The rainy season runoff shoots from the drain that pierces a high stone wall.
Summer Rain
The rain falls
fresh as cucumbers
on cobblestones and tiles,
the dust of another summer
washed from crevasses
and curves of stone and clay.
The air is cleansed
of the scent of primavera,
jacaranda
and flamboyant trees
and the whole world
breathes easily again.
For the dVerse Poets Quadrille prompt: Summer
ESCAPE
The door to the greatest house of all, the ocean’s edge,
tempts me to leave myself and enter.
This echo of the ocean is the dove in me
that carries the message that I want to fly.
Soaring dove, I want to ride on your back
to the crack of sunrise—to its flower.
To forget the lone compulsions
of the logic that has frozen me.
If I could let this hard time pass,
I might grow less diverted as my distance from it grows.
Time’s ricochet might drive me to the ocean’s rim,
revealing to me that I no longer want to toil.
The stress of guilt slows down
and if I choose to let it, falls behind.
Time will devour my past no matter how grand its scale––
revoke my sentence and set me free.
I will pass and repass it
on my round journey,
until my whole life
finally wears away.
For dVerse Poets Open Link Night. To see other poems for this prompt, go HERE.
AI image from dVerse Poets prompt.
Piecemeal
Two lives once pieced together
one day may come apart.
Who knows if time will loosen
that fine mosaic of heart
that happened after melding
two souls into one?
Even mighty continents
slowly come undone.
For dVerse Poets Pub. To see other submissions to this prompt go HERE. Mosaic by Alma Thomas
Born on the 3rd of July!!!
Behold the Crab who walks on toes
to all the hot spots where he goes.
And though July is Cancer’s sign
and so the Crab is also mine,
I can’t walk up on toes at all,
for if I do, I’m sure to fall!
A 44-word poem for:dVerse Quadrille: Feeling Crabby. (The photo is copied from the prompt site.)
To see other crabby poems, go HERE.
Artist: Catrin Welz-Stein.
Words
By their adjustment,
I change their drift,
but when I alter their lilt,
I am as transformed by them
as they are by me.
I am inebriated by words.
I reel in their power
as they call my bluff.
They reflect the changes in me
I would otherwise not know.
I can float in their buoyant comfort
or shoot the rapids of emotion.
Words are my river and my raft,
my cushion and that daredevil conveyance
into a new stream of thought
from which I never return
to the exact same world
I left from
for dVerse Poets
To read other poems written to this prompt, go HERE.
When her large middle eastern family moved to our prairie town of 500 people, they pretty much stuck together. She was an odd little girl which had intrigued me, but caused the other girls to pretty much shun her.
From the first grade onward, in the classroom or any public gathering, I’d get that itchy feeling that no amount of scratching could dispel and when I turned around, I’d see her staring at me. It caused me to go blank during spelling bees, to miss free throws, to stammer during wedding vows; but any efforts to befriend her and discover what she was thinking when she stared like that never succeeded.
Yesterday, 50 years after we graduated from high school, I read on the local Facebook site that she had passed away. I pray to God that she may lie forever with unopened eye.
Words and Music
I like words that sizzle. I like words that pop.
When it comes to words I find that I can never stop.
Words that bubble are a gas. They float like a balloon.
Some rat-a-tat like snare drums. Others hum like a bassoon.
Onomatopoeia makes a lyric rich.
It hums along the melody, itching every itch.
The clanging of the cymbals, the clinking of a bell
assure us that the verbs they’re given suit them very well.
for dVerse Poets
Image by Simon Ormsby on Unsplash
Night Chorus
When a bright full moon escapes the cloud,
the dogs howl long and the dogs howl loud.
A burro brays its harsh assent
as wind whipped palms whisper consent.
Only you and I stay silent still
As the world around us speaks our will.
For dVerse Poets, the theme is Dark and the form is the Quadrille (44 words only.)
One No Trump
I must begin this sad narration
with these words of sad regret
for the state of our lost nation
that has lost that noble way
carefully planned in its gestation,
perfect in its founders’ minds,
but somehow skewed in maturation
by takeovers from the Trumpster set
led by an idiot’s vain oration!
The dVerse Poets Magic 9 prompt today was to write *a poem in 9 lines
*meter and line-length at discretion of poet
*rhyme, a b a c a d a b a, with c and d unrhymed
Go HERE to read other poems that followed the propt.
Double Betrayal
Her thoughts in parting were most candid,
her emotions, clearly branded
on her face. They reprimanded
him for how he cruelly stranded
her within their love affair—
how he left her standing there
alone, heartbroken, vulnerable.
How he’d burst her true love’s bubble.
Thus was her earlier promise broken
before a single word was spoken
when she met them, face to face,
engaged in intimate embrace—
that one who was to be her mister
with her faithless younger sister.
For dVerse Poets
See how others responded HERE.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 