Tag Archives: dVerse Poets

Happy Holidays!!!!

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Remembering Grandma at Christmas

The years have chosen to abrade
the paper angel Grandma made
that year when Christmas cheer was thin,
because for weeks we were snowed in.
Even Santa ceased his action
for his reindeer had no traction.

Weeks of snow and sleet and fog
even kept the catalogue
from providing a Christmas doll
when Santa couldn’t come at all.
And so the holidays that year
did not reflect our usual cheer.

No tree, no lights, no heavenly choir,
our only heat a roaring fire.
We kids complained to Mom and Dad
and by Christmas Eve, they’d had
as much of kids as they could stand
and that’s when Grandma took a hand.

Her silver scissors nipped and flew
creating something that was new—
a Christmas angel feathery light
that floated that December night
above our heads in fire glow,
hung by a string, rotating slow

around the room with wafting wings
descending from above on strings.
And from the dark a heavenly song
prompted us to sing along.
My Grandma led, with timorous voice
that song that always was her choice:

“Silent night, holy night!
All is calm, and all is bright.
Round yon Virgin, Mother and Child.
Holy infant so tender and mild.
Sleep in heavenly peace.
Sleep in heavenly peace.”

One by one, we entered in,
our voices first halting and thin,
but when my Grandma chimed a bell,
our family choir began to swell
up to the ceiling, throughout the room,
dispelling darkness, cold and gloom.

Mom made cocoa on the coals
while Dad made popcorn, filling bowls
we strung on thread to deck our halls
from curtain rods to lamps to walls,
along with paper snowflakes that
twirled on their strings to tease the cat.

In the firelight’s magic glow,
they made things magical and so
every normal Christmas since,
we love our turkey and pies of mince,
Christmas presents to poke and squeeze,
bubble lights and towering trees,

but what’s most special is when Pop
puts Grandma’s angel on the top
of the tree covered in flakes
and popcorn strings the family makes.
And when we sing her special song,
if angels sing, she’ll sing along.

For dVerse Poets, the last prompt of the year is “Holiday.”

I wrote this poem 6 years ago. It may not be Kosher to run it by again, but then Chritstmas isn’t a very Kosher holiday at all, is it?  Happy Holidays to one and all..be it Hanukkah or Xmas

A Sci-Fi Poem for the diVerse Poets Pub

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The Prayer of the First Astronaut Poet

There is no Wifi in space
and so I send my words
out into the Universe
hoping that each syllable
will emit a ray
somehow connected
to all my other syllables,
and if quantum entanglement
is right, they will one day
find each other
again.

For the diverse Poets Pub the prompt is to write a Sci-Fi Poem

“Within” for Quadrille Challenge on diVerse Poets, Nov 26, 2024

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Within

Although they stand stiffly at attention,
these walls reach out
and hold me safe within their middle.
They stand guardian,
cushioning sound,
deflecting sharp edges.
Lucky me to have their protection.
Foolish me to leave their arms.
Yet the butterfly
soars over and away.

for dVerse Poets, the Quadrille Challenge prompt is “With.”

“Tree-hugger” for dVerse Poets, Nov 13, 2024

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            Tree-hugger.                 
Today my eyes teared over
as they bulldozed the tree
in the undeveloped lot next door.
It had to be cut. 
A house was being built there and
aside from the trash it dropped,
it blocked the view.
“I’ll tell you what,” Kazem had said,
“I’ll dig it up and plant it in your yard.”
But I didn’t want the mess of it, either.
I wanted the tree next door
where I could see it 
without  dealing 
with the fluff in my pool,
the pods falling off.
That tree was a resting place for  birds,
which I said goodbye to
along with the tree.
Then, while I was at it,
I said goodbye to my cat
who had drowned in the pool
a week before.
Goodbye to my husband
who had hoped to see that tree
and the view around it
every day of the rest of his life.
Goodbye to my mother,
who passed onto me
her love of trees.
Goodbye
to all loved creatures 
recently gone.
The tree was gone in a minute,
along with dry bushes, weeds.
The backhoe scraped the soil over
Coke cans, agua bottles,
plastic flowerpots and chips wrappers–
the detritus from houses on each side,
as well as evidence of years of workers
who sat in the shade of the lot for lunch.
For a year or two
of privacy lost, calm shattered,
peace surrendered,
I’d get new neighbors,   
perhaps a friend.
Clouds of dust billowed
over my newly painted wall.
They’d plant new trees, 
the builder promised,
as he bulldozed all.

–Judy D-B

For dVerse Poets Pub, photo by Aaron Burden
To see the prompt, go HERE. The prompt quote was:
—whose hearts are mountains, roots are trees,
it’s they shall cry hello to the spring.
–e.e. cummings

“Afterthought,” for the dVerse Quadrille Challenge

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Afterthought

I had this thought before you came along,
so whatever you thought I was thinking is wrong.
I wasn’t thinking  your dress wasn’t right,
although now that you mention it, perhaps you might
choose one that was made for a girl of your height.

for the dVerse Quadrille Challenge, the prompt word is What. You can see how others responded to the prompt HERE. Image by Fray Bekele on Unsplash.

Lampmakers, for DVP Quadrille Prompt, Oct 14, 2024

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Click on photos to enlarge.

 

Lampmakers

My husband
trapped light.
Sculpted it.
Forced it to his will.
Made art of it.
Made me
complicit in making it
more than something to see by.
We surrounded light
and channeled it.
Held light before releasing it
in the directions
of our dreams

 

For dVersePoets Quadrille Light Challenge.
See how others responded HERE.

“The Power of Words” For dVerse Poets

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The Power of Words

Words gleam with the meaning
infused with their first thought,
as we think of what they mean to us
instead of what they’re not.

Forming into sentences,
they collect more meaning.
All the smiles of happy words,
and all the sad words’ keening.

For some words grow our ecstacy
with lyrics that are lilting,
while others cast a deathly pall
that prompts our spirit’s  wilting.

 

2. Three little words – Sarah gave us this prompt based on what3words:
“ what3words divides the whole world into 3 metre squares with each allocated a combination of 3 words. These words pinpoint your location exactly.” The three words for my gazebo where my hammocks are hung, (the location on my property where much of my inspiration comes from) are: Gleam sentences wilt. We were to write three stanzas, each prompted by one of the words.

 

Rich Harvest, for dVerse Poets, Oct 2, 2024

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Rich Harvest

The night that we brought in the wheat,
our weeks of labor now complete,
we raised our voices, beat our feet,
and in that stifling prairie heat,
weary and arm-sore, yet replete
with satisfaction for jobs well-done
earned in the dust and chaff and sun,
we ceased our labors and had some fun.

Hank gave the prim schoolteacher a treat
by lifting her from her safe seat
to move her to the fiddler’s beat.
Soon, her hairpins met defeat,
her wild hair anything but neat,
and Hank was heard to woo the miss
and then to plant a tender kiss.
She remembers all of this

now that their family’s complete
with Rita, Sarah, and little Pete.
Now every harvest, when you greet
each townsperson you chance to meet,
chances are they will repeat
how Hank brought in the wheat that year
and afterwards, conquered his fear
and dared to call the school marm, “dear.”

The dVerse Poets prompts today are harvest and haunting–to use one or both as our theme in a poem. It is a bit early in the month for “haunting,” so I’m sticking to the harvest theme. To read other poems written to these themes go HERE.

Seeing Off Joe

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Click on photos to enlarge.

Seeing Off  Joe

The birds were in attendance:­­
the pelican, night heron and snowy egret,
as well as his friends—
some in the boat,
others gathered onshore
to watch him swell his being
under a falling sun
in the  beginning of his final journey to every shore.

Mexican by choice rather than birth,
he floated, strung out
in ribbons
behind the boat
as we returned him
to his chosen place,
strewing our friend
like flowers.
Spilling him home.
Reaffirming
that we’re never lost to a world we are a part of.

 

For Quadrille Monday: Strings  (I chose to write a poem composed of two quadrilles.)

Home Improvement, For dVerse Poets, Sept 26, 2024

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Home Improvement

Some of us find the world
in the places where we were born.
Some of us can find no place there at all
except in retrospect.

We write books about these lost places
as though we knew what they were all about;
as though just by living there, we understood that place.
Actually, by writing about them we visit them again
and feel as much a stranger as we did before.

That is how we can stand to write about them.
They become the exotic other lands we’ve traveled to.
Misfortune becomes the best part of the story;
and we, at last, are grateful for it.

 

For dVerse Poets Open Link Night