My good friend Kari Davidson and I wrote a rengay that appeared in the 2018 Fall edition of Frogpond, the journal of the Haiku Society of America. A rengay is a collaborative six-verse linked thematic poem written by two or three poets using alternating three-line and two-line haiku or haiku-like stanzas.
Our rengay was inspired by the Lenten services held at our church. The last stanza is a tribute to our husbands, who are both in the process of patiently and lovingly walking their mothers home through the fog of dementia.
(Re)Thinking Things
slow snowfall
our walk to the woods
disappears
Lenten examen
so much accumulation
(re)thinking things
cephalopods
in the old church wall
ashes
the four directions
mapped on our foreheads
cardinals in the church yard
taking off our Mardi Gras masks
white crocuses
walking our mothers
home
by Kari Davidson and Holli Rainwater
