Tag Archives: dVerse Poets

Small Town South Dakota

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Believe it or not, this was our main street, two blocks long!

Still Life With A Small Town Girl

For many years when I was small and far into my teens,
my summer days were filled with little else than magazines
and books and all the other things a girl in a small town
brings into her summers just to make the days less brown.

Day after day of reading soon led to dreaming, and
my shade beneath the cherry tree became a foreign land.
I did not know the name of it, but in this foreign place
the people did such lovely things. They kept a faster pace.

There were many things to see and people who liked doing—
circuses and carnivals, badminton and horse-shoeing,
imaginings and plays and travels. People who liked dancing.
Instead of trudging down the street, these people would be prancing.

I dreamed such dreams of bigger towns, and far-away towns, too.
All summer, I lay in the grass, dreaming what I’d do
when I was so much older and could go out on my own.
I’d wander off into the world. Explore the great unknown.

Now six decades later, I have done it all—
so many of those things I yearned to do when I was small.
I’ve been to places far and wide—Africa and Peru.
In England, France, Australia—I found so much to do.

Plays and concerts, dances, films, museums, garden walks.
Lectures, movies, workshops, classes, roundtables and talks.
Tours and treks and trips and sorties—guided meditations.
Somehow life seemed fuller packed with exotic vacations.

But now that I am seventy-six, I’d appreciate
if all this activity would finally abate.
I dream of slower days that I’d spend dreaming in the shade
where all my memories of days spent doing would just fade

into the past and leave me to dream here in this place,
swinging in my hammock, at a slower pace.
Leaving my activity to stream from head to pen,
filling up the page with all the places I have been.

Thus making sense of why I had to go and go,
speeding up the days that back then seemed to me so slow.
I guess I had to travel to find others of my kind
to teach me that life’s riches are mainly in the mind!

 

For dVerse Poets, we are to write a poem about a city. If you’d like to see more photos of my small town and environs, go HERE. And you can see how others responded to the prompt HERE.

The Blue of a Heart before Forgetting, For dVerse poets

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The Blue of a Heart before Forgetting

First thing in the morning, when I’m fresh from dreams,
your memory cuts so sharply through the day’s beginning that I wake.
Once, in that long dream of childhood­­, days were not over half so soon.
Early in September, below the slippery slide,
the steady beat of dribbling basketballs.
So many acts of bravery lost—
“Annie I Over” and “New Orleans.”
Way back in our salad years,
it was so very easy to trap wonder in a box.
The dominoes going head to toe.
All those nights of passion, those years spent in desire.
More in the air than possibility.
You would think there would be some remnant left.

Enough, I say!
It was the beginning of the end.
I’m counting steps from one to ten across my heart, then back again.
What you blindly get into in youth can be the end of you.
I must ask, is it me alone—
this bald horizon line, the teeth of far-off cliffs?
The tide comes in each morning.
That isn’t my heart beating with wild abandon.
I scream, I cry, I moan, I curse.
The rain is falling drop on drop.
All day long, the rain comes down,
writing this poem with water on cobblestones.

The moon like an animal hovers over and around our houses.
My life catches in its static house.
I am an ally of the truths that lie the whole world over,
though some of them are ill-begotten.
Since it is true, I must report.
Every day since birth, I have been emptying the cup.
My past drifts away from me.
I seem to fit my life now. I’m cozy in my skin.
Is it gain or loss to feel contentment?
A woman should be shrouded, silent, pregnant, dumb.
You crane your necks and stand and gawk.
Clap hands, you say, Clap hands to the music.
The act of creation is the greatest art.

 

For dVerse Poets, we were to make a poem from the first lines of one poem we published each month in 2023.  Finding it almost impossible to sort through over a thousand posts made in the past year, I instead went through my file where some poems from past years are filed alphabetically. Selecting some poems from poem files A to D, I recorded first lines that seemed  to be possible lines in a poetic compilation, then set about reordering them.  This is the poem I came up with.  The lines are exactly as they were in the 40 poems I borrowed the first lines from. The only changes made concerned punctuation and capital letters. The title is also from a first line.

To read other poems written to this prompt, go HERE.

Night Thoughts for dVerse Poets

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Night Thoughts

They lie there like slumbering cats,
unaware of my presence,
then stir to stalk a field
where hidden metaphors hunch,
twitching, in the tall grass.

Whether they exist in a dream or not,
they do not know, but dwell there
in the shadow of my sleep,
transformed into jungle animals.

Exposed to the light of day,
they spring, as though tired of waiting,
into my conscious thoughts,
leaving their footprints on the page
where I jot them down guiltily,
a grateful plagiarist
who has merely trapped
the stuff of dreams.

Showing, then curling and retracting their nails,
paw after pawprint, they stalk
one line after another,
as, taking the credit,
I fill another page.

 

For dVerse Poets.  What Animal serves as a perfect metaphor for how you write?
See how other poets wrote to the prompt HERE.

Judy’s Addictive Sangria Brew

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Judy’s Addictive Sangria Brew

Frozen strawberries, eight or ten––
find a pitcher, toss them in.
Pour Tequila, just to cover.
(Not too much, Tequila-lover!)
Next, Sangria, Kirkland brand.
a third way up the pitcher is grand.

Then orange juice in equal measure,
and then to guarantee your pleasure,
7-Up to fill the place
that formerly was only space.
Let it sit, then stir it up
and pour it in a pre-iced cup.

Guaranteed to please each guest,
but the way I like to serve it best?
Frozen strawberries in lieu of ice.
And the presentation’s especially nice
with bamboo skewer to stab the berry.
Is this drink addictive? Very!!!!

I learned how to make this sangria at a friend’s house in Wyoming and carried it back to Mexico with me where it has become an addiction among my friends, with only one or two hard-core white wine-drinkers abstaining,

Looks like I missed the cutoff date, but this was written for the  dVerse Poets: Recipes in Rhyme

Under the Snow Moon: For dVerse Poets

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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.

Here the sandcrabs burrow deep,
where no predators can creep.
All these memories I keep.
Turn out lights. Go to sleep.

The dVerse Poets quadrille prompt is snow. My favorite way to create a quadrille is to find a longer poem I have written and to trim it down. Go HERE to see how others responded.

“Giving” for dVerse Poets, Nov 30, 2023

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Sacrifice

Some people give their lives to it,
And others never do––
Conditions never calling for
Rash actions to ensue.
I’ve held onto my life because
Fate never asked me to
Immolate myself to save
Child, soldier, Jew,
Ensuring that I remain 
Securely in life’s queue.

I don’t think sacrifice has been anything I’ve had to do much of in my life, short of occasionally knowingly giving someone the last pork chop or the biggest piece of cake.  Perhaps this is because I had no children.

I can think of only one big potential sacrifice I made in my life and that is something I will not speak of–mainly because people it might affect are still alive. So, in lieu of writing a personal essay or poem on this topic, I invite you to read an article about the top ten most inspiring self sacrifices.  You can go  HERE to read it.

 

For dVerse Poets: Giving

routes laid out by heavenly bodies for dVerse Poets Quadrille Challenge, Nov 13, 2023

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routes laid out by heavenly bodies

the moon
at its birth
and
the sun
at its death
create
just the
suggestion
of a
road
that is
why
I rise early
for the
sunrise
why I
ask you
to join me
for the
sunset
to howl howl
at the
open moon

This is a rewrite of a poem written 8 years ago transformed into a quadrille for the dVerse Poets Quadrille Challenge: Moon.  Go HERE to read other poems written for this prompt. I think I like the quadrille version better. Thanks, De at Whimsygizmo, for the incentive.

Autumn Colors for dVerse Poets: Fall Foliage

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Autumn Colors

There is little in nature—both in life and death-—that does not contain beauty.  Trees in autumn are a perfect example.

They reach out their hands
to collect dying colors
to adorn curled palms.

 

 

To see other Haibun on this same topic, go HERE.
For dVerse Poets Haibun Monday.

Tag Along (A Short Short for dVerse Poets)

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Tag Along

You cannot pluck moonlight to bring in your pocket, yet unasked and unbidden, it may follow you home.

For dVerse Poets  Prompt:  Write a prose piece of no more than 144 words that includes this line from a  Helen Hoyt poem: “You cannot pluck moonlight to bring in your pocket.”

To see other reponses to this prompt, go HERE.

Smashed Hopes: For dVerse Poets

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Smashed Hopes

My fascination with kale is nil,
but smashed potatoes fill the bill.
They go best with butter and
homemade gravy, never canned.
Rosé goes with clove-studded ham,
but I must admit I am
 fond of gin for getting smashed
when the potatoes are mashed!

 

The dVerse Poets Quadrille challenge prompt is Smash.
And you can find more responses to the prompt HERE.