fill the desert with colourful flowers. It gives hope and joy, leading to a meaningful life.
— Devendra 
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❀    ❀    ❀    ❀    ❀
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Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:
. . . . . every Friday I present one or two poems I’ve read this week that particularly speak to me;
. . . . . Saturdays I present one or two poems submitted by YOU, my readers.
 . 
If you would like to offer a poem for consideration, either by a favorite author or your own work, please view these GUIDELINES for Saturday Readers Share:
 . 
 . 
If you would like to receive an email each time a post appears, please SUBSCRIBE to Verse and Image using the button on the Home Page.
 . 
If you have a hard time finding the SUBSCRIBE button on this WordPress site, you can send me your email address and I will add you to the subscriber list. Send your request to
 . 
COMMENTS@GRIFFINPOETRY.COM
 . 
Thanks again for joining the conversation. . 
– Bill
 . 
 . 

Posted in Imagery | Tagged , , | 2 Comments »

Dead Reckoning

May 15, 2026 by GriffinPoetry

1949 Yearbook Staff, Women’s College of the University of North Carolina

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[ poetry by Hyejung Kook and Donna Masini from Poem-a-Day ]
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Dead Reckoning
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to estimate one’s position
without instruments
or celestial observations
 . 
calculating direction and distance
traveled from the last known fix
while accounting for tides, currents, grief
 . 
drift       numbness
sudden storms of pain
unexpected joy
 . 
to reckon is to believe
something true
to reckon with the dead
 . 
is to believe I can know them
an airy thinness
gleaming
 . 
despite
the distance
traveled
 . 
I’d like to know how far
I’ve gone
how much farther there is
 . 
to go       how absence
unfathomable
becomes
 . 
something I can carry
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Hyejung Kook
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Copyright © 2024 by Hyejung Kook. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 16, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets. Hyejung Kook is a Korean American poet from Seoul. She received her BA from Harvard University and holds an MFA from New York University. A Fulbright and Kundiman Fellow, Kook lives in Prairie Village, Kansas.
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❀    ❀    ❀
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Mother’s Day was this past Sunday, May 10. I unboxed my old digital picture frame, the thumb drive from September, 2024 still in place: Mom’s memorial service, two months after her death at age 96. I set it up on the bedside tray in Dad’s room at Chatham Nursing Center and he and I watched it through twice. Infant Mom on Grandma McBride’s lap. Tween Mom on her bike with favorite dog. Graduate Mom in mortarboard at Women’s College in Greensboro. Mother Mom holding my hand as I take my first steps.
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And happy, nutty, smiling Mom in all her favorite places with all her favorite people doing all her favorite things. Some of those things we engineered during her last year of life. I measured and helped her stir the batter but she rolled out the nutty fingers to bake. Mary Ellen scheduled the entire family for an afternoon of painting pictures of dogs, Mom’s favorite subject, and she the only true artist among us. And for her last Birthday that hat – knit Duke Blue Devil with protruding horns and eyes – she couldn’t quit laughing while she wore it.
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Absence unfathomable. I am carrying it.
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❀    ❀    ❀
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My Father Teaches Me to Play Solitaire
 . 
by the window of his hospital room. So late in the day
and he won’t let us cheat. Cards slipping on his rickety tray,
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the orderly rows collapsing into one another,
his hand diminishing, he turns over the one card
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that won’t fit anywhere. We couldn’t finish.
Wait, I said, we’re almost done. He shook his head.
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Luck, chance. No skill involved. No will. No bluff. No time
to start a new game. I left my father waving in his window.
 . 
Days later I bought a deck, shuffled the stiff cards, set them up
the way he’d shown me, and—beginner’s luck?—I won.
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Can you win a game you’ve played alone? No need to display
a poker face to yourself. No kidding, he said, I just won too.
 . 
My father’s a joker. Bruno, our neighbor used to say,
you’re a card. So no surprise what he taught me:
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when you’re done you have nothing in your hand.
 . 
Donna Masini
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Copyright © 2025 by Donna Masini. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 26, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets. Donna Masini is the author of four poetry collections, and is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a New York Foundation for the Arts grant. She is a professor of English and creative writing at Hunter College and lives in New York City. . 
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Dad didn’t need me to teach him how to play Rummikub, but at ninety-nine he is requiring a few more nudges and prompts. And he can still beat me. Sometimes.
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❀    ❀    ❀    ❀    ❀
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Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:
. . . . . every Friday I present one or two poems I’ve read this week that particularly speak to me;
. . . . . some Saturdays I present one or two poems submitted by YOU, my readers.
 . 
If you would like to offer a poem for consideration, either by a favorite author or your own work, please view these GUIDELINES for Saturday Readers Share:
 . 
 . 
If you would like to receive an email each time a post appears, please SUBSCRIBE to Verse and Image using the button on the Home Page.
 . 
If you have a hard time finding the SUBSCRIBE button on this WordPress site, you can send me your email address and I will add you to the subscriber list. Send your request to
 . 
COMMENTS@GRIFFINPOETRY.COM
 . 
Thanks again for joining the conversation.
– Bill
 . 
 . 
 . 

Posted in family | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Saturday Share – George Harrison, Damaris King

May 9, 2026 by GriffinPoetry

Coltsfoot

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Saturday morning readers share
[George Harrison, Damaris King]
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Neighbors
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Into the woods I go
To watch my little creek flow.
Along it winds through crevice and pine
Arrayed in bright shine.
It glistens in sunlight,
bidding my neighbors, deer with tails white
And a crow, black as night
To drink its sweet nectar.
 . 
George Harrison
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I attend Joseph Bathanti’s weekly writer’s group [Joseph is former North Carolina poet laureate – ed.].  Our mentor and leader, Joseph prompted us to write anything about “Getting Out”. It could have been about getting out of anything or getting out to go somewhere. We have a very short time to write, so this simple and short poem is what I came up with.
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Joseph invited us to submit poems to you to celebrate Earth Day. What a joy it is to read the poems on your poetry site [for Earth Day and Earth Month].  As a fly fisherman, I was particularly drawn to Ron Rash’s poem. [Poetry and Earth – Awe]
George
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Nothing in nature is isolated. Nothing is without reference to something else. Nothing achieves meaning apart from that which neighbors it.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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In Sligo’s Woods
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Pay attention along the path,
among the trees are mysteries.
Bright clusters of ferns emerge
sheltering their rusty veins.
 . 
Feel the texture of varied fronds,
some craggy, some silky.
In the middle of this array,
five tender petals newly shine.
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Draw in the colors. See the dead
cradled unsung in blood-dried
leaves. Note the greens, from palest
wisp to boldest hue, how
light unfurls from fiddleheads.
 . 
Damaris King
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I wrote this poem after a walk in the woods, one of those lovely walks that calls you to slow down and look around you. There is a certain peace and awe that overcomes me when I am in nature and this poem is my attempt to share that feeling with others. 
Damaris
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You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters.
St. Bernard (1090-1153)
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❀    ❀    ❀    ❀    ❀
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Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:
. . . . . every Friday I present one or two poems I’ve read this week that particularly speak to me;
. . . . . Saturdays I present one or two poems submitted by YOU, my readers.
 . 
If you would like to offer a poem for consideration, either by a favorite author or your own work, include a comment and if possible a photograph of yourself in your native habitat. Review these GUIDELINES for Saturday Readers Share:
 . 
 . 
If you would like to receive an email each time a post appears, please SUBSCRIBE to Verse and Image using the button on the Home Page.
 . 
If you have a hard time finding the SUBSCRIBE button on this WordPress site, you can send me your email address and I will add you to the subscriber list. Send your request to
 . 
COMMENTS@GRIFFINPOETRY.COM
 . 
Thanks again for joining the conversation.
And Mike, thanks as always for the apt quotations. A treasure chest!
– Bill
 . 
 . 

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