From my friend Sharon’s beautiful garden in Berkeley, California.
For FOTD,May 12, 2024
My soul is restless, dark and lost.
Its flickering flame is tempest-tossed.
Ceaseless waves assault my ears,
their chanting pulse swelling my fears.
Slipping into their restless grasp,
I void my terror in a gasp.
No fan of chance, I cast my lot
into that teeming marble pot
where those lost futures roil and toss,
whose progress is the potion’s loss.
Where is that world secure and calm
that cups one in a soothing balm?
Those caught in it feel its caress
unaware of that duress
that catches others in its swell––
one world encompassing Heaven and Hell.
For the latest Sunday Whirl, the prompt words are: waves slip void soul restless dark chanting flickering pulse chance marble fan.
Fire on the Mountain
The smell of burning leaves us only when we sleep,
the hills above us aflame for weeks as the wind
catches the upraised hands of a dozen fires
and hurries them here and there.
It is like this every year
at the end of summer,
with the dry grass ignited by
light reflected by a piece of glass
or careless farmers burning off their fields.
The lushness of the rainy season
long since turned to fodder by the sun,
the fires burn for weeks along the ridges
and the hollows of the Sierra Madre—
raising her skirts from where we humans
puddle at her ankles.
Imprisoned in their separate worlds,
the village dogs bark
as though if freed
they’d catch the flames
or give chase at least.
The distracting smell of roasting meat
hints at some neighborhood barbecue,
but only afterwards do we find
the cow caught by her horns in the fence
and roasted live.
Still, that smell of roasting meat
pushes fingers through the smoke of coyote brush
and piñon pines and sage,
The new young gardener’s
ancient heap of rusting Honda
chugs up the hill like the rhythm section
of this neighborhood banda group
with its smoke machine gone crazy
and its light show far above.
The eerie woodwinds
of canine voices far below
circle like children
waiting for their birthday cake,
ringing ‘round the rosy,
ringing ‘round the rosy
as ashes, ashes,
it all falls down.
For My Vivid Blog, the prompt is “All.”
For Cee’s FOTD
In celebration of May 10, which Ann Koplow has reminded us is “Trust Your Intuition Day,” I am reblogging a talk I gave on the subject years ago. To view the video, go HERE. (You might want to fast forward to 6:31 on the video, which is where the talk begins.)
And HERE is Ann’s blog on the subject.
For Fibbing Friday the theme is to define the below:
1. Mini Clubman: A preteen golfer
2. Morris Minor: A paraphrase of “More is less.”
3. Range Rover: A mounted cowboy
4. Hillman Imp: A mountain sprite
5. Datsun Violet: What Violet’s husband said to her when she queried him regarding what the glare was as they took the bandages off after her surgery that gave her vision for the first time.
6. Triumph Herald: A messenger carrying the news that there will be three umpires for the game.
7. Austin Cambridge: A viaduct constructed from used tin automobile cams.
8. Ford Capri : The tag of a Christmas present for Leonardo Decaprio that the dog got to first and chewed a corner off of.
9. Alfa Romeo: Fifty percent of an entire Romeo.
10. Talbot Horizon: An illustration of a mountain created by Artificial Intelligence.
Mainly trees but look hard. There are a few flowers to be seen! This is the view from my desk.
If he were on my Virginia Creeper,
I’d be repositioning him
to the empty lot next door, but here
he seems to be a guest; and so some etiquette
keeps me from altering his placement
as he sits on stone, moving his suction cups in sequence
now and then only to alter his direction, not his territory.
For dVerse Poets: Write a poem about a walkabout or pilgrimage or wandering.