Category Archives: Poem

“Bad Tenants” for The Sunday Whirl, June 15, 2025

3 Replies

Bad Tenants

Those caravans of daily life proceed at what a cost?
The breath of forests stifled by the clouds of their exhaust.
As we trace our progress mile on mile spent behind the wheel,
the tracks we leave behind us leave scars that will not heal.

We have bundled up our legends and published them in books,
sealed safe between those covers where no one ever looks.
“Oh beautiful for spacious skies and amber waves of grain”
mere lyrics, that though touching, may be sung in vain.

We tend to think that nature is simply meant for viewing,
as we overlook all of those other things we should be doing
to save our fields and forests from pesticides and other
misdeeds brought about by man, lest at last we smother

that Earth that feeds and shelters us in spite of what we’ve done
to bring about our end on this third planet from the sun.
We worry about meteors that pelt us from the skies.
Meanwhile overlooking where the greater danger  lies.

 

For The Sunday Whirl, the prompt words are: clouds caravan breath forests track trace wheel touch pelts tends legends bundles.

Under the Snow Moon, for RDP June 14, 2025

1 Reply

IMG_9713

Under the Snow Moon

Moon of Snow, Moon of Sand.
Under a bleached white moon I stand.
Starless night, all alone.
Cold as ice. Cold as bone.

There you spin, far above.
Prompting wonder, prompting love.
Why is your light a different sort
Causing fierce creatures to cavort?

In the forest, eyes shine bright,
intent to tear, intent to bite,
but here at continent’s far rim,
with moon as bright, our passions dim.

Here the sand crabs burrow deep.
poem predators to stir their sleep.
Light of moon and light of sun
are the same. Their light is one.

Your light reflects some foreign day.
I look once more, then turn away.
I take its memory to keep,
turn out the lights and go to sleep.

 

For RDP the prompt is “predator.”

Ask First! for SOCS, June 14, 2025

8 Replies

Ask First!

I don’t drink milk and don’t drink tea.
Water and coffee do for me.

When it comes to booze, I’m picky.
Tequila’s fine but Scotch is icky.

Pineapple juice or orange is fine,
but tomato’s out of line,

so bloody Marys aren’t the thing
that I’d like for you to bring

to wet my tongue and slake my thirst.
I request you ask me first.

For SOCS, the prompt word is “drink.”

Downpour

3 Replies

Finally, after a year of practically no rain, a downpour!!!

Downpour

I love the cadence of the rain
on paving stones and windowpane.
One slight percussion, then a profusion
blending into a confusion
of drops that interrupt and drown
the sounds of others coming down.
Each new drop joining with them all
to imitate a waterfall.

“Rote Learning” For the Three Things Challenge

2 Replies

Rote Learning

As education
takes a vacation,
alas, we know
that even though
thoughts that astound
may well abound,
thinking aloud
is not allowed.

The three words for the Three Things Challenge are: ALLOWED
ALOUD ASTOUND

Trump administration considers slashing federal education money.

 

Goodbye Old Paint, for the dVerse Poetics Challenge

24 Replies

Old for New

Goodbye Old Paint

What have you eaten that we have forgotten?
What lost earring resides
in the deepest recesses of your front seat?
What coins shaken and pushed into your crevasses?
And do you remember the song made up on the spot
and sung just once, then left forgotten in Nevada?

Do you still carry the dust of Tonopah
or that yearning to actually see something extraterrestrial
on the Extraterrestrial Highway?
Do you carry shards of his boredom while driving
mile after mile of Utah beauty?
Do you still carry her expectations
of sharing the giant faces of Rushmore
and echoes of the fact that he expected more?

What of molecules of the Mississippi crossing
or dreams of the memories of Hannibal?
What sweat from those Mississippi hours
waiting outside the B.B. King Museum?

Salt grains and crumbs of chocolate
and DNA of those few souls who rode along in you—
all parked in a parking lot waiting to be bought
by someone who will never know the hidden you.
Just like the rest of the world,
frequented by interlopers.
Only we, leaving you, will murmur “Goodbye Old Paint”
and know that although you neither hear nor answer,
somehow our past is locked up inside of you
and there a part of us will stay
while we depart without it.

The dVerse Poetics Challenge is:  to write a poem that conjures a view (whether from your travels or everyday life, whether from desire or experience) that is colored by the emotion of the moment. This poem was originally written in answer to This blog by Forgottenman. I had totally forgotten it, but when it popped up in another context today, it  just seemed to meet this prompt so well that I had to repeat it.

Weekly Prompts Color Challenge: Blue

16 Replies

Some Thoughts Upon Viewing a Blue-Footed Booby

A chameleon can change his color by cue,
but what’s a blue-footed booby to do?
You can’t take off a foot like you’d take off a shoe.
And when blue is the only color you view
as you walk down the beach for a mile or two,
you might fancy a color a little bit new.
Yet, step after step, his feet remain blue!
It’s the color of ink and the color of goo—
a color that any mom would eschew
if she had a choice and a chance to imbue
her fledgling’s feet with a more subtle hue.
Instead, they’re this color that both of them rue.
Amazing to witness and lovely to view,
but admit it! You wouldn’t want blue feet, would you?

For the Weekly Prompts Color Challenge: Blue

Crossroads, for dVerse Poets, June 6, 2025

18 Replies

Crossroads

You and I are at that place where roads cross—
a new place made by the need for things
going in different directions to meet.

How lonely if all roads
veered off on their own, solitary,
never coming to a junction.

It might have been thus, but for
a thousand small decisions that led to this meeting,
here on this corner of your road and my road.

We meet here and become one for as long
as we both decide to stand talking like neighbors,
each of us having veered
halfway away from private territory
to come to the spot here in the middle
where we become two parts of a center.

Neighbor, lover,
friend, acquaintance,
interloper, by-passer
or strangers when we meet,
so many possibilities
in the crossed roads
of our lives.

for dVerse Poets

“Full Volume,” for Word of the Day, June 5, 2025

7 Replies

Full Volume

I hear my neighbor’s fighting cocks crow into the night,
expressing their readiness for tomorrow’s fight.
There are always noises cutting through the dark.
I hear the donkey’s braying and the dog’s loud bark.

Some neighborhood weekend party goes on ’til four or five,
expressing at great volume that they’re glad to be alive.
The singing and the music and the fireworks exploding
that sometimes make me feel as though my head may be imploding.

The church bells in the village every quarter hour declaring,
trucks advancing street by street, loudspeakers rudely blaring.
One truck selling vegetables, another selling gas,
shouting out their wares to everyone they pass.

Others selling water or cooking oil or soap,
scrub brushes or sponges, plastic buckets or rope—
Motorcycles without mufflers roaring down the street
revving up their motors for every friend they meet.

Bandas in the plaza play at a decibel
that I swear could raise the bats straight up out of Hell.
Mexico isn’t subtle. It’s bright and bold and proud.
That’s why for everything in Mexico, the volume’s turned up LOUD!!!!

The Word of the Day is “Volume.”

 

“Wallpaper” for Esther’s Writing Prompt, June 4, 2025

5 Replies

Since I used to be a papermaker, I have dozens of blogs about paper in some form..from handmade washi lamps to toilet paper (not homemade.) This one, however, is the first poem in my new book of love poems, out within the month, I hope, and it is titled “Wallpaper.”

Wallpaper

DSC09880 

 

Wallpaper

Clinging to the wall
like an old wallpaper scrap
are the words
I want you, I want you, I want you, I want you.

Their refrain slides up and down
the musical scale—
an old country tune,
plaintive and clear.

Why do I want you?

The first time I met you,
there was something about the curl of your hair.
Your eyes, so familiar­—puzzled, as though
you, too, were trying to remember.

After that, it was
the set of your shoulders—
the arm stretched between your seat and mine
with your hand on the back of my seat.

All of your restraint an aphrodesiac.

The truth is
that I pined
for two days after I left,
then went on with my life.

Still, that scrap
of wanting
comes up early in the morning
as I waken

and my mind walks,
looking for someone to pin it to,
and every time
it stops at you.

For Esther’s Writing Prompts, the prompt is “paper.”

When I searched 13 years of my blog  for the topic of “paper”  I came up with almost 400 blogs! As a writer and a papermaker, I guess that isn’t surprising.  I made the paper, starting out with tree bark that I soaked, pounded, then combined the fibers with formation aid suspended in water and dipped numerous times to make huge sheets of washi paper. I made some of my own forms for the lamps, to spread the paper over. Other larger forms were made by my husband and I devised shades for them out of my paper. Since we were both writers as well, paper formed an important influence in our lives. HERE  are some of our lamps.