Three Poems
Janice D. Soderling

Nordic Seascape in the August Mist

The sky is white. The sea is white.

And one white sail unfurled.

That ghostly glides through flimsy light

And almost melds, but never quite.

A specter boat in spectral flight

On waters paled and pearled.

A sky so white. A sea so white.

And one far sail unfurled.

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Published in Other Poetry, UK

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Watching a Late Autumn Thunderstorm

Outside, the raucous rain comes pelting down.

I’ve onetime watched in curious surprise

both ruin and rapture pouring from such skies,

replete with thunderous drums and lightning crown.

I’ve seen dull nature shift from brittle brown

to budding pinks and preening butterflies.

I’ve also watched the cold rain brutalize

the makings of a flowering fairy town.

Before and after rain reigns such extremes

of ruinous fire, indifference and ice

that to the sheltered looker-on it seems

the ecstasy of storm scarce worth its price.

Instead of passion’s moods and ructious schemes,

a balmy summer drizzle would be nice.

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Published in Literary Bohemian, Czech Republic

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Constants, Variables and Unknown Quantities

At six a.m. we walk the forest path,

Hilda—the Stockholm pooch—and I. She trots

and sniffs confused, confronted by the math

of moss and grass, a dog’s connect-the-dots.

She assays boulders left by glacial ice,

red lingonberries, heather, fragile fern.

I have a matrix too, complex as gneiss.

I know the whats, the why is yet to learn.

We walk an austere northern paradise.

I’m lost in thought, morose and taciturn.

Dumb Hilda rolls delirious with glee.

A rougher force than rolls big rocks like dice

propels us clueless through our brief sojourn.

We walk the path: young Hilda, x and me.

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Published in Literary Bohemian, Czech Republic

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Janice’s notes: “I offer a triolet and two sonnets and a quiet musing on whether we might expect fixed forms to have a renaissance to counter the deluge of AI-assisted poetry.

“I like to think so. While it is true that few human poets will achieve the beautiful complexity of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73 or the wit of Leigh Hunt’s delightful rondeau ‘Jenny Kissed Me,’ I like to think that diligent humans fail differently than diligent machines fail and the difference is more apparent in fixed forms. I may be wrong.”

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Janice D. Soderling has published several collections of poetry and of prose, most recently Naming the Names under the imprint of Kultivera Production.

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Three Poems Janice D. Soderling

Three Poems
Janice D. Soderling