Category Archives: Writing

Wild Women Mini Writers Retreat

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Not all of the Wild Women Writers were present, but Margaret was visiting and Amelia and Leslie were in town, so Harriet and I, who are always here, joined them for a one day retreat at Leslie’s rented house. Amelia posed interesting questions and Harriet and Margaret came up with some fun writing prompts. Leslie organized the lunch which we all contributed to and I snapped photos.  A good and enlightening time was had by all.  Judy Reeves, it was good to talk to you via the internet. We missed you…The last photo is a picture of the original Wild Women group at a retreat at Quinta San Carlos before Covid changed our plans for further yearly retreats.

Gone Fishing

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Gone Fishing

I brandish my brain and confer with the night,
assiduously, wait for new thoughts to bite.
I go fishing for words that will serve as the bait
as what I am thinking I try to relate.

Floating on dreams, I troll their broad sea.
As I fish in them, I’m fishing in me.
Pulling out words from the seas where they ride
bright flashes of light that bring them topside.

Who knows what deep currents wash shores of insight
unless we cast nets to draw them to light?
In our forgotten midnights, their legions are teeming.
We must troll their dark depths for these riches of dreaming.

The lush waters of night invite interruption.
They do not view our hooks as corruption.
We’re their reason for being. They are food for our thought.
We cast lines in their depths that we may be taught.

Prompt words for today are brandish, confer, assiduous and forgotten. Painting by Isidro Xilonzochitl.

Early Morning Ecstasy

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Early Morning Ecstasy

That surge of elation when I awaken
is because the next hours have not yet been taken.
No obligations, no duties or meetings.
I can follow my heart—pay heed to its beatings.
I follow my thoughts wherever they please.
I milk them for meaning, fingers on the keys.
Does my mind correlate with the sound of the birds,
Or are the birds harmonizing with my words?
The climate is perfect right here in my head,
computer on stomach, stretched out on my bed.

 

 

The word prompts for today are: Elation, Awaken, Climate, Correlate and milk.

Lucky: The Pleasures of Advancing Age

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(Click on photos to enlarge.)

Lucky
(The Pleasures of Advancing Age)

If I were a golfer, I fear there’d be no putting,
for my grass is lush and verdant— badly in need of  cutting.
Meanwhile, the bougainvillea has gotten out of hand.
It’s like a barbed wire jungle—every twisted strand.
If I were more rambunctious, I’d grab work gloves and scramble
to gas up the mower and to tackle every  bramble,
but those days of industrious gardening are far back in my past.
Those Olympian feats of plant and tend simply didn’t last.
Instead I lie here in my bed growing and trimming words.
Outside, through the curtains, I hear the wakening birds.
I hear the front gate opening, make out the squeak of wheels.
Is there a single reader who detects how good it feels
to just fluff up the pillows and type on throughout the dawn
as Pasiano trims the thorny vines and mows the blasted lawn?

Prompt words today are verdant, meanwhile, rambunctious and lucky. Here are links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/05/13/rdp-monday-verdant/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/05/13/fowc-with-fandango-meanwhile/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/05/13/your-daily-word-prompt-rambunctious-may-13-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/05/13/lucky/

How to Write a Poem

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How to Write a Poem

Only a fool waits for a poem to come to him.
You have to call for it like a proper blind date,
knocking on its door
and seeing beauty in whatever opens it.

Take it dancing.
Twirl it around the floor,
letting words fly off in all directions.

Leave what flutters off alone.
Someone else will pick it up
and dance with it.
No word is a wallflower,
although some are chosen more frequently to dance.
Those are the words to avoid.
 
Do not always choose the prettiest words.
In the dance of the poem,
the ugliest of words acquire a charm.

Do not insist that you yourself lead.
Let the poem, instead, draw you
off the dance floor,
out the door
and down the path
to deep woods
where all the wild words live.

Gather them in bouquets
or weave them into chains
to crown your head––
that head of the poet
who follows where the poems go
and collects them by armfuls to share with the world.

 

The NaPoWriMo prompt today is to write a poem about how to do something. Three of the other four prompts I follow had the word “fool” as the prompt. No surprise. The fourth had the prompt “down.” Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/04/01/rdp-monday-fool/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/04/01/fowc-with-fandango-fool/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/04/01/your-daily-word-prompt-fool-april-1-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/04/01/down/

Fidelity

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The prompt word on this Valentine’s Day is, fittingly, “passion.” 

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Fidelity

Each morning when I wake
to shrill alarm or sweet bird song,
depending upon the requirements of my day,
you are the first to greet my opening eyes.
You rest there on the pillow next to me
in the bed where first I, then you,
have fallen to sleep the night before
too soon, too soon,
before half our words were said.

It is the first stroke of my fingers
that brings you finally to life.
Your countenance lights up
and the same love words
I revealed to you last night
are returned to me.

My hands caress
and new words come easily
first to me, then to you.
I touch gently all
your fine smoothness,
getting back
everything that I give
equal measure,
continuing our long love story
of give and take
as I shift your light frame onto my lap
to stroke your separate parts
from question mark to exclamation point.

Could a PC ever rouse this passion in me?
No way, MacBook Air. Thou art my love!

 

 The above is a rewrite of a poem written 5 years ago, and my passion for its subject continues to this day.
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/02/14/your-daily-word-prompt-passion-february-14-2019/

We Gather to Write

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We Gather to Write

Waves crashing in below us and jovial repartee
from the ones below us in the small café.
The waiter interrupts us. We order coffee, tea,
or jugo de naranja, but, dedicated, we
return to our writing. It’s what we’ve gathered for,
here where it is quiet, up on the second floor.
Leather covered tables, and equipales, too­­––
tablecloths of orange, yellow, purple, green and blue
as though they had instructions to make use of every hue.
These vivid pigments  seep into all we write and do.
Children leap through tide breaks, walkers gather shells.
Swimmers move hand over hand, out beyond the swells.
But we above just write of it, revealing how we love it
as though we were a part of it instead of here above it.

In the Rough

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Yesterday I talked about writing the Tin Man poem in my hot tub.  Today I showed Forgottenman my originals, scrawled in the drink. He urges that I should show y’all and although at first it seemed pretentious, it occurred to me that I loved looking at original drafts, with corrections, back when we all wrote by hand. So, I’m showing them to you, water drips and all.  It actually shows my process pretty well.  Line-by-line, making lists of rhyming words, choosing one and working toward it in the next line. Crossing out, moving lines. If you enjoy this, why not show me yours?  You can see the finished poem HERE.

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Topically Distracted

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Topically Distracted

When WordPress put us out to dry,
turning a deaf ear to our cry
not to suspend the Daily Post,
I think it disillusioned most.
Yet, so many rose to hear our plight
that now I labor day and night
to fulfill the prompts they host.
I fear offending if I don’t post.
So though outside the air’s a balm,
the flowers lush, the scene all calm,
I feel my obligation’s rush.
I feel each lined-up prompting’s crush.

Each jostles to be first in line
like a regular at opening time.
So though outside it’s tropical,
and therefore very topical,
I cannot feel the scene before me.
Sun, trees, water only bore me.
Even the palm trees do not sway.
No wind  rustles them today.
And though the prompt is “tropical,”
my mind is stuck on “topical.”
I must admit that I’m distracted.
With prompts, I fear, I’m over-facted!


Here are seven prompt sites that have grown up in answer to WordPress’s abandonment, plus two I’ve been posting on for some time:

https://fivedotoh.com/  Fandango’s prompt today is tropical. This is a well-set-up daily prompt site that is easy to post on. It needs followers.  Give it a try. I’d like to see it succeed. It is posted daily, just past midnight Pacific time, so if you like an early start, this is a good prompt site for you.

https://weeklyprompts.com/  This site publishes a weekly prompt.

https://flakback.wordpress.com/ Alan Grace has set up a site recycling WP prompts from two years ago. This should work out well for beginning bloggers who haven’t already done these prompts.

https://onewomansquest.org/2018/06/04/v-j-s-weekly-challenge-1-shift/  This is a once a week prompt that I used for the first time yesterday.  It was an intriguing prompt that was very unusual and fun to write to and I look forward to getting into the habit of posting there once a week. 

https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/  Daily Addictions is another reliable and easy-to-use site that makes use of Mr. Linky.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/  This is a very good daily prompt site run by seven bloggers who were part of the WordPress Daily Prompt community and who wanted to see the daily prompts continue.  You’ll recognize many of the names who post there, now.  

https://gratefulsinglemoms.com/category/daily-writing-prompts/  embeecee recommends this prompt site, saying that it isn’t always a daily prompt.  I haven’t used it yet.
 
 

https://dversepoets.com/ This is another poetry prompt site I love that predated WordPress’s retirement.They post two prompts a week and make use of a Mr. Linky site to link your poems to.   

https://ceenphotography.com/  Cee posts a number of prompts, many of them photo prompts, but some that include prompts to be written as well.  Hers are the prompts I’ve followed the longest.  They are thought-provoking and she has a large following and an easy-to-use linkup page.

If you know of other prompt sites I’ve forgotten or have not yet come across, please list links to them in the comments below. 

Mentoring Poetry

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Since the prompt today is “mentor,”  I am going to send you back in time three years to a poem I wrote about mentoring that I have no memory of having written, so even if you were around way back then, perhaps you’ll be ready to read it again as well.  Here is the link.

 

The prompt today is mentor.