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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
Noises in the Night
She was six years old and alone in a room that had noises in the wall. She would curl up into a tight little ball under the covers and concentrate on the friendly sounds––the tapping of the pendulum of the clock which hung on the wall beside her bed and the water gurgling through the heating pipes. The muffled voices of her parents down below in the living room. She liked these noises. They made her think that she wasn’t alone.
But she could hear other sounds of the summer night–– the sudden loud popping noise that she thought was a gun until daddy told her that it was only houses settling, or the sound of the elm tree outside her window scraping against the brick on the chimney or the wind as it whined through her screens, making the venetian blinds scrape against their wooden window frames. She could hear things in the walls, too––noises that sounded like people walking and high shrieking noises that daddy said were just mice and not robbers.
The sheet felt muggy on her bare legs and she kicked it off and rolled over. She lay on her stomach and slipped her hand beneath the pillow, sliding it back-and-forth against the trapped coolness of the percale. She glanced at the noisy pendulum clock Santa had brought her for Christmas to help her learn to tell the time. It was her first real clock and it was in the shape of a Shmoo. She could just make out where its hands were from the light of the streetlamp shining through her window. It wasn’t very late.
She flipped over and slid her legs over the side of the bed, feeling the slight stickiness of the linoleum on her feet as she walked to the window. The air had cooled a bit and it had started to rain. A slight breeze tickled the hairs on her arm and sifted the rain onto her nose as she pressed it close to the screen to smell the mustiness of the wet night grass.
She wondered when her older sisters would get home and come up to bed. It was lonely in a room all alone in the upstairs of a house that had robbers in the walls.
Most of you have probably seen this next post about my sisters, but I had forgotten it so perhaps you have, too: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2021/11/06/my-sisters-camera/
This pictorial post from two years ago actually prompted a book which I am doing the final editing on. Hopefully it will be published in the next few months.
For the dVerse Poets prompt: Siblings
And you can read what others wrote in their response HERE.
Dear Genie (A note Affixed to a Bottle)
Get back into the bottle. You’re doing nothing right.
The Adonis I requested just the other night
turned out to be the plumber. He got here around nine,
but the pipes he chose to work on were not any pipes of mine.
A problem with your hearing is a possibility,
so for now there’s only one more wish that I would ask of thee.
A doctor of ear, nose and throat you need to visit, please,
for when I requested money, you brought me hives of bees.
Now I’ve sufficient honey and beeswax it appears—
almost as much as I imagine you have in your ears.
As it is, each thing I wish for occasions my new fears.
So you’re confined to quarters ’til your hearing reappears!
Vidalia Onion Dicer. No More Tears!
Sauerkraut and mustard, ketchup, onions, relish—
a hotdog was created merely to embellish.
The tears came later, when the bill came. Go HERE to read the story of the thirty dollar hot dog. And you’ll just have to imagine the story of my my recent forty-dollar corn dog eaten at a hotel in Billings, Montana. Pictured below, its story is too painful to relate. No onions, this time.
Here is the link for the prompt, and here are more poems on the subject for dVerse Poets: Vidalia Onions
Short Vacation
Just for today, repress advice
that the world is not so nice.
For just one day, forget the slime.
Pretend the world’s once more sublime.
Let’s hop aboard our little dingy,
grab that picnic hamper thingy
and simply sail our fears away.
Escape the news, just for today.
The dVerse prompt today is “Vacation Reminiscences”
To see other poems written to this prompt, go HERE.
(This is a poem I wrote in 2018. I had forgotten it, so perhaps you will have forgotten it, too. A shortie, just like the vacation described.)
