Category Archives: Uncategorized

Sunshine and Shadow: Flower of the Day, Apr 13, 2017

2 Replies

IMG_3341

 

Do not miss Cee’s flower today.  Her best to date.  Just incredible.

Following: NaPoWriMo 2017, Day 13

14 Replies

The NaPoWriMo prompt today was to write a ghazal. A ghazal is formed of couplets, each of which is its own complete statement. Both lines of the first couplet end with the same end-word, and that end-word is also repeated at the end of each couplet.

daily life color242My sisters and I. Strangely enough, there is not one photo of my mother and father and the three of us girls together. The only family photo ever taken was before I was born.


Following

 The youngest of three, every day down unpaved roads, I tracked my sisters’ footprints.
Nancy Drew wannabe, who needed  fingerprints when I could read their footprints?

My mother’s closet a treasure trove, hidden wonders lay obscured on the tallest shelves.
I fanned her dresses with my fingers, slipped into red high-heels that bore her footprints.

Careful where you walk, my father warned, parting tall grass near the homestead ruins.
Fearful of snakes, I fit my own feet to matted grass that marked my father’s footprints.

That frightening choice of colleges facing me, I knew no other way to decide
than to go where she’d gone, and follow in my sister’s footprints.

The obligation of college over with no more paths worn by other feet to follow,
I chose  Australia, Indonesia and then Africa––following imagination’s footprints.

My niece’s teeth clamped to the old saxophone as its mouthpiece snapped in two,
worn by each of the girls in our family and then by her, as she followed in our footprints.

Wisteria: Flower of the Day, Apr 12, 2017

2 Replies

A must-see is Cee’s tulip.  See it HERE.

Morning Matins, NaPoWriMo 2017, Day 12

8 Replies

full moon morning 2 jdbphoto2017

 

Morning Matins

Cuddled and chirruping, choirs of birds
trill from their tree limbs in boisterous herds.
Like broken crystals, they tinkle in showers,
cacophonous clashings from high hidden bowers.
We cannot see these hermits in their hiding.
Until the sun rises, they will not be gliding
smoothly on air currents, sliding and slipping,
deft and most daring while doing their dipping.

Now a clashed chirping, like the chipping of ice.
The cooing of doves and a rooster crows twice.
The masked moon is waning, obscured by the light
as the first rays of day do away with the night.
Then the wrens take to wing and the grackles glide in.
Flycatchers and orioles desert where they’ve been.
They make their curtain calls, then spread their wings
in pursuit of their breakfasts and other bird things.

vermillion flycatcher jdbphoto2017

Being a night owl, I am so rarely up at 5 in the morning that it has been years since I’ve experienced the awakening of birds in the full moonlight before the sun has yet come out.  It was like a concert listening to birds awakening, still obscured by darkness and their sanctuaries of trees.

The NaPoWrMo prompt for day 12 was to use alliteration and assonance in a poem.

4 A.M. (NaPoWriMo 2017, Day 12)

6 Replies

full moon morning, jdbphoto2017

4 A.M.

It is too early to be stirring, the world is still asleep.
The sound is all still slumbering, the darkness is too deep.
No dayness stirs the nightness. No touch is reaching out.
No stirring and no blowing. Not a whisper. Not a shout.
When I wake before the world does, it seems the end of things
instead of the beginning, when the whole world sings.
Sun rises and the birds demand. The dogs whine for their feed.
All the world around me awakens to its need.
But for now, they are all sleeping. It is a lifeless world.
Its eyes and ears and mouth closed, around me densely curled.

The NaPoWriMo prompt today is to use alliteration. This is quiet alliteration, like the poem.  Not too much.  Just a touch!

Flower in the Making: Flower of the Day, Apr 11, 2017

2 Replies

Version 2

This Royal Poinciana is just about to pop!

https://ceenphotography.com/2017/04/10/flower-of-the-day-april-11-2017-tulips/

Work Week

18 Replies

IMG_3604Work Week

Monday

The day’s become unravelled. The night’s begun to fall,
yet I’ve not accomplished anything. I’ve done nothing at all
except cooking a curry and writing several drafts
of poems still uncompleted–they’re bobbing here like rafts
afloat upon my consciousness but have nowhere to go.
The words all came so quickly, but their gelling has come slow.
They want to group together in concrete communities,
but instead they’re fluttering like moths and landing where they please.

Tuesday

I’m a syllable collector, a hoarder of each word
without a purpose for them. It’s come to be absurd.
Verbs are piled up on shelves, adjectives under foot.
The gerunds hang like spiderwebs. I have no place to put
The adverbs and the articles. They leak out of my head.
When I nudge them into lumpy piles, they hide beneath the bed.
I’m going to have a housecleaning of consonants and vowels.
Collect them up in buckets and wipe them up with towels.

Wednesday

I’ll sort out all the lovely words. The ones I like, I’ll hoard,
then pile the others in tidy stacks and tie them up in cord.
I’ll keep the good ones by my desk to sort through when they’re needed.
Bad words go in the basement, unsorted and unheeded.
Then I’ll have a yard sale of unused words like “pickle”
and sell them in unsorted lots—a handful for a nickel.
Then perhaps I can make room for words more orderly
that come to me in sentences that make more sense to me.

Thursday

My muse is hyperactive, I need to tame her down.
Instead of resting close to me, she runs all over town
collecting words at random— funky words like “phat”—
so when I really need her, I don’t know where she’s at.
Then when I am sleeping, she unloads word after word
until there’s no room left for them. It has become absurd.
They’re piling up around me. They’ve reached my nose and ear.
I cannot swim my way through them. I’m smothering, I fear.

Friday

That’s why I’m calling poets, every novelist or bard
to have a drive-by of my house and stop here at my yard.
Bring a bucket and a rake. Take all the words you please,
for now they’re raining down like leaves falling from my trees.
Just gather them in armloads. I won’t find it queer. 
Better bring a wheelbarrow if you cannot park near.
You do not need to pay for them. Today they’re yours for free.
If you don’t help I fear that words will be the end of me!

Saturday

YARD SALE
Take what you wish. Please do not disturb occupant.

 

P.S. If you’d like to take any words or phrases or lines from this poem to prompt your own poem, please do.  But please, please send your poem as a comment here–or send a link.

The prompt today was unravel. The link to NaPoWriMo Day 11 is HERE.

Royal Poinciana: Flower of the Day, Apr 10, 2017

6 Replies

IMG_1395

 

For Cee’s daily flower challenge.

Racing Man

2 Replies

Version 2

Racing Man

I’ve parked you in my dreams
where you sit sputtering,
engine racing,
ready to be off
over the next hill
as always, reaching to release the parking brake,
adjusting the seat back,
never noticing the rear-vision mirror
is slightly off-kilter.

The NaPoWriMo prompt today was to write a poem that is a portrait of someone important to you.

Blind Misfortune

15 Replies

DSC08409Mixed Media collage “Macho” by Judy Dykstra-Brown, jdbphoto


Blind Misfortune

What you blindly get into
in youth can be the end of you.
Those days of passion, counting coup
are never risked when days are few.
The shorter our remaining years,
the greater seem to be our fears.
Thus, old men send the young to war,
forgetting what life’s really for.

They forget love’s throb and ache
and living just for living’s sake––
that need to feel adventure’s thrust––
the drive to do what’s fair and just.
Once passion ebbs, the quest for gold
drives these men turned crass and old.
They give libido other names
as they turn to other games.

Warheads coming now erect,
it seems a waste not to connect
them to their targets, so far away.
It’s only strangers who will pay.
All those enemies of mind,
with no thought of age or kind:
mothers and children meet their ends
and old men never make amends.

They send their own youth off to war
because this is what they’re for.
And young men taught by fantasy
on football field or on TV
are fodder for the greed of those
billionaires in evening clothes.
So the young men blindly go
for reasons that they barely know.

The WordPress prompt word today is blindly.