In a comment on someone else’s photo gallery for The Numbers Game, I challenged him to write a line prompted by each photo, then to rearrange them into a poem. Then I decided to take my challenge myself. Here is the resulting poem. Go HERE to see the rest of the photos that prompted the lines. (After you read the poem, I invite you to do the same. Use as many photos to prompt lines as possible, but you need not use them all. I omitted a few in the poem. Then link your poem or story to this page.)

Saudade*

In these weeks before Christmas,
I take solitary morning walks along the tideline
capturing photos along the way.

I am wedded to a communion of senses:
the scent of dried kelp on the sand,
the mist of sea spray,
the orange blossom
of a crown of thorns,
my pants cuff held prisoner
by its barbs.

Drumbeats
of the dancers on the beach,
green fronds swaying in the wind
and a cormorant
on a branch reaching upwards
as though in supplication.

My eyes are captured by the shadow
of the coral succulent blossom
against a rock rolled into a perfect sphere
by the ocean tide.

Closing the garden gate,
I am greeted by
one open-palmed white hibiscus,
tongue extended,
fenced off from the field of wildflowers
that stretch down to the sea.

My ear perks to the purring
of abandoned kittens
in a pile on my couch,
and I move to my bed––
its serpentine twist of sheets
the remnants of a torturous night.

• Saudade is a feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia.