Meeting April 2026

 April is like everything else; it meets you like you meet it. I have known toothy Aprils. Ones that roared their victory over winter's leftover crumbs and devoured them to get even stronger. I've had Aprils that curl up next to me, tucking irrepressible wildflowers into my pocket while my head was pressed to a wall. Those Aprils put their arms around me and whispered into my ear while cherry blossoms rained around us. This one is a curious April, perhaps a little stubborn. Those flowers will bloom, though the wind will blow. And then we will see what colors they take on, what fruits will feed us in October.

the bud doesn't need
to know it's final color
in order to bloom

Photo by Rui Xu on Unsplash

Song Choice for this Groove: What's Up? by Four Non Blondes

Liner Notes for this Groove: This is linked to Poets and Storytellers United's Friday Writings post. The prompt asked us to find inspiration in a group of quotes about April. I think I took a little bit from both T.S. Eliot and Marty Rubin to come up with something that felt like me.

By Rommy Cortez-Driks

Who Can Think of Spring?

I often think about the still-born spring, three years ago, when it seemed like nothing would ever grow again—not even in our woods. The woods were lost girl met lost girl, years and years ago. We decided that it was safest to believe in magic to find the way through. We lifted moss-colored words from the banks of our creek to line our path and tucked stories into trees. 

I wonder if the trees notice you are gone, when I go to pick up scraps of memories caught in the brambles by the creek. I wonder what the creek thinks when I try to weave those scraps into something recognizable, something that makes sense. Spring green should not be the color of grief, but even now, in the spaces where growth is undeniable, spring always arrives late for me. 

 

who can think of spring
while grieving the one flower
that will not grow back

Photo by Ed Leszczynskl on Unsplash

By Rommy Cortez-Driks

Song choice: Gavi's Song by Lindsey Stirling

Liner notes for this Groove: This poem is linked to Poets and Storyteller United's Friday Writings Prompt, In Memoriam.

November 2020

Morning walks in the fall always feed my soul, but today I am especially greedy for the gulps of air I get from the spirited winds flowing over my county. I need this moment to feel my breath flowing in and out of lungs that have so far stayed strong. I need this bit of peace… because who knows what will blow in on those winds?

Sweet crisp air cleanses
the stale breath I’ve been holding
before hell breaks loose.

Song Choice: The Final Countdown by Europe

Photo by Jennifer Griffin on Unsplash

This haibun was inspired by the Weekly Scribblings prompt on Poets and Storytellers United, The Eye of the Storm

By Rommy Cortez-Driks

October

Photo by Esther Wilhelmsson on Unsplash

October's leaves are pumpkin-colored confetti of celebration whose crunch carries the whispers of the grave. Like all magical things, October has its price. I cherish its gifts all the more for it.

I breathe deeper in
October’s sweet beginnings
and its harsh endings.

Song Choice: Only Time by Enya

This poem was created for the prompt at Poets and Storytellers United, Weekly Scribblings #39: October Thrills. 

Liner Notes for this Groove: October happens to be the birthday month for some very cool people, including my husband and my son. It also is the month I said goodbye to my first dog, Faye, and to a dear friend, Mike. 

By Rommy Cortez-Driks

That Sportsball Life

I couldn't hear the bounce of ball on blacktop over the susurration of pages turning under my hands when I was young. Tying elation and depression to the ferocious waltz between strangers held no appeal. It was only when I felt the freedom of venting emotions in a well timed kick that I began to understand.

My unexpressed rage
finds solace in strengthened limbs
dripping sweat, not tears. 


Liner Notes for This Groove: 

My dad did a terrific job suppressing laughter when I told him I voluntarily participate in sport-like activities every week with my co-workers. That ever athletic man spent a lot of time trying to encourage me to enjoy a physical activity beyond walking back and forth to the library with a ginormous backpack of books. I'm just as surprised as he is by how much I look forward to what I call "sportsball time" at work.

There are weeks I'm especially grateful for sportsball time. This week was one of them. There was a whole lot going on that, let's just say, left me feeling mightily irked. It wasn't enough to make me cry (and I'm certainly not against a good cry either - I find those to be extremely cathartic), but I had some pretty strong feels that were going to be unproductive to vent any other way than on the sportsball field.

I actually played my best game this week - 2 goals, 2 assisted goals. I credited it to brewing chai tea in coffee that morning (caffeine is a hell of a drug, for me at least - ask my college roommate). But there was just something cleansing about playing hard, even if my team didn't win in the end (I mean... that wasn't realistic. The gentleman who runs the class and the lady who is super hard core about fitness were on the opposing team. It was like going up against the Avengers).

I'll never be fabulous at sports, but I'm having fun playing. Heck, I even have a favorite sports team - the Hanshin Tigers from Japan. They are from Osaka, which is known to be a foodie haven. That seems to be as good a reason as anything else to support a team. Go Tigers!

By Rommy Cortez-Driks

Mascot for the Hanshin Tigers

This poem is linked to Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads Weekend Mini-Challenge: Mustn't Be Fancy and Poets United, Poetry Pantry 436.


Song Choice: Rokko Oroshi (the fight song for the Hanshin Tigers baseball team out of Osaka Japan) by Snuff

A Drop of Jasmine

I only need a drop of jasmine to weave into the corkscrew vines of my garden. It is already dew-kissed knowing you will slip in just as night begins to lap up the sky as it explodes into stars.  

My tongue led along

constellations of freckles

reaches towards your bliss.

Song Choice: Love Reign O'er Me by The Who


This poem was created for the prompt given at Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads: Fireblossom Fridays Poetic Imagery. It is also linked to the Friday 55 at Verse Escape and Poets United Poetry Pantry #397.

By Rommy Cortez-Driks

Honey

I’ve known where he goes. How could his longing be a secret? Especially when I see the hunger in his eyes when someone says your name. At last he understands how his desire can be his ruin. Yet that knowledge means nothing when his mouth desires only to be filled by you.

  

I can only watch

his delight in licking lips

still sticky from you.

Song Choice: Jolene by Dolly Parton

This poem was inspired by a prompt at Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads: Love Hurts. It's also linked up to Poets United Poetry Pantry 391

By Rommy Cortez-Driks

Changeling

The Fair Folk are fond of mischief and misfits. Why else take a human child and switch it with one of their own? It may be a gift to live in a land you might otherwise have never known. But there is sadness too, in knowing you will never be quite part of the world of your blood.


Reshaping myself
to always fit, I forget
which is my true form.


Song Choice: Arcadia by Faun

This poem is linked to the Tuesday Platform at Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads

By Rommy Cortez-Driks

Even the Sky

Even the sky blushes when it thinks of the night to come. Anticipating the taste of you, the day passed so slowly. But your touch can stop time, making star lit night grow longer and punishing day for taking so long to yield.

Waiting for your skin

to alight upon my body

is sweet agony.

Song Choice: Despacito by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee

This poem was inspired by a prompt given over at Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads: Fashion Me Your Words, Slowly. It is also linked to the Friday 55 at Verse Escape and Poetry Pantry 385 at Poets United.

 I seriously love the song behind the prompt, especially because as a Spanish speaker, I know how unsubtle that song is. This was crazy fun to write.

By Rommy Cortez-Driks

Invitation

The weeping willow’s green curtain beckons souls who want to hide, yet still be outside. But merengue and the smell of barbeque float from the other side of the park. The bookworm waits for someone to speak her language before deciding.

Footfalls keep the beat

while Spanglish sings over the park

coaxing me to join.

Song Choice: Sube las Manos Pa' Arriba by Pitbull

This poem was created for Verse Escape's Friday 55 It is also linked to Poets United Poetry Pantry 383.

By Rommy Cortez-Driks

Unvanishing

Spaces between can be stretched, like shadows lengthening in the fading day. Strange magic tugs on atoms, bending and pulling objects until they vanish. She does not understand that it is herself she wishes to make gone when she says her words into the waiting air. She only speaks the words, “Make it go,” and mass, neither created nor destroyed, rearranges itself elsewhere. It is simpler to make things disappear instead of feelings.

Easy to banish

a bowl or a trinket, still

the shadows remain.

Song Choice: Smile by Nat King Cole

Photo by Jellico's Stationhouse

This story told in haibun came from a combination of the picture prompt given over at Friday Fictioneers and the prompt from Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads, Physics with Bjorn: Space time and the theory of special relativity. 

Shinrin-yoku

I turn off paved road onto gravel, cruising down the one lane road until I reach the parking lot. Every season is a marvel to behold, but there is something magical about the early days of spring. The buds have just birthed green leaves, with spring beauties and trout lilies heralding the arrival of steadily warmer days. Five steps into the preserve, I breathe in the scent of the trees around me. Fifty steps in, the tense spot between my shoulder blades caused by too much time spent hunched over a screen loosens. Five hundred steps in, with the noise of the streets left far behind the chorus of insects and birds, immersed in a chapel of trees, the light in my eyes testifies to the contentment of my soul.

In the forest’s peace

I am cleansed of pollution

and baptized by green.

Song Choice: Return to Innocence by Enigma

This poem was inspired by the prompt given over at A Dash of Sunny's Prompt Nights: When Besotted by Green

Beauty and Tea

The chajin seeks an atypical sense of perfection, not in symmetry, but in the beauty of nature. Too ruthless a concept of loveliness will keep you from appreciating the charm of an odd shaped bowl, mismatched tea tools and a well-loved vase. There is nothing we can point to as the perfect tree or the perfect flower, but yet we are moved by their beauty even with the lack of a hard measure of it. This concept of beauty applies outside the tearoom as well. To love someone does not require perfection, in lover or beloved, but appreciation of the oddities, quirks and glitches, yet still finding them lovely.

In uneven bowls,

and in my beloved’s smile,

I find perfection

Song Choice: You Are the Beauty by Gungor

I purchased this beautiful tea bowl from Art to Hold. It has it's own bit of history

Process note: Chajin literally means "tea person", one who studies the art of tea

This haibun is inspired by the prompt given over at A Dash of Sunny. This week's topic for Prompt Night is perfection

By Rommy Cortez-Driks