Haiku Number 2 With Variations - Both Sonnet and Free Verse

Haiku With Variations (Both Sonnet & Free Verse) Haiku Number 2 hail rides air updrafts raindrops crater planet's skin your breath’s clouds, fall skies May 12, 2016 Mother of a Winter’s Night – Shakespearian Sonnet Her distressed sighs rise up like nascent hail, (Tears blown to ever colder zones of sky), Where frozen prayers see gravity prevail, Release their pain on what they think is lie. These raindrop tears sew cratered fields as well, While farmer's labor washes out to to sea, (Those tender roots that split rock - time's to tell), But impact strips her lover’s legacy. And with the fall as cold means leaves turn blue New growth goes dormant and awaits Spring’s lease, Confusion reigns as her breath’s clouds subdue And haiku’s calmer images release. If I am wrong let no one take offense She’s not to blame, but my own lack of sense. May 14, 2016 Poet's Note: Please excuse the paraphrase of Shakespeare Sonnet #116's couplet. :-) Mother of a Winter’s Night – Free Verse Your distressed sighs are the updrafts That hurl nascent hailstones skyward, Freezing tears colliding, clumping as they go Into tortured spheres that could kill a horse, Certainly knock shingles from the newest of roofs, Or pound a field of sunflowers straight into the ground! My vulnerable fields cratered by your tears, Whether in their frozen form or flowing wet, Top soil now enroute to the sea itself, As if the history of its creation were of no consequence, Tender roots that pried a farm from solid rock, Swelling into cracks that are always present, Turning stone to fertile soil. The sea’s surface, that not so long ago Mirrored a most gorgeous sunset, Now a tortured and a rabid foam, Laid to waste, craters overlapping craters, Gone in an eye blink, all my love a non-event In geologic time it seems. Winter has come early as your breath’s clouds Mask all reason and confuse me, A bitter chill fills every corner of fall’s skies, Even leaves turn blue and cannot breathe, Oxygen sucked from the room we live in, My only recourse is poetry and prayer. May 13, 2016 Long Tooth Poet's Note: It was an interesting challenge to try to write the same poem three times and keep the meaning of the original haiku intact.